Saturday, 31 May 2025
hohenwartetalsperre iv (12. 500)
Thursday, 29 May 2025
hohenwartetalsperre ii (12. 496)
We wanted to go wandering along a narrow footpath above the shoreline to the next village of Linkenmรผhle, hosting a guesthouse and the only ferry in the state of Thuringia, which we made but the going was a bit uncomfortable with the added traffic of the holiday and inebriated men pulling carts. The gastronomy was very crowded but we enjoyed ourselves and decided to take the highroad back via a logging path over the mountain. It was a steep climb and with a field blackberry (Brombeer) brambles that we needed to carry the dogs over due to the thorns of but worth it for the views and very much to ourselves. We came to an establishment called Ziegenhof—a working goat farm—with caprine-based refreshments, including goat-milk ice cream and a variety of cheeses—on the way back down to the campsite.
synchronoptica
one year ago: laundry lessons from Japan (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth the revisit plus a post-war postscript from Thomas Mann
seven years ago: Native Americans granted citizenship
ten years ago: the founding of Leipzig, more links to enjoy plus acceptable facial hair for Norwegian sailors
twelve years ago: furloughing federal workers
thirteen years ago: Germans and joy plus counterfeit wine
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฃ, ๐ , ๐ฅพ, Thรผringen
Saturday, 11 January 2025
hohe schule (12. 166)
Taking advantage of a brief period of sunshine, H and I took the dog on a hike up to the summit of the Hohe Schule—previously, the tallest plateau in the eastern foothills of the Rhรถn mountain range, to inspect more of the recently restored Wanderweg.
Formerly known as the Aalhauck—“eel hill,” now called “high school” for unknown reasons—German toponymy can be deceiving, as with Schweinfurt, not where the pigs can ford the river.
The flat top hosts the ruins of a fortification from the Hallstatt period, presumably built to monitor trade through the Ellenbach valley and reoccupied in the Middle Ages with a newer rampart and collapsed walls, hardly recognisable and reclaimed by the forest but fenced in as several Bronze Age artefacts were discovered there during an emergency survey conducted in the 1980s, including prehistoric millstones, primitive glass vials and a brooch, but further excavations are still pending and archeologists want to preserve the site, and affords some spectacular views on the valley and village below and mountain peaks beyond.
Tuesday, 2 July 2024
maccagno superiore (11. 659)
Slowly scaling the mountain rising behind our lakefront campsite, we were afford some amazing views and walked the path around Lago Delio, a reservoir first constructed in 1911 and dammed in the 1960s for hydroelectric power.
one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica) plus a miscellany of Americana
eight years ago: a cancelled vacation
nine years ago: artist Peter Max, fantasy politics plus bans on yoga
ten years ago: diplomatic blackmail
eleven years ago: check-out line etiquette plus dragnet surveillance
Saturday, 29 June 2024
il rocco di caldรจ (11.655)
Visiting the comune of between Luino and Laveno Castleveccana and took a hike through the frazione of Caldรจ to the Rocco, a promontory that first hosted a defensive castello in the early tenth century but was breached during the campaigns of Otto I against Berengar II.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Dancing in the Streets (with synchronoptica), an animatronic facelift, We Didn’t Start the Fire updated plus US supreme court ends affirmative action
seven years ago: the parable of the second arrow, rolling back regulations on pesticide use in the US, Trump goes to Paris plus the US united in quackery
eight years ago: weaponising toxic-masculinity, more on ISOTYPEs plus a Golden Mean pocket scope
nine years ago: a word for relating to pigeons plus assorted links worth revisiting
ten years ago: social engineering, an optical muezzin plus placebos and nocebos
Wednesday, 26 June 2024
carmine superiore (11. 652)
Traveling back to Luina—which inherited market privileges from Maccagno—but not quite the showcase of local food and craft week expected, we returned to Laveno to take a ferry ride to the Piedmontese side on the lake at the port of Intra by Verbania and between the stretch of coast known as the Cannero Riveria—with same Mediterranean flair—and city of Cannobio, we stopped to explore an abandoned village—the lower settlement named inferiore though still populated.
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus the Pied Piper of Hamlin
seven years ago: low-Earth orbit being crowded out, mobile check-up units, more links to enjoy plus an IBM featurette
eight years ago: a camera carriage frame for car morphing, secessionist groups plus a potential UK constitutional crisis
nine years ago: more links to enjoy
ten years ago: the Wicked-isation of classic fairy-tales
Monday, 24 June 2024
maccagno (11. 650)
The former independent Lombard commune now merged with other municipalities along the lake, the town where we are staying. Elevated during the tenth century by Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great as the immediate fiefdom of the Four Valleys for hospitality demonstrated during the Kaiser’s Italian campaign against his cousin Berengar II as king of Italy with a charter to hold a market and mint coins of the realm.

one year ago: resistance fighter Willem Arondรฉus (with synchronoptica), the Wagner mutiny plus the last Western Roman emperor
seven years ago: television cameras banned from White House press conferences, the Queen signals her displeasure, plus fact-checking the Trump campaign
eight years ago: populism in the US and UK, subterranean Singapore plus Greenland leaves the EU (1982)
nine years ago: assorted links to revisit, reconciling ancient philosophy with church doctrine plus a chimeric lamb
ten years ago: the importance of boredom, the vocabulary of migration plus bootstraps and bitcoin