großer lychensee (11. 893)

Leaving the Haussee of Himmelpfort, we took a short trip through the tributary Wolblitz (the river‘s name meaning the Little Havel in Old Slavic) for a really magical route with wooden bays and tight curves all to ourselves and crossed into the public dock in Lychen.  We walked around the town for a bit and had a nice lunch at a former coffee mill and rostery.  One the way back to the boat, we passed the the historic home of one Johann Kirsten who circa 1900 invented the push pen, thumbtack, whose present occupant had somewhat appropriately it seemed established a Museum of Fake News, using the windows as a bulletin board for made-up headlines.  The weather turning windy and rainy and not much time left in the day for traveling, we returned to the campsite by the lock in Himmelpforte and had our pitch still waiting for us—although our neighbors had moved on, an older couple who had been on the waters since May and had been working their jobs remotely thanks to the pervasive WiFi coverage with the company of their two adventurous cats.  

synchronotpica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica), a pristine tomb discovered in Naples plus a fully outfitted station wagon

eight years ago: more links to enjoy, the Altamura Man plus Parliament under repair

nine years ago: the Best of Reddit

ten years ago: parenting around the world 

eleven years ago: debt-limits and default

coeli porta (11. 892)

 

Departing Röblinsee through the Fürstenberg lock and crossed the canal into Stolpsee, and although intending just to stop at a municipal harbour to check out the town, we ended up staying moored at entrance to Himmelspfort, the spot turning out to be idyllic, essentially all to ourselves and aligned with what we envisioned camping by boat would be. After we got settled, we took a look at the ancient town named for a former Cistercian monastery, abandoned and left for ruins after sacralisation but the adjacent brewery founded by the monks was still intact and active.

The town is also known for its Weihnachtspostamt, upholding a tradition began by two postal workers in 1984 when they started answering children’s letters to Santa Claus (the Weihnachtsmann in East German times)—the whole town kind of has a Christmas theme and today, the postal service answers around three-hundred thousand letters from all over the world, but apparently is only one of seven addresses in Germany for such dispatches.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: fantastic spiralling art with AI (with synchronoptica), a graphic design collection curated by Kristen Lound plus LEGO as a media for fine art

seven years ago: murderous dioramas, proposed sovereignty for a Great Lake plus Japanese bathroom ghosts

eight years ago: Obama to his successor on unfinished business, solar plasma eruptions, a new front in the Cola Wars plus early canned, robotic music

nine years ago: holiday creep

ten years ago: the Ebola outbreak, stealing drug-offenders identities plus the landed gentry unchanged for a thousand years 

finowsee, woblitzsee, drewensee und zurück (11. 891)

Leaving the habour, we hooked up and to the north through a narrow channel that led to the Greater and Lesser Priepert lakes through the Finowsee that forms a round bend in the river.We pasted underneath the Hausbrücke Ahrensberg, a covered bridge (one of the few intact in northern Germany) that spanned the crossing to Drewensee.

 

 

Taking a long canal through the forest, we arrived at the inlet to Woblitzsee and stopped in the small town of Wesenberg to walk the dog and have a late lunch. The place is dominated by a high Middle Ages hilltop fortress (Turmhügelburg).

 

The lock at the outlet turned out to be the the most powerful one in the network of waterways with the floodgates really powerful instead of the usual sinking and rising and ended up passing through twice in rather quick succession as the anchorage we planned to stay at on the way to Neustelitz was closed for the season.Rather than risk getting stuck somewhere after the locks closed, we headed back to the first camp by Fürstenberg, seeing some of the boating lesson in practise and navigating the buoys which warn of hazards and the course to take that switch depending on whether one is travelling up- or downstream, and arrived just at sunset.

bundeswasserstraße obere havel (11. 888)

H and I travelled north for a houseboating holiday on the Havel, which intersects with a few different national parks crossing the borders between Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg Vorpommern. 

With our point of departure Röblinsee, leading to connections to the various lake districts (Seenplatten—including the Müritz where we visited years and years ago), we arrived at the harbor at midday and after orientation and a training module to operate the boat safely, it was too late to venture out before sunset and stayed in the dock in Fürstenberg overnight. 

The neighbourhood fronting the riverbank was lined with fancy villas and the industrial ruins of multipurpose food processing factory (Mischfutterwerk) was visible on the opposite shore. Three years prior to the Cuba Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union placed six armed launch for medium range R-5 Побе́да (Victory) nuclear warheads in early 1959–garrisoned troops left the small town in 1994. Behind the row of stately homes built originally for retirees from Berlin, a housing high rise for soldiers and their families stationed there. After an evening of planning and studying the channels and rotes, we were ready to head out.

