ferienhaus

Some property-scouting from Things Magazine directs our attention to the estate agents who have recently placed a MidCentury Modern vacation village on the market. This ensemble of chalets with amenities are part of a campground on the Italo-Swiss border outside of the community of Cremenaga with seventeen of the twenty-seven units (plus communal buildings and facilities) designed by renowned Zürich lecturer and architect Justus Dahinden (*1925 - †2020), whose other works include some iconic, Brutalist concrete sacred buildings, a ziggurat-inspired clinic and numerous community centres, multi-purpose halls and holiday resorts. Much more to explore at the links above. 

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ginger-reveal party: photographer Kieran Dodds has spent years capturing images from red heads all over the world  

nacelle: a handy camper turned a surplus jet engine into a deluxe caravan trailer 

thursday afternoon: the video paintings of Brian Eno—see previously 

lawn and order: perhaps Spain ought to get out of the art restoration business and other items of note from Hyperallergic’s weekly digest 

we’ll let the supreme courtyard marriot decide the outcome of the vote: apropos the entry above, more roundups and rundowns from the week from Super Punch  

julia’s name is going to be julia gulia: a team of volunteer correspondents answer missives left to Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers  

matita: a treasury of vintage Italian pencils 

macroscopic: a pairing of recent posts from the always excellent Nag on the Lake celebrate capturing images of the tiny at extremely close range

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patim, patam, patum: font specimens of Patufet, a typeface inspired by the Catalonian Tom Thumb 

ace of cups: Summer of Love all-female band that played the Avalon Ballroom and appeared with Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead release a new double-album 

leaf-peeping: Swiss fall foliage map 

franking privileges: Finnish studio mints climate change stamps with heat-reactive ink 

backyard safari: highly detailed journal documenting encounters with wildlife—via Nag on the Lake 

space 1999: scenes from the sets of the iconic British scifi series that ran from 1975 to 1977—via Messy Nessy Chic 

pacomobile: a modified VW snail camper—via Things magazine  

sălaj county: a brilliant assortment of flag redesigns for Romania’s forty-two regions to celebrate the country’s diversity 

 cannonball aderley: jazz record sleeves from Reagan Ray (see previously) feature the typography of the artists’ names—via Kottke

fränkische schweiz

Located in the uppermost pocket of the Franconian Jura and originally bearing the name the Muggendorfer Hills, we had the privilege of touring the region previously “rediscovered” and romantically marketed at the end of the eighteenth century by a couple of law students from the University of Erlangen who wrote about enthusiastically, followed by a 1820 volume by a local historian who coined the new endonym die kleine Schweiz and now had the chance to see it again for a few fresh impressions over the weekend.
First we entered in County Kulmbach the market town of Wonsees with its medieval Felsenburg (rock castle) Fortress Zwernitz, hewn into the dolomite stone, originally the family seat of elevated peasants called the Walpoten—a so-called ministerialis line, that is serfs raised up as servitors and agents into positions of responsibility within the class system of the Middle Ages.
While not technically free and independent, these families held social power and could cultivate their estates and pass along their wealth to the next generation, with equal status accorded to men and women.
Beneath the tower and keep is a seventeenth century cliff garden called Sanspareil landscaped around some strange rock formations and with oriental follies—reminding H and I of the gardens at Veitshöchsheim or Schwetzingen.


Next, following the Burgen- und the Fränkischen Bierstraße (the region having the one of the highest concentrations of traditional breweries in Europe) we came to a village called Aufseß, named for the stream that flows through it, dominated by a castle and chapel with a clutch of some pretty fancy chickens in the property opposite the courtyard who were eager to have their pictures taken by us paparazzi.

