château de chinon (12. 546)

For the second leg of our journey, we returned to the Loire valley traveling in the direction of south Bretagne through Sens and Tours, bypassing most of the ensemble of châteaux but found a picturesque campsite on the opposite bank of Vienne with a direct view of the town‘s fortified castle, the last one of its kind in the region. Built on the foundations of a fifth century Gallo-Roman fort, the castle‘s present form dates from the late tenth century when the dukes of Anjou, aligned with the House of the Plantagenets—thus, England, took the town and its defensive bulwark from the king of France, and was expanded under Henry II, securing his favoured residence from his rebellious brother, Geoffrey, the Count of Nantes.

England held this region only util the early thirteen century when Phillip II took back Chinon after a monthlong siege and was thereafter, with some intervening periods of neglect—infamously as a detention facility for the Knight Templar while awaiting judgment and sentencing once they had become too powerful, particularly in the eyes of the French aristocracy—used as the French royal court through the sixteen hundreds.

Joan of Arc was granted an audience with King Charles V during the Hundred Years War over the line of succession and legitimate heir to the throne and presented her vision from God for intervention in the Battle Orléans to expel English influence and political meddling once and for all. After cross examining her sanity and sincerity, Joan was granted command of the army.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Ursula K Le Guin’s webpages (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

ten years ago: the Queen and consort visit Germany plus more links to enjoy

twelve years ago: Western expectations of Türkiye 

thirteen years ago: allowable letters on vehicle registration plates 

fourteen years ago: Chinese copies of European destinations 

ossuaire de douaumont (12. 545)

On our way back to southern Bretagne, we took a beautiful and peaceful campsite in the countryside near Verdun.

While there, we took a sombering drive through the World War I battle field on the trenches dug through the fields and forest amid destroyed villages and saw some of the remnants of the three hundred day and night slaughter that killed three hundred thousand with four hundred thousand more injured in a small area covering less than twenty square kilometers.

Surrounding devastated farmland was replanted with trees—the ancient forest lost—and the core of the battlefield left to Nature, restored in the intervening century.

At the heart of the slaughter lies the national ossuary and necropolis with sixteen thousand marked graves of the French dead and the former containing the unidentified bones of an estimated one hundred thirty individuals, both French and German combatants, president François Mitterand and West German chancellor Helmut Kohl famously held hand here at the memorial dedicated in 1932 in September of 1984 to honour the fallen in an act of reconciliation, understanding and friendship.

synchronoptica

one year ago: hair shavings as battery components (with synchronopticæ) plus more mysterious monoliths 

ten years ago: assorted links worth revisiting, Hell is other people plus more links to enjoy

twelve years ago: tiny museums plus social contagion

thirteen years ago: willow shoots, the US army in Germany plus Switzerland’s hidden defences

fourteen years ago: using Google search to transmit secret messages 

usonian airstream (12. 537)

Though very happy with our camping trailer and certainly not in the market for a new second-home, we were very much enamoured with this collaboration between the aerodynamic caravan company known for its distinctive aluminium coachwork and Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to bring the design approach and aesthetic of the architect to mobility and travel, courtesy of Nag on the Lake. Not inspired by a single property, the unit was designed by teams from both organisations at Wright’s Taliesin West studio in Arizona, the eight-and-a-half metre model is certainly informed by the Usonian ideal—a unified vision for landscaping, civil-engineering, typified by the middle class ranch-style home, interiors exposed to the outside, free of previous architectural conventions. Although the term was popularised by Wright in a 1927 manifesto—around the same time as the introduction of the Airstream, its first use preceded the architect’s by a couple decades with a Scottish writer called James Duff Law proposed that, in deference to indigenous people, Canadians and Mexicans, inhabitants of the US had no exclusive right to the title Americans—suggesting adopting the alternate style, “Usonia”—for the United States of North Independent America, though sort of a retronym, losing nationalistic flavour in later use. The kitchenette and overall floor plan matches ours pretty closely. Much more at the links above.

hohenwartetalsperre iv (12. 500)

We took a short drive to look at the Hohenwarte dam wall (Staumauer, see previously) and took a nice long walk with the dogs down a trail through an enchanted forest (there were a lot activities set up for kids hidden amongst the trees, like our own Zwergweg) and across the basis by a former cardboard factory. We could see the Pumpspecicherwerk (pumped hydroelectric energy storage plant in the far distance, a gravitational sink that is a source of potential energy, channelling water uphill to a higher holding basis during off-peak hours and releasing it during higher periods of demand to generate electricity in the turbines.

Such a plant also allows excess energy from intermittent sources—like solar and wind—to be saved. The lake and surrounding area were full of recreational opportunities, more wandering and cruises over the length and breath of reservoir.

hohenwartetalsperre iii (12.497)

Early in the day, we took a trip to the larger town of Ranis to stock up on provisions and revisited the fortified castle, with its Ilsenhöse passage leading from the bailey to the old market recently confirmed to have some of the oldest prehistoric evidence for the settlement of Homo sapiens in the region—more than forty-five thousand years ago, particularly rare for an urbanised area.