6x6 (11. 858)

second-hand baloney boys: director Bong-Joon-ho’s Mickey17 explores indentured immortality with his expendable space colonists—like the duplicates paradox of teleportation 

r/no burp: a Redditor community brings recognition to an undiagnosed but pervasive syndrome 

ultimate world cruise: the social media coverage of a trip to seven continents plays out like reality television  

the ladies annual journal; or, complete pocket book for the year: the 1776 diary of Susannah Dalbiac kept in the back of an almanac 

twenty-eight years later: latest instalment of Danny Boyle’s zombie franchise was filmed entirely on iPhones 

sanewashing: how journalists can resist normalising outrageous and radical ideas—via the New Shelton wet/dry

the cruise of the kings (11. 787)

Disembarking this day in 1954 from Marseilles with a retinue of over one hundred royal dignitaries from twenty five current and former reigning families aboard the Agamemnon, the ten-day excursion through the Mediterranean was conceived and organised by Frederica of Hanover, queen consort of Greece, with the aim of not only promoting tourism in the region and economy recovery after World War II and the country’s civil war but also, as the granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II (see previously), to repair family ties among Europe’s royals after decades of conflict and turmoil. Ports of call included Naples, the Ionian islands, Corfu, Heraklion, Santorini, Mykonos, Rhodes and Athens with guests including Simeon II of Bulgaria, Prince Axel of Denmark, Duke Franz von Bayern, Prince Otto of Hesse-Kassel, Duke Peter of Schleswig-Holstein, Prince Antoine of the Two Sicilies, Umberto II of Italy, Charlotte Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, the royal families of the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden along with Prince Dimitri Romanov of Russia and Infanta Pilar, duchess of Badajoz. Protocols were abolished aboard the cruise ship and at any stop so guests might be freed from royal order of precedence and could mingle amongst themselves and with locals, and though there were designs on solidifying love connections (reality tv-style), only two engagements resulting from onboard encounters—Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia and Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Parma and Princess Sophia of Greece and Prince Juan Carlos of Spain. A second cruise was planned for two years later be had to be cancelled due to the Suez Crisis and the invasion of the Sinai peninsula.

the philadelphia experiment (11. 760)

Alleged first trialled on this day in 1943 on the US navy vessel the USS Eldridge at the city’s shipyard and coming to public attention over a decade later with a detailed account by supposed witness, a former merchant marine Carl Meredith Allen, the secretive project involving poorly understood extraterrestrial technology carried out with the intention of cloaking an escort ship. The outcome however was unexpected: while the Eldridge did vanish, it reappeared instantly in the naval docks of Norfolk, Virginia, some four hundred and fifty kilometres away, with the crew (no one else corroborated Allen’s story) sustaining bizarre side-effects from the teleportation, returning to Philadelphia minutes later. The navy disavows any knowledge of such research and the story and conjecture gained currency in the late 1970s with the resurgence in interest of paranormal phenomena like the Bermuda Triangle and Project Montauk. The 1984 film adaptation with Michael Paré added an element of time-travel and was generally not well-received by the fringe scientific community.

synchronoptica

one year ago: deadly and illegal border barriers (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit

seven years ago: sabre-rattling, crown shyness plus old neologisms

eight years ago: more links to enjoy

nine years ago: the velocity of money

ten years ago: thoughts on Dune and redundancy

women on the waves (11.687)

The Dutch NGO founded in 1999 by Dr Rebecca Gomperts has the mission of bringing reproductive health services, education and outreach to women in countries with restrictive abortion laws, with services rendered on board a specially-made ship, which boards women at a pre-arranged port-of-call and sails out to international waters, where Dutch law is in effect. Unsafe abortions administered in countries whose laws provide no other alternative are a leading cause of maternal death and the organisation seeks to champion universal reproductive autonomy. Earlier ship’s doctor on the Rainbow Warrior II, Gommperts and crew of medical professionals have visited Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Guatemala and México—all countries that have since significantly expanded abortion access, and a spin-off programme, Women on the Web, helps women with self-managed medical abortions with the drug combination mifepristone and misoprostol.

beaumont slope (11. 686)

In anticipation of eventual ratification of the 1994 UN treaty, the Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, see more), the United States quietly staked claim last month to its extended continental shelf in the Arctic so were it to become a signatory, it would be joining on its own terms with boundaries already delineated. The move did not go unnoticed as other member nations have also tried to assert, under the treaty, their own territorial reaches in the far north and the American declaration of what’s theirs by dint of geological affiliation, an area of the seabed the size of California which overlaps with the exclusive economic zones of Canada, Norway, Denmark and Russia, rather than political flag-planting and is seen as contentious and a sign of continued American exceptionalism, manifest destiny flouting customary and international law. More from Radio Free Europe at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the search for past life on Mars (with synchronoptica) plus the Hollywood sign (1923)

seven years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus a million dollar heist

eight years ago: camping in Metz 

nine years ago: missing the Dalai Lama plus the Bechdel Test

eleven years ago: a furlough for US federal workers, psychiatry and sainthood plus a choreographed panopticon

isola boromee (11. 654)

Though island-hopping was not as logistically easy as we thought—an all day commitment and much of the archipelago did not allow dogs, we nonetheless enjoyed our excursion via ferry to the Lago Maggiore island group in the bay of Stresa.  

