Tag: Germany

From straight lines to round vats and clear glasses

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31 lines b (640x480)

31 lines a (640x480)

31 lines c (640x480)

I’ve always found the rows of vines in a vineyard with a vanishing point in the distance make good photos.  We went on a wine walk yesterday – basically a stroll through the vineyards of one village with tents put up at intervals where one can sample the local wine and different kinds of food.  The weather wasn’t great but it least it didn’t rain and the cold was the right incentive to try out the more than 20 red wines on offer (not to mention the whites and rosés).  Not that the thousands of people needed much of an incentive!

More links to photos with lines in them can be found on One Word Sunday.

Once a year

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26 traces

No, I don’t mean the traces of the River Rhine in the distance, nor the town of Rüdesheim on its banks, nor the strange totem poles, nor even the old monastery in front of which this guy was kneeling.  It’s his back – with the locations of all the German national HHH meetings since 1989 on his shirt.  Good times!

This is posted as part of the Thursday Special Traces of the Past, by Lost in Translation.

Chickens aren’t the only ones

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Elwetritsche BrunnenElwetritsche Brunnen

The hatchling peeping out of an egg is an Elwetritsch, a mythical creature from the Southwest of Germany. This particular one is part of a fountain in Neustadt an der Weinstraße.  If you want to read up on Elwetritsche (apparently they’ve made their way to the New World where they are known amongst the Pennsylvania Dutch as Elbedritsch) you can look them up on Wikipedia.

This is in response to The Daily Post prompt “Egg” – more eggy posts can be found here.

 

A zest for life

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11a

I seem to find these more traditional murals around here.

11d

This one – from the old part of town of “Newtown an der Weinstraße” in Rhineland Pallatium, Germany – is called “Phantastische Allegorie zu Neustadt und der Lebensfreude” (Phantastic allegorie about Neustadt and zest for life).  It was created by Werner Holz for H. Grübius (both names appear in the picture).  I’m not sure about the date, I believe I can read 1990something, the artist died in 1991.

More Monday Murals can be found here.

Application denied

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07 b

I saw this a couple of years ago in Neustadt/Dosse in Brandenburg, Germany.  I couldn’t find a local who could (or would) explain to me what the creator of the piece was protesting against.  Apparently, he or she or some organisation wrote applications yearly from 2000 onwards, which were filed and denied, and in 2004 the matter was finally closed, whether by death of the process itself or a person involved I don’t know.

for:  Monday Mural

http://oaklanddailyphoto.blogspot.de/2017/09/monday-mural-slam-dunk.html

 

Our obligation: peace

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9 tomb e

This is the war cemetery in Brandau im Odenwald.  461 dead from the first and second world war are buried here, among them soldiers, known and unknown, of various nationalities,  forced labourers and displaced persons, e.g. survivors from concentration camps who did not return to their homes.  Tragically, there are also a few graves of children who were born during this time to mothers who were deported and forced to work in Germany.  The cemetery is cared for by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V., a humanitarian organisation whose tasks include caring for cemeteries in Germany and looking after graves of German soldiers and war victims outside of Germany, also helping relatives to locate graves of missing family members.

9 tomb z

The driving ethics behind the organisation is to work for peace.

Frieden

The inscription in the chapel reads: Our sacrifice – your duty – peace.

Kriegsgräberliste

A list of all the graves and the people buried is kept in the wall and can be consulted by visitors to the graveyard.  The individual graves are marked with names, dates, nationalities and, in the case of German soldiers, with their ranks.

9 tomb f

9 tomb c

Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar.

The sign of the organisation with the details for donation.  The words are the beginning of the German Basic Constitutional Law: “Human dignity is inviolable.”

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Tombstones or Cemeteries

The mouse ran up ad hoc

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04 mouse c (640x480)

I have an ulterior motive with my 6 word musings this Saturday.  I was walking in the woods yesterday when this little creature ran in front of me on the path.  It was tiny, totally unperturbed, meeping in a high voice, and following ants on which it pounced and ate one after the other.  I think it was either a wood mouse or a bank vole – but the size still puzzles me. Its body was just an inch long, the tail about another inch. Any of the animals I checked up on are normally bigger.  Or was this a baby who was still learning to keep under cover and keep quite? I hope it learned fast.  Anyway, if somebody knows for sure what I saw I’d appreciate to hear from you.

The area was a fairly well frequented part of a large arboretum with exotic trees from all over the world, beech varieties are also included, pretty close to a town, in southwest Germany (Weinheim an der Bergstraße).    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotenwald

for: Six Word Saturday

More than a century of reflections