The eleventh-century castle on a promontory overlooking the town has been in the ownership of the Germany Red Cross since 1994, the dynasty of von Breitenbuch selling the historic site for a nominal fee. Back at the campgrounds, we followed a trail along the water’s edge to a forest path littered with slate—a common architectural element for the region that afforded us some commanding views of the artistic bends in the watercourse.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a US supreme court justice flies provocative flags (with synchronoptica), a WWII battle for an Aleutian island, the anatomy of a limerick plus Trump found guilty of falsifying business records 

seven years ago: all about Ostheim

nine year ago: a wearable, in-ear translator plus giving Tumblr a try

ten years ago: Swiss cheese goes blind plus Alf’s hip-hop album

eleven years ago: mourning a ruined laptop, semi-conducting cement plus getting ready to travel to Lake Como

hohenwartetalsperre i (12.495)

 

Taking advantage of the holiday and Brückentag, H and I (with the dogs) went caravaning, returning to the reservoir created by the damming of the Saale river valley in the 1930s (see previously here and here) to chiefly mitigate flooding and found a campsite centrally located in the eighty-kilometre long lake with five successive cascading basins outside the village of Neumannshof on the water’s edge. 

The village and the municipality of Gössitz lying on a higher plateau of the foothills of the southern Schefergebirges (Slate range) is surrounded by thick woods and the Slavic name means “forest mountain.” Commissioned by optics manufacturer Carl Zeiss of Jena later for its potential for electricity production, the feat of engineering is a major source of hydropower to this day.

taubertal: rundweg (12. 428)

 

Taking a slightly different route through the Tauber valley along the river rather than straight up the wooded promontory where Rothenburg is perched, we passed a collection of small settlements that grew around the many mills including the Topplerschlösschen built by prominent city mayor, Heinrich Toppler (whom orchestrated an alliance with Ulm and two other cities along the Romantikstrasse Nördlingen and Dinkelsbühl and was ultimately executed during a palace intrigue), during the fourteenth century as a summer retreat and to monitor milling enterprises.

The towers and steeples of the city were visible on the horizon during the walk and grew as we approached the double stone bridge. The skyline, the most developed and articulated one which is breathtaking and must have been nothing sort of transfixing for medieval people seeing it for the first time, had earned Rothenburg the title of the “Franconian Jerusalem” since the age of the Crusades. Back in the city, we visited the spacious Burggarten and walked along the medieval walls back down to the Tauber valley, with a view of Detwang in the middle distance.

 synchronoptica 

one year ago: foreign movie titles in Norway (with synchronoptica), an AI beauty contest from 1964, steaming footage from the International Space Station, wistful nostalgia for a a time and place one has never known plus a banger from Robert Palmer

seven years ago: transit fare-strikes plus the Swiss cheese cartel

eight years ago: an executive order to protect bigotry, crossing paracosms plus the unacknowledged privilege of not having to sit to pee

nine years ago: US-EU trade accords plus bursts of activity

twelve years ago: the European Space Agency explores Jupiter’s moons

taubertal: rothenburg ob der tauber (12. 427)

 

Well preserved and one of only four cities in Germany with intact medieval defensive walls, and recognised as a free and immediate Reichstadt—Heinrich V appointed a nephew of the Hohenstaufen branch after the original dynasty died out in the twelfth century as a successor to the counts’ property—Rothenburg ob der Tauber was threatened with destruction during the Thirty Years’ War, the Catholic League field marshal Johann t’Sercalaes, County of Tilly, fresh from a string of victories, wanting to quarter forty-thousand troops there, much to the the resistance of the populace, prepared for a siege rather than takeover in pitched battle. The popular though certainly apocryphal legend of the Meistertrunk gives the account that Tilly would spare the city and its governing council if any one of them could drink a flagon (roughly a gallon, three and a half litres) of wine in a single sitting. Burgermeister Georg Nusch was up to the task—which is heroic enough but does not seem like an impossible ask and the fact that there was no contemporaneous chronicle suggests rather the city lost its strategical importance due to a bout of plague which led to the preservation of its seventeenth century state. Nonetheless the feat is commemorated hourly with a clockwork recreation from the Ratstrinkstube near city hall. Romanced by landscape painters from the nineteenth century onwards, Rothenburg gained special significance in ideological terms as representative of Heimat with many field trips there organised through the Kraft durch Freude programme.

 

The city was destroyed by one-third, sparing the oldest parts, during an Allied bombardment campaign but rebuilt true to form—see also—the cityscape was also used in the film Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and the inspiration for fictional hometown of the animated feature Pinocchio, with the Plönlein, the small square at the intersection of two streets at a fountain, being one of the more photogenic spots. On the way back out, through the former Jewish quarter and back over the hill, we learnt that the future pontiff Francis had stayed here for several months in 1986 whilst learning German at the local Goethe Institute chapter.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: the beautifully dissociative nature of the Japanese language (with synchronoptica), Saturation 70 plus the US National Day Reason

seven years ago: commemorating the Berlin Airlift, humorist Grant Snider plus animated sketching lessons

eight years ago: the origins of the .mp3 format, disaster capitalism, the matte paintings of Star Wars plus the geographic centre of the EU shifts

nine years ago: an animated filmography plus food colouring’s unqualified reputation

ten years ago: an avatar-making app, Fearbook! plus divided America/divided Germany