Tag: #CosPhoChal

Meeting on the Rhine

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There is no coast closer than a 5 hours drive from here. But a one hour drive at the weekend got us to Mainz on Saturday, very close to the place of the confluence of rivers Rhine and Main (despite the spelling, they actually rhyme).

Besides seeing friends again (how we had missed that!) and running and walking and chatting, we saw ships going by. Sometimes two of them meeting in the middle of the river.

It quietened down towards evening, and then HE came along:

The HE 7 is the patrol boat of the Hesse river police, stationed in Wiesbaden.

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: On the Coast

Einhard’s Basilica in Steinbach

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There are not many buildings left from the Carolingian area in Germany. The most famous is the Lorsch Abbey near Worms in the Rhine Valley, a UNESCO world heritage site. The basilica of Einhard, about 40km to the east, is less well-known. This is a model on the site.

Einhard, who was amongst many other functions at the court the biographer of Charlemagne, had the basilica built in the early part of the 9th century and endowed it with relics, probably in order to make it into a centre of pilgrimage. His plans did not come to fruition and the relics were removed to Seligenstadt in the North. Other clerical buildings of the time were renovated and modernised throughout the century whereas this basilica was left mostly in its original state.

Imagine approaching this building at a time when most buildings were hardly higher than a man!

More information on the Einhard’s basilica can be found on this blog, called English Speaking Odenwald written by an American expat living in the area.

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: Buildings of the Past

Three Different Types of Open Space

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A huge open space for most of the year in the middle of the city: the Wiesn, the place where the biggest Octoberfest in the world takes place each September.

Brandenburg is as flat as country can be and there is nothing like seemingly endless skies to feel out in the open.

At the other end of Germany, the flatness of the Upper Rhine Valley is bordered by the Odenwald on one side, the Pfälzer Wald on the other side.

It’s the sky in all three examples that purports the sense of open country.

Colour can enhance that sense of wideness.

The Cosmic Photo Challenge: In the big wide open spaces