With a few detours through Plankenfels and Waischenfeld, we stopped at Burg Rabenstein—a well-preserved Spornburg, a spur castle which is constructed where natural topography aides in its defences that also featured a quite good restaurant, a dripstone cavern and a bird-of-prey demonstration. The intact castle is one of the best conserved—most are ruins but romantic ones—along the route and was originally also in the capable hands of the Rabenstein ministerialis family, who were eventually able to buy the property and ennoble themselves. The castle appears as the main stage for the 1995 wildly popular PC game Gabriel Ritter sequel “The Beast Within”—I was not familiar but I think it was like the equivalent of the King’s Quest saga.
After securing a campsite (we had miscalculated a little and instead of the season’s end like we thought it was busier than expected) in the Veldensteiner Forest outside of Pottenstein, we returned to Gößweinstein with its Burg and basilica minor designed by Balthasar Neumann as a pilgrimage destination.
Our last stop on the way back to the campsite, we drove back through Pottenstein and visited the town, crisscrossed by canals, more fowl not shy of the camera and a row of sleeping ducks (I did not know they did this) and dominated by towering karst towers.
The town is absolutely awash with roses of all sorts; learn more of the story behind that and Saint Elizabeth of Thüringen at the link up top.
We looked at the rock formations from another perspective in the Tüchersfeld neighbourhood of Pottenstein on the way out of Little Switzerland and on our way home.
While not on the itinerary, our last impression for this visit was of the ruin of Burg Neideck, towering above the Wiesen river valley and considered the icon of the region, just outside of the town of Muggendorf

6x6

nestbox: Czech firm designs a modular trunk extension to turn any car into a camper

kintsugi court: a rundown basketball blacktop restored with the ancient Japanese art that cherishes the cracked

your 2020 bingo card: researchers discover a population of sharks thriving in an undersea volcano

earth science: a treasury of minerals mapped out—via Maps Mania

green tea ice cream: Linda Diaz’ soulful rendition wins the NPR Tiny Desk competition

cosmic architechtonics: multipart exploration of Eastern Bloc monolithic housing estates

unter dem burgen

The site of our last night of camping along the Moselle, guarded by a host of more manky swans, was in a village called Burgen beneath its namesake ensemble of a chapel and eleventh century fortification, Bischofstein, on the west bank of the river perched on a steep mountainside—though folk hagiographies place the castle back to a legendary time some six hundred years prior as the palace of Bishop Nicetius of Trier in the times of the Merovingian court (as opposed to the stronghold of the archbishops of Treves as it is believed historically to be) as a bulwark to protect trade and traffic in the region.
It was destroyed and rebuilt at least twice and exchanged hands many, many times—most recently to a business magnate from Darmstadt as a summer home and was purchased in 1930 (granted protection status as an example of interior design of that decade rather than as an eight-hundred year old castle) with refurbishment beginning then but was never occupied, the castle seeing incarnations as a sanatorium for returning soldiers and then as a safehouse for refugees. In the mid-1950s, it was purchased by the alumni association of a prestigious gymnasium in Krefeld, near Düsseldorf, as a retreat for students and a place to hold their class reunions and host other events. The tower’s white ring are the remnants of a plaster coating all but washed away by centuries of weathering, but local lore has all sorts of explanations, including that it indicates the high water mark for a particularly catastrophic flood.

in der römerischer weinstraße

Our penultimate overnight stop brought us to the Central Moselle (Mittelmosel) community of Trittenheim—this like most other steep vineyards advertising their local vintners and varietals in big white letters like the Hollywood sign, championed by a village Wine Queen (Weinkönigin) selected by a jury of past title holders and restauranteurs.
In 1999, however no suitable candidate could be found and the judges instead elected the first (and quite possibly sole exception but we’d like to think that such pageants are a bit more enlightened—a few years ago the Moselle named their first royal industry representative who was a Syrian refugee) Wine King in master mechanic, philanthropist, entertainer and developmental chieftain (Ngoryifia) Céphas Kosi Bansah of the Ewe people of the Hohoe region of Ghana.
Having come to Germany as part of a student exchange programme, Bansah stayed on and was invested with this honourific political office, realising that he was able to govern remotely and could achieve more education and outreach for his people in Germany, improving infrastructure and schools dramatically through his celebrityand his talent for networking. 

