chirality

With travel season approaching, many will be using rental vehicles to bridge the gaps in their vacation plans or tour about the countryside. It can turn into quite a frustration queuing up to fill up one’s unfamiliar car and realize that one is not sure if the tank is on the left or the right side. I’ve wondered what manufacturing conventions govern the distribution of gas-tank configuration and are some popular makes at a disadvantage—chiral is a term for a sort of chemical-handedness, the way molecules twist towards the right or towards the left. Most modern cars, models that one is likely to get at the rental shops, however, do have a very subtle tell in the instrument panel: the little flag by the pump symbol points towards the side the gas tank is on.

furor teutonicus

There has been much fanfare over the past week about a survey (Umfrage) of the American public that confirms a general affinity between Germans and their American cousins.

 I am sure that it is a combination of factors, like many Americans having some German ancestry, military partnerships—at least an understanding—familiar products, like beer, food and automotives, that could have endured as a tacit acknowledgment, as I am sure it has for years. Slow-news days are probably also a contributing dynamic. Depth of knowledge and stereotypes aside—the thrust of the battery of interview questions and responses seem to mainly involve economics—I wonder if American public perceptions of Germans aren’t a focus, an ideal corrective lens for how they’d like to see themselves. Secure and stable and comfortably bourgeois without the outward signs of massive inequity or fanaticism or hysteria; socially and environmentally conscious yet relatively conservative and traditional without excluding other persuasions. It seems this way, at least. The two acts are not connected, but it really does seem the antithesis (and not a reciprocation or extension—perhaps rather a back-handed compliment), but it does seem strange that the European Union parliament moved to back accords (Abkommen) to share air-traveler data between Europe and the US. The American security apparatus will have fifteen years to ruminate over their guests’ profiles, but the judgment that this was not in violation of individuals’ privacy rights rather lowers the standard, instead of giving America a standard to aspire to.

jump-start

I was very happy to see that the woman who works at the bank in the neighbourhood where my office is brought her Bully, the same model as ours, out of hibernation with a fresh paint job and detailed. She calls hers her Lady as well. At the same time, I was a little sad that our Lady did not quite come barnstorming out of the garage from her long Winter's nap, but I am sure we will get in her top form again for further adventures for this Spring and Summer and for many to follow. She just needs a little nudge and will be rewarded with a lot of care and getting all decked out, as well.

rigel 7

Later in the year, we are going to visit fabulous Las Vegas and we are very excited about the all the exotic sights to see in that desert playground. I think it is really a shame, however, that one resort experience planned for Vegas never made it beyond the sandbox. In 1992, capitalizing on the enormous popularity of the Star Trek franchise—The Next Generation and the later spin-offs of Voyager and Deep Space Nine—and wanting to revive the downtown area, the Strip with the colossal casinos and hotels was the bigger tourists’ draw, a group of investors and architects proposed creating a Star Trek theme park with a towering, full size (non-operational) model of the Enterprise housing space age accommodations—the standard complement of crew being 430, dining and entertainment, keeping true to the series. High speed elevators would shuttle guests around—perhaps between the Holodeck and a lounge on the ship’s bridge or in the engine room. I imagine that the whole experience would have been beyond surreal and possibly sort of goofy, like those classic episodes from the original series when the crew find themselves confronted with alien civilizations unduly influenced by the wild, wild West or Greek mythology or Prohibition era Chicago gangsters.  It’s too bad really that the project never was launched but it’s comforting that the series still captures the imagination, as much now as back then.

jump back loreta or velvet underground

The golden city of Prague, for all its tangible history and its legend and lore, is an inexhaustible place, a story-telling at every pass, corresponding point for point. Here are just a few impressions that didn’t fit elsewhere. The Loreta church of the Immaculate Conception is a pilgrimage site, inspired by the Holy Hut where Maria lived that was salvaged from Saracen raiders and brought to Italy, with an altar and reliquaries dedicated to the Holy Family.

An Italianate arcade surrounds the chapel, Casa Sancta, and there is an impressive treasury and museum with a detailed history of the cult and patronage.

