leval ii (13. 489)

 

For the first time on a return trip, I think, we stayed again at the campsite outside the village of Leval near the German border for the last overnighter before getting back home, prepared this time now to try to capture some images of the brooding stork nests that seemed to occupy every available eave and column of the little town.

The wading birds are considered a symbol of Alsace of course—we hadn’t encountered such a preponderance of them before—and the subject of many legends and folktales, like the tradition of the Easter bunny that also originated here, first described by fifteenth-century botanist (see also) Georg Franck von Franckenau of Strasbourg, and though their association with fertility and expectant mothers go back to Ancient Egyptian myth, the lore was especially articulated in the Middle Ages, with storks said to retrieve babies from a nursery hidden inside caves and dropped them down the chimney (chimney-sweeping also understood psychoanalytically as an expression wish fulfilment or magical-thinking) of desirous households.

synchronoptica

one year ago: curating the Apocalypse (with synchronopticæ) plus Elton John’s debut album

fifteen years ago: misused tools plus macroeconomic woes

sixteen years ago: the year of the Tiger 

 

 

via rhôna (13. 487)

 

Our intermediate stop on the way back home brought us again to the banks of the Drôme, staying at a municipal campground on les Îles de Silon directly on the confluence of the the Galaure and Rhône rivers on the outskirts of the village Saint-Vallier. A Gallo-Roman station, called Ursuli, at least since the reign of Claudius on the Via Agrippa, the town is now stop on the EuroVelo cycle route that runs from Lake Geneva to the Mediterranean, following the river valley.

These step-up bivouacs are specially made to accommodate bikers and we thought we could manage such a construction at the edge of our property for bikers passing through—addressing the lack of real pitches in our village. Saint-Vallier’s most famous daughter was the fourteenth century courtesan Diane de Poitiers, who wielded much power and influence as Henri II’s royal mistress and adviser. Killed in a jousting accident, the king’s widow, Catherine de’Medici, had de Poitiers exiled after his death and Catherine’s unpopular regency for the legitimate heirs was highly unpopular and destabilising, leading to the French Wars of Religion.

tafone (13. 465)

Though in my head I had been referring to such geologic weathering as Roadrunner and Coyote rocks, we learned that tafoni, from the Corsican pietra tafunata meaning perforated stones is bc the proper term for this sort of erosion and chemical reaction—with examples to be found worldwide in granite, limestone and sandstone and is especially prevalent on Sardinia and Corsica. 

These samples were just around the terraced campgrounds with some other particularly fantastic ones among the cliff-faces and the calanques on the coast. Though in my head I had been referring to such geologic weathering as Roadrunner and Coyote rocks, we learned that tafoni, from the Corsican pietra tafunata meaning perforated stones is the proper term for this sort of erosion and chemical reaction—with examples to be found worldwide in granite, limestone and sandstone and is especially prevalent on Sardinia and Corsica. These samples were just around the terraced campgrounds with some other particularly fantastic ones among the cliff-faces and the calanques on the coast.

synchronoptica

one year ago: what a decibel registers (with synchronopticæ)

thirteen years ago: bad operating systems,  cheese banks plus drone-patrols for vandals

fourteen years ago: Eurovision boycotts plus Centralia, Pennsylvania

seventeen years ago: jingoistic language 

drôme (13. 455)

For the second leg of our journey, we stayed outside of Châteauneuf-sur-Isère, a commune of the Drôme near the city of Lyon. I liked this new take of bird on a wire that greeted us at the campsite—drunk in a midnight choir. Lying on the forty-fifth parallel, equidistant from the equator and the North Pole, the department fed by the river Rhône has been since prehistory the fruit-growing region of France.

It is also the birthplace of sainted bishop Hugh of Grenoble, invoked against headaches for reasons, and cofounder of the Carthusian order.

synchronoptica

one year ago: antique perfume bottle blueprints (with synchronopticæ), fake books by real authors, German troops deployed to Lithuania plus Trump meets with his South African counterpart

twelve years ago: a trip to Tuscany 

thirteen years ago: Bayesian logic  

fourteen years ago: a devastating earthquake in Italy plus weed-killer in Germany

sixteen years ago: delicate constitutions plus missing links and living fossils

lac de la seigneurie (13. 454)

Just crossing the border from Germany, our first camping pitch on the first leg of our trip was a brief overnight stay in the village of Leval in the historic Territoire de Belfort in the region of Alsace. Through primarily agricultural, the soil is impermeable and dotted with ponds (étangs) like this one at the edge of the campground called Lac de la Seigneurie—which incidentally was up for sale—or at least assumption of a lease—including a lakeside restaurant. The abundance of poppies reminded me how certain cultivars bloom with different tints according to the composition of the earth and the scientific papāver (papaverous meaning pertaining to poppies and opium dens and thus sleep inducing) name from the Latin for the colour of a flame and was the chief term for something orange before Europeans were acquainted with the citrus fruit— which seems particularly resonant again with the perennial unacademic myth once more circulating that Homer was colourblind or that the Greeks in general couldn’t distinguish between blue and green.