entlang die mosel

Underway for a local excursion for a few days, we headed to our first overnight destination, secure but still cautious that the camping set and those who run campgrounds are among the most conscientious about hygiene, shared spaces and consideration for one’s neighbour—and indeed everyone was adhering to the rules set forth and all activity was chiefly in wide open spaces with ample distance apart, other than this manky swan that was keen on showing off his ballet moves, and managers, as ever, were studious about taking the information of the guests in case of the need to do contact tracing.
En route, we stopped at Burg Thurant overlooking the village of Alken on what’s referred to as the Terrassenmosel (the terraced Moselle).
The double castle of slate and stone dates from the thirteenth century and was a condominium with lands claimed by the archbishoprics of both Trier and Köln—with a line running through the structure to designate each side, and to this day is still a private joint residence of two families.
After getting encamped on an island in the river outside of the town of Hatzenport, which looked at first to be more crowded than it turned out to be with the outward facing shore lined with trailers and awnings set up for longer term occupants but were still vacant—these Potemkin villages were common at all the sites who were seeing as expected a lot less business—we visited the ancient town of Münstermaifeld, dominated by a massive minster (from the corresponding Latin for monastery), the Franks having arrived in the area centuries after the Romans vacated and built the church around the ruin of a Roman fort.
Our last site for the day was a hike to see Burg Eltz (previously) from a distance and marvel at the well conserved castle, one of the few on the left bank of the parallel Rhein river and still owned and lived in by members of the same family—the thirty-third generation since its construction in the 1100s, with some of the wings (there are several branches that own the castle jointly, an arrangement called a Ganerbenburg where no single line is responsible for the upkeep alone, and also a tactic by an overlord to prevent vassals from becoming too powerful ) open to the public with treasure and art on display.

low poly

In addition to the all-terrain mobile unit as an accessory to Elon Musk’s newly released prototype Cybertruck—which people joke looks like a computer rendering from a time when graphics processing with polygon mesh (see also) wasn’t nearly so advanced as it is presently—will have the optional package outfitting the cargo bed as a pop-up camper for exploring the actual outdoors and not CGI side-scrolling.
What do you think? Critics are bashing the design, forgetting about the experimental wedged wonders of the Italian automotive tradition that were all the rage not so long ago, but we’d seriously support getting such a car for our next vehicle—especially considering a range of nearly eight hundred kilometres to a charge and over-engineered performance that allows the truck to zip about faster than finest luxury cars, not to mention the target price that’s half of the suggested manufacturer’s asking-price.

la célèbre maison

Hiking along the seashore from Plougrescant (Plougouskant) on a trail that wound around Porz Hir (the undertaking a bit more ambitious than we expected, and we drove the last part of the stretch later) past la Point du Château—a tall outcropping with the silhouette of a manor house—we came to le Gouffre, the tip of the peninsula with a pretty rugged and wild landscape reminiscent of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, made even more famous with its house wedged between two giant boulders. 

Castel Meur, also known as La Maison du Gouffre, was built in 1861, defiantly with its back towards the unforgiving sea and seeking a measure of shelter from the native terrain, has been maintained by the descendants of the original builder who currently reside their and whose privacy (along with their neighbours) ought to be honoured and the cottage admired from a respectable distance.

An earlier incident for the granddaughter of the first occupant that involved some rather invasive tourists put up boundaries for all of us. As much virtue there is in deviating from the prescribed, there are certain norms to be upheld, especially for visitors and guests.

camp

Having just returned from a caravanning trip across the breadth of France—nearly three thousand kilometres there and back with several diversions—we appreciated, via the venerable and always interesting Things Magazine, the introduction to the aesthetic and repertoire of artist and builder Jay Nelson through his series of projects exploring the spaces, shells, huts and hulls, we inhabit whilst we’re vacationing. Much more to discover at the links above.

tro breizh

Though the historic tour, the pilgrimage to the shrines of the region’s seven founder saints, might be too ambitious for a few days’ vacation—a grand undertaking with a circuit covering Quimper, Vannes, Dol-de-Bretagne, Saint-Malo, Saint-Brieuc, Tréguier and Saint-Pol-de-Léon—we’ll nonetheless have at least a few of those stops on our itinerary as we at PfRC take a much needed sabbatical in Brittany. Stay tuned for further adventures coming soon. Kenavo ha beaj vat!

wonderful.successes.devoured

We very much enjoyed reading this follow-up story on the mapping tool that redresses some of the shortfalls of addresses and directions. what3words (previously) parcels the world into fifty-seven trillion three-by-three meter squares and uses a vocabulary of forty thousand random but memorable word combinations to identify exact coordinates, and search-and-rescue authorities urge people to have the tool at their disposal in case they get lost, on land or sea. There have been several lives saved using this programme.