Prague is also a canvas for revolution, aside from the famous and ephemeral John Lennon Wall, a side of a building belonging to the Knights of Malta who allowed the graffiti artists to make their statements throughout the times of the Velvet Revolution until today, like this infinite loop, Möbius strip, of tanks and construction vehicles tearing across the city.

The city has done an extraordinary job in preserving the sacred and profane, acknowledging that invention and openness are sometimes the better curators.  Also on the palette of expression were these looming--close by the canals and water-wheel of the the Lennon Wall, giant and monstrous baby sculptures in the park on Kampa Island in the Vltava.

ahoj-hoj or bohemian rhapsody

PfRC is taking a few days of vacation in the Czech capital. Please be sure to follow our continuing adventures on our little travel blog. In the meantime, here is an interesting point to ponder: the ancient city’s host of kings and emperors are famous for their patronage of the occult arts and sciences, like alchemy, astrology and numerology, through a few highly visible landmarks, like the Astronomical Clock or the dormitories and workshops of the royal hermeticists on the Golden Row below Prague Castle, but there is also a more subtle homage to the esoterical. The pedestrian bridge spanning the Vltava (Moldau) was realized at 0531 in the morning on 9. July in the year 1357, when the bridge’s namesake (Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV) personally laid the first foundation stone. The precise time is known because this palindromic timestamp (the same forwards and backwards, 135797531) hewn into the bridge tower was picked by court astrologers as the most auspicious time to start building the bridge.  I wonder what other mystical symbols might be hiding in plain sight.

prognosticate, procrastinate

I am a bit early, but there is cause to commemorate the approaching day that marks the tenth anniversary of my arrival in Germany. The date is only stamped in an expired passport in a drawer somewhere but I can visualize it--though I never connected the date with Groundhog Day before. Tomorrow, it's Groundhog Day--again, and it's weird and wonderful that an event that's a mix of traditions and folk-beliefs can be articulated to a degree where the roots are nearly overshadowed and yet still take on more meaning, metaphysical and metaphoric. By the way, does anyone else, on the first morning of the month, somersault out of bed and shout "Rabbit, Rabbit?"  The same routines don't loop back on themselves, outside of work certainly, and every day is an adventure, with many that bear repeating.

o du fröhliche or shutter-speed

I suppose there is no bigger challenge for amateur photography than a lively Christmas Market (Weihnachts-markt, Christ-kindlmarkt) in its native setting, the festive glow of the booths under an icy sky and many attractions quite kinetic, like the giant Pyramid of the Leipzig, sort of a wooden carousel with Christmas figures that's propelled by the heat of flames. Leipzig's fair is among the eldest traditions in Germany, along with nearby Dresden and Bautzen, and decorated with the holiday trappings and influence of the Ore Mountains' (Das Erzgebirge) arts and crafts.

Beneath the spinning installation, a booth serves a insulating and potent cup of fortified punch called Feuerzangenbowle, a variation on Glüwein--a conditum paradoxum, a "spiced-surprise" in Latin. The sheltered arcades that crisscross the old city were also decked out dazzlingly, like this tall and illuminated tree around the corner from Auerbachs Keller, the historic restaurant, older than the Christmas market itself, that was made famous by Marlowe's and Goethe's Faust. Christmas trees, I understand, became the more dominant symbols of the season but still share a place alongside their highland and up-land forebears, the Pyramide, and creates a composition that really sets the mood--memorable, despite the challenges of sharing that scene and atmosphere in pictures.

hungry hill

There was a sort of inaccessible quality of tragic beauty to western County Cork, which became, like other places we have visited in Ireland, more defined with study and background. Adrigole, though, at the foot of the Healy Pass and the summits of Sugar Loaf and Hungry Hill (made famous by the Daphne du Maurier novel, who also penned what became Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds), had an especially poignant—but not unique sadly as we had also stayed in Leenane, County Galway, where The Field was set—history that we got to know that added to the experience of visiting. Adrigole (Irish, Eadargóil) stretched out over ten kilometres, hugging the distinctive coastline of the Beara Peninsula, and is a peaceful and serene place, though it was once a boom town, before being decimated by the Famine (Hungersnot), immigration and the copper mining industry going bust and the robber-barons leaving the area.