 

bamberger bürgerpark (13. 396)

Taking a short stroll through the village of Bug, we crossed the bridge south of the city to the massive public green space bordered by the Main-Danube canal and the Regnitz called the Theresienhain and took a long walk around the park’s perimeter. 

 The Franciscan order was donated the village palace with its mansard roof for its missionary work in India and Sri Lanka, the former royal forestry office of the Kingdom of Bavaria—and is the only branch of the brotherhood in operation in Germany. 

Designed in the style of Munich’s English Garden in 1803, the commission of Maximilian I, the area was preserved during renovations and expansion of the inland waterway and shipping channel, and the forest, rewilded, true to the route that writer ETA Hoffmann took through the Hain on his brainstorming walks for inspiration, and is dotted with pavilions, monuments (including one to the author himself) and a so called druid temple, Monopteros (see also) as well as sports facilities and a botanical garden. 

We stopped at a former boathouse that was converted into an open air tavern and sampled some more beers as a band played before returning to the campsite.

bug (13. 394)

 

Pronounced “boog,” we joined our neighbours for a long Labour Day weekend on a colourful campsite just south of Bamberg on an island in the river Regnitz at the mouth of the Aurachtal. 

Though the retreat made no pretensions of being an artists’ colony, there was a surfeit of paintings and statuary everywhere, first discovering the art in the restaurant, converted from the former studio and dance hall of the camp’s founders, Fritz and Else Hoffmann-Bug (the nobiliary particle adopted for the couples’ adopted residence and long-term project) who began the campgrounds after the war in 1952, exhibiting his own works and chairing the first professional visual artists’ association for Upper Franconia.

We were going to order wine with dinner, but then remembered how Bamberg is famed for its beers, and had a Rauchbier (the flavour won from toasting the malted barley) that paired well with the smoked trout, with a distinctive taste like s’mores and campfire. The restrooms for the campers were rather vaulted affairs themselves, outfitted as a gallery of paintings and murals and a singular experience to pass through and assuredly much appreciated by guests—the camp remaining in the family over the subsequent generations and maintaining the showcase and artistic spirit of the establishment. The village was until recently also host to the museum and publishing house for the adventure franchise of Karl May before being repatriated in 1995 to the writer’s native Radebeul.

 

störmthaler see iii (13.223)

Returning to Leipziger Neuseeland for the long Easter weekend and staying at a familiar campsite on the shore of an artificial lake created from the former open-cast lignite mine of Epsenhain. 

 Revisiting a seafood restaurant in the Kahnsdorfer lagoon, we got to see the serving-robot in action (see above)—though mainly a extra tray and probably a more ubiquitous feature in most gastronomical venues, in was pretty good at avoiding obstacles like the diners and other waitstaff—as well as the largest windpark in Germany straddling farmland on the Autobahn from Saxon-Anhalt to Saxony and adjacent the largest photovoltaic array in the shadows of the former cooling towers of Kernkraftwerk Lippendorf. 

We also explored the towns of Borsdorf and Panitzch on the Partheau, historically serving as toll stations along the main route from Leipzig to Dresden and presently part of the city’s Green Ring, a corridor to encourage biking from the suburbs and wetland reclamation project to mitigate flooding.

katzenkopf iii (13. 281)

Taking advantage of the nice weather, H and I got the camper from storage and prepared for the season with a weekend trip back to the Frankish wine islands, staying in the village of Sommerach. The vineyards waking up too for the spring, we took a long hike crossing the island and over the canal of the Main river through fields and pine forest in protected environment known as the Sandfluren (inland dunes, the sandy areas reminding me of trekking from Wiesbaden to Mainz under the bridges and over the islands) outside of Volkach on the mainland. 

Reaching the village of Dimbach, we headed back to the island over the lock and weir at the southern part of the river loop at the Mainkanal. In the distance, we could spy the twin steeples of the cloister Münsterschwarzach with a cruise ship docked at the weir. Exploring more of the landscape on the way back, we walked around the village a bit, trying out that wine automat we saw on our last visit—it wasn’t dumped out like a soda machine but rather a mechanical arm guided our selection down to the flap—and had a late lunch before going back to the camp grounds.

More details about the history of these places and impressions at the links above.