↖ boulder brook trail

Via the always brilliant Kottke, we are introduced to a family of typefaces from the Design Outside studio inspired by the US National Park Service signs (see also here and here)—the sort of classic guide posts and way-pointers that are carved with a router bit, very evocative of the sense of space and time to wonder and wander. Much more to explore at the links above.

of bastions and batteries

Constituted in part from some of the last remains of a medieval fortification (a bastion, the defensive ring around Felsenburg Neurahen) but mostly a series of naturally occurring but artfully linked observation platforms, the bridge located high in the sandstone mountains (die Elbsandsteingeberger) of Saxony represents one of the first purpose-built tourist attractions, having existed in this form for some two hundred years.
H and I recently had the chance to hike around and explore some of the trails in this area, known as the Saxon Switzerland, der Sächsische Schweiz, and take advantage of the accommodations that developed over the decades and informed what we have come to expect—for better or worse, from a destination, its renown presaged by romanticised depictions in travel guides and paintings—though nature conservancy also went hand in hand with promoting tourism and now is the centrepiece of an expansive national park and preserve.  Click on the images to enlarge.

Also not failing to deliver, next we toured the Fortress Königstein, located on the towering promontory that dominated our campsite, as we’d appreciate later. A centuries’ old enclosed ensemble asserts its control over the Elbe, forming the one of the largest fort in Europe, located on a tabletop hill (Tafelberg).

Casements and batteries aside, the Königstein owes its long existence and many iterations to a reliable water supply won through an incredibly deep well (one hundred and fifty two metres, excavated by hand with two horse power and the second deepest in Europe) that allowed the occupants of the fortress to survive and outlast what would otherwise be a crippling siege and a matter of waiting the defenders out.

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barra de atención: documenting the endangered and disappearing no-frills bars of Madrid

vetrai veneziana: exploring the storied village of Murano that once held the European monopoly on glass

treasured gaze: a look at the eighteenth century obsession with eye-portraiture—via Everlasting Blört

brannock device: a deep dive into the measuring instrument found in finer shoe stores—based on the barleycorn

futurelight: a collaboration between an automotive company and an outdoor apparel manufacture produce a featherweight camper

post-dated post script: manerba del garda

The town on the southwest side of the lake is the namesake Minerva (according to legend though some argue it was a later Roman assimilation and syncretism of a local deity) and is dominated by the promontory of the cliff of Manerba (previously) jutting out into the waters.
The rocky outcropping itself covered in the ancient remains of a high fortress where the local population is to seek refuge during raids—the Rocca, and other strata of ruins that document over ten thousand years of human occupation.

Thirteenth century medieval towers are built on the foundations of older Roman forts, which in turn follow the outline of a Copper Age necropolis, only discovered through excavations some four decades ago.  The entire site is well-marked and there is also a museum nearby with exhibitions of artefacts recovered from the area.
The shrine to the Etruscan and Roman equivalent to—wise and born fully-formed though less warlike than her Greek counterpart, Athena is found here with a view over the lake and countryside. Below is the peninsula and island of San Biagio, where we are staying.

post-dated post script: shore birds

We’ve returned to a very fine campsite on the southern end of Lake Garda (previously) but this time were graced with a pitch directly on the water, just behind a copse of reeds that despite the foot-traffic of campers and dogs, a variety of sea birds use as a living and breeding habitat.
There were the familiar friends in mallards and those more mysterious and wary black plumed birds with the white beaks that I called Nō theatre ducks until learning that they’re properly called bandicoots (Fulica—Latin for coot, a mud hen, apparently oder eine Blässhuhn) but judging by the multi-voiced chorus each morning, a crescendo of calls that formed this wall of sound, there were more sorts of birds hiding in the tall grass.
Later some sea gulls, crows, pigeons (the latter being strange candidates for cohabitating I thought) revealed themselves but we still weren’t able to identify all the cries, which was quite the persistent wake-up call with no snooze option. For warmth, growing ducklings sleep all tangled up, like a rat king.
I recall reading how in huge colonies, bats and other swarming creatures distinguish their vocal signatures by choosing unique places in terms of frequency or pitch but in situations where range is shared, I wondered how confusion was avoided—except that these diverse species seem to respect one another and wait their turns, going in a sort of coordinated, pre-arranged sequence. Here are a couple of audio samples, which became a pretty endearing accompaniment over the next few days. I wish I had taken a recording during the first few days before the weather turned stormy as the sounds seemed more distinct and there was less lapping of waves but happily all the residents and the reeds weathered the winds and driven rains just fine, if not a bit off key.

 

 

otium

We here at PfRC will be on a short sabbatical whilst we return to the Italian lake district for vacation. Please stay tuned for further adventures but expect that posts might be less frequent. The title, Latin for leisure, signals withdrawing from daily business—that is, negotium, to engage in more enlightening and edifying endeavours.We have a lot to be grateful for. Ciao, ci vediamo presto!