There was evidence of this livlier past, and also of more ancient oppressions, like the ruins of Catholic churches that were hidden in the mountains when worship was persecuted by the Church of England. The place was warm and inviting, and certainly did not feel empty or like a ghost town, but knowing this history enhanced our time there.

ghost run

Not only does Atlas Obscura deliver postcards from the world's curious and esoteric locales, they also have a pretty nifty blog, which is celebrating thirty-one days of Halloween by featuring its creepiest and most haunting places. It is ghoulish--especially the tales of catacombs that ring of urban legend and highlighting the other consecrated sites that have a reciprocal relationship, a ceded and imparted spell-binding, with their visitors--and certainly worth investigating for raising holiday spirits.

whack fol de turalura ladie, whack fol de turalureley

You can see Dublin City and the fine groves of Blarney,

The Baun, Boyne, and Liffey, and the lakes of Killarney,

You can ride on the tide o'er the broad Majestic Shannon,

You can sail round Loch Neagh and see storied Dungannon.

Will you come, will you, will you, will you come to the bower?

PfRC will be will be taking a short hiatus, while we take are engaged with adventures in one of our favourite destinations--Ireland.  In the past we have enjoyed exploring the Dingle Peninsula and the Ring of Kerry, seen the savage beauty of Connemara, and this time we will be traveling to County Cork to visit Bantry Bay and the Ring of Beara on the southernmost peninsula. 

I am very excited--and surely all the while narrate our doings to the tune of the Edmund Fitzgerald or some other forgiving Irish folk song--and be sure to check back with our little travel blog for updates. 

pontifex and bauhaus

This past weekend was a busy and a bittersweet one for H and I. First, very early on Saturday, we joined some thirty-thousand pilgrims, winding our ways through dark and circuitous alleys policed by a huge security force to the Cathedral Square of the old city of Erfurt, where incidentally Martin Luther reformer and architect of the Protestant schism was educated in the priesthood and was first ordained, to celebrate the Eucharist with the Pope.

It was a very moving experience to share with all those thousands, focused on one individual. Having recovered from that adventure, we crossed to the antipode of Germany to the city of Darmstadt--beautiful and enjoyable but sad as we bid my parents farewell as they were getting ready to return to the States. We met them at their temporary vacation cottage, nearer the airport, and went into town to first see the apartment complex, the Waldspirale, designed by the Austrian artist Hundertwasser, with onion-topped domes and a strange non-Euclidean geometry that was like something out of the blended imaginations of the Flintstones and Dr. Seuss.

Darmstadt is replete, as well with, examples from many styles and movements and we passed through blocks of Jungstil (Art Nouveau) townhouses on our approach to the artist colony and architectural workshop and laboratory in the Mathildenhöhe neighborhood. The park is a cascading ensemble of early 1900s design.

The Hochzeitsturm (Wedding Tower) is a quintessential Jungstil skyscraper though draped for renovation in the background (here's a little version made for blind visitors) in the background, behind the Russian Orthodox Chapel and water elements.  Spending an afternoon at a café on the grounds was a very nice way of saying to my Mom and Dad that we will see them real soon and wishing them best of luck for their continued adventures.

silent haitch

Most sites and historic buildings are exceedingly well-documented, but good, living stewardship and repair does not always guarantee that the curious can find out more. A few weeks ago, H and I happened on this impressive old church with a colourful wooden interior and crypt in Thüringer Rohr in County Schmalkalden-Meiningen.

The style reminded me of churches we have seen along the Baltic coast, with its craftsmanship and artwork. A small sign proclaimed that the community was proud of this place, one of the oldest churches in Thüringen but there was little else in the way of a guide or reference. I was perfectly happy, though, in the end, for having seen it and getting to climb into the rafters and appreciating the details without explaination, letting it remain a mystery to outsiders.

