Friday 7 September 2012
gabriel blow your horn
catagories: ๐, Europe, graphic design, religion
castle week: berlin-brandenburg
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ซ๐ท, ๐, foreign policy, philosophy, travel
Thursday 6 September 2012
doctor pangloss, I presume
The ever engrossing and a sure bet for a good take-away to ruminate on, Boing Boing, recently presented two brief and chilling tracts about the echo chamber of communication and some dismal reflections on the realities draped by economic cheerleading. Boy, this was some bleak stuff, presented in a way that was hard to refute or not be disheartened.
catagories: America, economic policy, labour, networking and blogging, philosophy, revolution
castle week: rheinland-pfalz
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ซ๐ท, ๐, holidays and observances, Wikipedia
Wednesday 5 September 2012
7/11 oder verkaufsverbot
Legal augurers, deciding that there is too much creeping in shop opening hours in Bavaria and creative license to skirt the limitations, have reinterpreted the exceptions granted to petrol-stations to expressly apply only to car and truck drivers and not pedestrians who are interested in using the attached convenience stores. Some people are quite disgruntled with the suggestion that the passing shopper would not be allowed to make purchases after eight o’clock in the p.m., the latest hour that retail stores and markets are traditionally allowed to remain open.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, food and drink, labour
castle week: hessen
Tuesday 4 September 2012
castle week: mecklenberg-vorpommern
catagories: ๐จ๐ฟ, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฑ, environment, travel
Monday 3 September 2012
castle week: baden-wรผrttemberg
The diverse land of Baden-Wรผrttemberg with Swabia, the Black Forest, Lake Constance (Bodensee) has a wealth of sites to offer, not the least being the paperweights of politics and trade of its ancient houses. Stuttgart was sometimes seat of the kings of Wรผrrtemberg with its old and new castles located in the city centre and featured spectacles to impress, extravagance and decadence of courtly legend to help forge alliances.
To my mind, the partially restored castle of Heidelberg never constituted a ruin—though it was already regarded and esteemed as such, and a worthy attraction for hundreds of years prior—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Victor Hugo and Mark Twain and others mentioning it in their travel logs. There are actual two ruins—the upper fortification has mostly succumb to the heavily wooded hillside and was destroyed by lightning in 1537 and the lower structures by battles waged in the 30 Years’ War, a conflict with roots in the protestant reformation and the question of succession in France and the Holy Roman Empire (the tensions which courtiers in Stuttgart tried to placate), and another errant lightning bolt.
Surely, there is a lot of romanticism connected with ruins, like the shipwrecks of empire and ambition, and somehow what’s left untouched and in disrepair allows the stories to be more intact. It seems at least that more people had more to say about their impressions of Heidelberg castle than many others. The other sometimes royal residence of Wรผrrtemberg’s rulers was located in the expansive Baroque palace in the Stuttgart suburb of Ludwigsburg, commissioned with the style and proximity to the urban capital as the Palace of Versailles has to Paris. Two other palatial estates are located on the palace grounds but the surrounding parks and gardens are so huge, noble neighbours would never disturb one another.