daytrip: the rosenau

H and I were in Rödental by Coburg and made a stop at the nearby Schloß Rosenau, referred to apparently in English—as we were about to learn through a litany of intimate connections, as the Rosenau. Owned for centuries by the Knights of Rosenau, the estate passed into the House of Saxe-Gotha after the last impoverished owner became weighted down by more debts incurred by a wonderfully eccentric ornithological hobby that entailed teaching native finches to sing like English pipits and self-publishing a treatise on it. The duke and duchess bore and raised the future Prince Albert in this castle—who would go on to become the husband (consort) of Queen Victoria. The couple lived in and reigned from mostly Windsor of course, but returned often to the Rosenau and the palace in Coburg.
After the outbreak of World War I made the British royal family much more reticent about admitting to their German connections, the property stood empty. As the Russian Revolution displaced other relations, however, the surviving line of the Romanov family and titular empress of the realm—with her ladies in waiting—was allowed to live there in exile, and in relative peace and comfort, having converted the library into an Orthodox chapel, until her death in 1938. Today, the castle and grounds are maintained as a state park and museum, and we’ll surely visit again for a tour and to see the gardens and their follies—ruins, grottoes and an artificial waterfall, in full glory. I knew some of this history beforehand, but it will forever strike me as incredulous that such events took place right down the road and garner little attention or fanfare.

haters gonna hate

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figgy-pudding: a blithe review of the finest, right-proper Christmas carols

ozzmosis: clinical studies into godfather of heavy metal reveals that he is genetically predisposed to survive and thrive decades of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll 

won’t you be my neighbour: Kottke directs us to a caring and thoughtful reflection on TV’s Fred Rogers

simulacraceae: a wildly imaginative piece on 3D printed gardening rooted in an exploration of pollinator-flower geometry

honey trap: farmers in Africa use fences of bee hives to deter elephants from wreaking their crops 

marchons or rearranging the deck chairs

Icelandic artist and activity Ólafur Eliasson working with geologist Minik Rosing have salvaged tonnes of icy obelisks, already doomed to their consummation, from the breaking front of Greenland’s glacial ice sheet and transported to them to central Paris, where delegates attending the crucial COP21 climate conference can witness them melt.
This is a pretty powerful statement and it’s highly recommended you visit the link and see more of Eliasson’s projects, but none to my mind was as stirring as the subdued Paris en Marche, when after the public rally was cancelled due to heightened security concerns and gatherings were banned, thousands brought pair by pair shoes to stand in for the absented protesters.

viennese sandbox: schönbrunn palace

As if the Hofburg was not palatial and accommodating enough, the imperial dynasty of the Hapsburgs also had a summer residence, just on the outskirts—seemingly at least, buffered by the huge, ancient gardens and grounds that include a menagerie of statuary and fountains, a hedge labyrinth and some architectural follies like artificial Roman ruins—and overlooking the city.
This baroque household boasts over fourteen hundred rooms and is crowned from a considerable distance by a structure known as the Gloriette a top a high hill.
The slope where the pavilion (the term means little room in Old French) stands offers an amazing, encompassing view of Vienna below was originally planned as the site of the palace, and was erected as a monument to serve as a focal point, a setting for dining al fresco, and as a dedication to a Just War (jus bellum iustum)—the worthy conflict goes unnamed (possible to honour all righteous indignation) but probably referred to Empress Maria Theresa’s own handiwork that allowed her to retain her power:
the War of the Austrian Succession, a global conflict that broke out on unexpected fronts, precipitating the French and Indian Wars in North America, Prussia and English-Bavaria, Russia and proxy-wars in the Far East.
A top the Neptune Fountain, the Gloriette was constructed from left over materials that went into building the artificial ruin and originally cannibalised from the defensive compound, Schloss Neugebäude, by then already suffering from neglect and disrepair and modelled after and constructed on the site where the Ottoman armies of Suleiman the Magnificent encamped during the first Siege of Vienna.

fun, fun, fun auf die autobahn

After some years of trying and with a long incubation time to anticipate—and intervening events that made public gatherings a show of defiance and courage—H arranged for us to see the legendary and pioneering Kraftwerk at the Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt, a brilliant and classic performance in living 3D, not just the performers on stage but spectacularly also their backdrop.
True to their founding principles, the group, harking back to a formative time in 1970 in Düsseldorf when the genre of electronic was theirs to define, the ensemble gave a dazzling and unforgettable performance whose message is yet resonant throughout the decades—especially poignant considering how the whole audience, despite, in spite and rather because of their seniority were also viewing ad preserving the concert on their mobile devices. Their now signature use of the minimoog and the vocoder for synthesized voices on their 1975 album Autobahn cemented their international reputation and to English-speakers, the title song—progressing out of the experimental and desparaging label of “Krautrock,” fahren, fahren, fahren was a misunderstood lyric.
There was a significant pause while the stage-hands put out the iconic figures, during which I entertained for a moment the idea that the band might have invited the talented elementary school class in nearby Darmstadt that made their own version of Wir sind die Roboter to appear with them but I knew it was already well past their bedtimes.

viennese sandbox: graben u. stephansplatz

The High Street shopping district of Vienna known as the Graben (ditch) originally marked the western extent of the Roman settlement Vindobona. By the late twelfth century, the city had grown extensively and the city walls were enlarged, financed in part by the king’s ransom for Richard Lionheart. 

Its chief monument—though it’s hard to speech in such terms in a place as ornate and storied as this—is the Baroque Pestsäule (Plague Column), dedicated to uphold the souls of the victims of one of Europe’s last great epidemics of the pestilence in the late sixteen hundreds.

Just opposite the boulevard (with some modern juxtaposition in between) is the massive cathedral of Saint Stephen (Stephansdom), seat of the archdiocese—was also commissioned in the twelfth century but construction spanned hundreds of years and as with Köln, the building is never really complete, to better accommodate the spiritual needs of that growing populace and to accentuate the Hapsburgs’ importance during the Age of Crusades (hundreds of saintly relics and miraculous icons are kept inside). 

The sprawling architecture and ornamentation of the edifice is not only a witness to dynastic movements but also an interesting reflection of changing culture and commerce, with standard weights and measures of trade displayed on the exterior walls (the ell for gauging bolts of fabric) and a church bell assigned to ring out last call for the neighbourhood pubs. 

5x5

queen of the nile: Egyptologists are most assured that Nefertiti is buried in a newly discovered chamber in Tutankhamun’s tomb

lorentz invariance: next month, the European Space Agency will launch a probe to confirm or deny the last major phenomenon predicted by the General Theory of Relativity—gravitational waves

bulla bulla: one linguist takes on the nomenclature and naming-conventions of a Swedish furniture giant

pretty maids all in a row: the brilliant BLDGBlog ponders further on the cyborg plant trials

arachne: genetic analysis of spider webs reveal that they incorporate the DNA of their prey in their weaving