It was really neat and the locals ought to be proud. This wizened sentenial was also a puzzle, and apparently a more recent addition that greets visitors. Considering that the work of conservationists is also prone to the tastes and tools of the time, such a monument itself has more enduring presense than any gloss or promotion about it.

at the mountain of madness

Der Spiegel reports on the jest and dreams of a reporter that may well be championed as a national cause, a shared-ambition in flat Netherlands. I guess the Dutch have a yearning for a bit of variety in landscape or maybe mountain-envy, as evinced by how they invade Germany and points beyond during every holiday season. This image is a just a mock-up but planning is underway to construct an artificial peak, some 2000 meters high in the Dutch countryside. The article has a terrifically day-dreamy tone and apparently such aspirations have really captured the imaginations of the Netherlands. It certainly seems that they could assay such a feat of engineering, since much of the territory of the country was reclaimed from the sea. A man-made mountain would certainly be a wonder, but maybe not so amenable to travel abroad and the Netherlands' own points of relative high stature.

rhein-main-donau

 Driving to visit my parents after work, I finally took the time to stop along the way and investigate the imposing cloister complex at Markt Ebrach, formerly belonging to the Order of the Cistercians (or Trappists) Monks. I only walked around inside the glorious church, having before only seen it in passing, which was just surpassingly beautiful and unexpected with art, colour and ornament.

The village boasted a wealth of other things to see, like sculpted gardens, a curiously fortified winter garden and brewery in addition to courtyards of the cloister. The Cistercian Order took vows of silence and removed themselves from the everyday world: these enduring buildings owing to their need to be self-sufficient. I will have to return for the complete tour when I can bring H along and can devote a few hours to the spectacle.

From the main street, just passing through and dodging traffic, the church and raised abbey garden are certainly eye-catching but I did not expect so much more on closer inspection. This entire stretch of road is beautiful but quaint and without ostentation or being sequestered--also, I was noticing, that a lot of towns and villages seemed to invoke matters bovine in their names, a lot with either the prefix Vieh- or the suffix -auroch. Vieh (cattle) gives us the English word fee, as livestock is a commodity. I might not have been right with -Auroch, though, recalling the primordial and now extinct European wild cow, the Aurochs (Auerochse oder Ur auf Deutsch).

The Coat of Arms of Mecklenburg

features an Aurochs

Rather the Auroch is a tributary of the Regnitz river, which flows into the Main, then the Rhein and onto the North Sea, but I suppose the river could refer ultimately to the ancient, undomesticated bull.

built this city on rock-and-roll

Some clever software engineers several months back produced a faithful three-dimensional model, extruded with a homemade 3-D printer, of the Coliseum in Rome from an aggregate of holiday snap-shots found on a photo-sharing site from all sides and all angles. The computer processed and analyzed all this data autonomously, and I thought about this feat during our recent trip to Dresden. This tidy and automated routine can no way compare, however, to the rebuilding of the city's landmark Frauenkirche essentially from collective memories. Although putting the church back together again was not completed until 2006, it was symbolic and important for many as a gesture of reconciliation for divided Germany, like the peaceful rallies, Montagsdemonstrationen, at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig.

The church was not actually hit by a bomb, experts surmise, but rather imploded during the ensuing firestorm that heated the porous sandstone building material to a temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius. Only the darker stones on the Frauenkirche are original, puzzled together from a pile of rubble that sat in place in the square for some six decades--the lighter-coloured material is new restoration.

Making whole all the baroque indulgences of Dresden, the Semper Opera House included, was a labour of love, remembering and piecing back together.  We passed by a memorial (Communist-style sculpture) to the Trümmerfrauen, teams that dug through the debris of war, salvaging what could be saved and unriddling remnants of a city that's once again glorious. I thought that this one had built this city on rock-and-roll.

silhouette of saxon

We're taking a long weekend to visit the phoenix of Dresden. I am sure it will be a nice refrain to sustain the feeling of last weeks' travels, and there will be a lot to see and do. I am hoping also to have the chance to explore the surrounding countryside known as the Sächsische Schweiz with its gorges and colossal rock-formations. No bureaucracy or committee ever diminished or contributed to the aesthetic value of anything, however, with Dresden's Elbe Valley being only one of two UNESCO World Heritage Sites (Weltkulturerbe und Weltnaturerbe) to be defrocked because of the muncipality's decision to build an Autobahn bridge to close to the Altstadt, it seems obligatory to celebrate what's original and authentic about a place--any place. Though it was a committee which too made that choice that's turned more and more unpopular, that move also ensured that the entire area tries to make amends in terms of preservation and conservation. Character and charm can be restored while they are not something easily displaced with either awesome enmity or mundane zoning.

aqua-velva

Having just returned from a fantastic, educational and relaxing vacation in the Aquitaine and Medoc regions of southern France's Atlantic Coast, I wanted to take the opportunity to round-up a few photographs that did not make the travel blog and a few pensées (after Blaise Pascal's random collected thoughts and enigmas, like, the parrot wipes his beak even though it is clean). 