One of a number of merchant and banking dynasties to carry the title Buon Romei—trustworthy Romans, the House that began acquiring the properties in the mid-fifteenth century were eventually ennobled and still to this day retain much of their holdings. Isola Bella contains a summer palace and Isola Madre has an English-style botanical garden. Isola Superiore (dei Pescatori, the Island of the Fishermen) where we disembarked, is the only one with a permanent—albeit a small one and far outnumbered by the staff of the many restaurants—and never owned by the House Borromeo.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica) plus The Wizard of Oz x Pink Floyd

seven years ago: Grenfell Tower, colonial Americans’ expanding settlements plus Germany legalises same-sex marriage

eight years ago: biometric passwords plus Invisibilia returns

nine years ago: more on the Right of Panorama plus a trip to the Wetterau

ten years ago: obscure sorrows plus pataphysics and Alfred Jarre

adrift (11. 519)

Having previously learned of the modern mudlarking off the coast of Cornwall through the Lego Lost at Sea project, a collecting and clean-up initiative that’s been very eye-opening about the amount of micro- and macroplastic in the oceans, we were delighted to get an update in the form of this rare discovery a of piece (numbered as it were like Pokémon cards since there’s a precise accounting of the shipwrecked manifest) in this octopus figure that went down with a cargo ship at Land’s End in 1997 recently by a local teenager. Some five million bricks in total went overboard when the vessel, the Tokio Express, was hit by a rogue wave in a storm, with the same teenager collecting nearly eight hundred parts—plus some nice fossils and shells—over the past two years.

10x10 (11. 496)

the cloud under the seas: the fleet of secret submarine cable repair ships 

sarbox: US Supreme Court appears skeptical about charging January Sixth rioters with obstruction of justice as defined by a law made in the aftermath of the Enron accounting scandal  

mix-and-match orthography: how Japanese writers navigate a choice between four writing systems (see also)—via Cardhouse  

walled gardens have deep roots: the imperative of rewilding (previously) the internet lest the duopolies take over—via Waxy 

bongo bash: Wild Stereo Drums (1961)  

embroidered surveillance: cross-stitch works of closed-circuit security camera footage  

the questor tapes: a 1974 television sci-fi drama about an android with incomplete programming by Star Trek alumni Gene L Coon, D C Fontana and Gene Roddenberry—via r/Obscure Media  

tegelwippen: Dutch towns compete to remove garden paving and embrace weeds—via Miss Cellania  

voir dire: jury selection continues for the criminal trial of Donald J Trump—with some potential jurors being unintentionally doxed by the media 

 atlas 2.0: Boston Dynamics’ new humanoid robot

synchronoptica

one year ago: Atelier Elvira, an unwoke chatbot plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: more gachapons plus an introduction to risography

three years ago: the launch of the Disney Channel (1983), an experimental light house plus Wham in China (1985)

four years ago: more links to enjoy, the International Amateur Radio Union plus The Spirits Book (1897)

five years ago: concrete monoliths moved by hand plus Mueller Report redactions

6x6 (11. 488)

dolia: new research reveals Roman wines to be of premium quality, contrary to conventional wisdom, and comparable to modern European standards 

second amendment rights: factors informing the arming of America 

ready player two: the ghost of a departed loved one preserved in an untouched video game console 

a supposedly fun thing that i’ll never do again: the story of Zenith, David Foster Wallace’s (previously) cruise experience—via Nag on the Lake  

on brand: a look at the author of reinstated 1864 legislation in Arizona—see more 

last of the summer wine: the untimely demise of the once trendy, effervescent piquette

the bessemer saloon ship (11. 484)

Steel magnate and prolific inventor during the late nineteenth century and second-wave of the Industrial Revolution—whose innovations were uniquely punctuated with enduring commercial success, including steam-power and techniques that improved steel manufacturing and solidified Sheffield’s reputation for more than a hundred years as a major industrial centre (also the namesake for the Alabama steel town) as well as numerous other improvements in material engineering with glass and iron, Henry Bessemer’s chronic disposition to sea-sickness inspired to come up with his rather singular flop. Though working in principal and in models, the sea-trial ended in disaster, crashing into the pier at Calais as it attempted to leave the harbour—outside of the control of the crew—however his idea for a self-righting cabin, a saloon, that swung on gimbals and hydraulic cylinders during cross-Channel journeys for passengers’ comfort in rough weather was ahead of its time. More from Amusing Planet at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit

two years ago: the Unicode Technical block of characters

three years ago: the show goes on, the legacy of project MKUltra, a capsule hotel annex in the woods plus more on Star Fleet uniforms

four years ago: extended Eastertide plus funny bios for birds

five years ago: empathy and tribalism, more coding by radio, retro McDonald’s packaging plus perennial cereal crops

saut de chat (11. 360)

Via Fancy Notions, we are introduced to the career and filmography of pioneering Soviet Armenia animator Lev Atamanov (Լեւոն Ատամանյան) and director through his 1969 collaboration with composer Alfred Schnittke, Ballerina on the Boat, with choreography help by members of the Bolshoi. Teaching the sailors to be more graceful, the passenger saves the ship during a storm with her moves.  After founding studios in Yerevan, Atamanov later joined Soyuzmultfilm, adapting many classic fairy tales and creating narratives of subtle satire with gentle humour and positive characters.