The area was just incredible--the port of La Rochelle along with this other hidden cove of Meschers-sur-Gironde with troglodyte dwellings pounded by the surf into the cliff was like a pirate theme-park. The caves there actually saw some piratery and were once host to French protestants who had to practice their religion in secret.

A sort of regional mascot too was a donkey in pajama bottoms, and later I learned that these pants were worn to protect them from mosquitos while working in the salt-flats that brought these cities great prominience.

The city of Bordeaux has a crest that resembles a bio-hazard or toxic-spill clean-up symbol, though I am sure there is no relation.  The coast was also dotted with these colossal and exemplary (really just like the perfect dreamscape of what one would imagine a fort or a castle to be with winding causeways, endless stairs, turrets, towers, loopholes and murder-holes) bastions from the handiwork of the Marquis de Vauban to protect trade and the rich harbours from foreign navies, but there was one inland garrison town that fell victim to the environment that created this wealth.

The mud-flats that are part of the oyster culture and the salt-flats which gave Aquitaine a monopoly are nourished by sediment washing in from the mouth of the Gironde colliding with the silt of the ocean.  Eventually, and probably rather sooner than anyone expected, the sediment choked this fortress off from the port by a good ten kilometers. 

Not useful for fending off invading ships, the town--which was also the birthplace of promogenitor Canadien Samuel de Champlain, the fort and billeting has been well-preserved.  There was a lot of neat stuff going on here and I have a lot of homework to do.

colossus

The local has a dispatch from the Baltic strand of Rügen about designs to convert the colossal planned holiday-going compound of Prora, which stretches for 4,5 kilometers along the strait separating the Bay of Jasmund (Jasmunder Bodden - recently too elevated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site [DE]) from the sea, after many decades, back towards its original intent.

This ambitious feat of engineering and architecture, built from 1936-1939, had over twenty-thousand accommodations, theatres, dance-halls and a berth for cruise ships and was sponsored by the Third Reich's Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) programme as a rest-and-recuperation facility for military personnel. The KdF programme was also the original impetus, incidentally, to make automobile ownership possible for every citizen, sort of a people's car or a Volks Wagon. As the war escalated, resources were diverted and the Seebad Prora never saw a single guest.

After the war, the complex was used by the East German military for billeting and training, and access for the public was restricted--the buildings' existence was virtually unknown during the DDR time and it still does not appear on many maps. Mostly, since--except for a bizarre and endearing museum installation in the central building, the place has been derelict. When we toured the Baltic in the Bulli last summer, we camped just outside of the monolithic shadows of Prora and had a great time on the fine beach and exploring the unspoilt ruins, untouched and undeveloped. I was a bit disappointed to read, already back then, of plans--placarded on the buildings themselves, to refurbish some of the units and offer them as vacation homes. It was a bit creepy, chilling I thought, to live there--but mostly I would not want to see the place over-developed and loose that austere and imposing isolation, even with surrounding beaches crowded.

Now the state government has introduced a compromise measure, to open up the resort as a youth hostel. Many castles and fortresses here include a youth hostel on their grounds and rather than detracting from the historic character, acts as a curating influence, letting young people get excited about staying in the midst of such a place and keeping away the vandals that helped along the decline.

night on bald mountain

Though we will be arriving a few days too late for the annual Hexentanz (Witches’ Dance) on the summit of Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz (EN/DE) Mountain range, H and I are really excited about getting away for a few days to explore that region. Wandering the trails in the primeval woods of one of the first, formally preserved nature-reserves in the world, inspired Goethe, Heine and Thomas Pynchon among others. There are churches and abbeys and villages from the Middle Ages and forsaken mines and waterways like the foundations of the Earth that are far more ancient. This blog will probably take a few days hiatus but you can follow all of our adventures on our little travel blog in the next few days.