Month: September 2025

Then and Now – Bern – Bubenbergplatz? Hirschengraben?

kenritley

Then:

Now:

Now in color:

Comments:

I was first pretty pleased with myself that I took a modern snap and compared it with an historical one. 

But I was fooled!

It is TRUE that the building to the left has a so-called “pediment” (triangle) – it is TRUE that both snaps look similar – and it is TRUE that Tram 9 as shown in the old snap still exists and runs next to the statute today.  But in fact, the original snap shows the Bubenberg statue positioned on Bubenbergplatz, something that no longer really exists!  Apparently it was moved in 1930 to the Hirschengraben, where it is located today.

So this is just a complete coincidence that the old snap looks like the new snap!

In an upcoming blog I will show what Bubenbergplatz looks like today – and your eyeballs will EXPLODE!

Cirque de Navacelles

kenritley

I actually learned about this in the geology class I took at Ohlone College back in 1983 – a river meanders and then the meander cuts itself off. In this case there is a medieval village down below. It’s so far off the beaten track in south France that I think it would take anyone 3 hours to get here. And it is a damn scary drive: I spent over an hour driving on narrow switchback roads high in the French mountains – so narrow, if you’d run into another car, someone would have to back up nearly a kilometer!

Hohenstadt Elephant

kenritley

For reasons I don’t understand – and neither does ChatGPT – you’ll find a surprising number of pictures or statues of elephants in the Schwabian region of southern Germany. ChatGPT speculated that a large number of Schwabians participated in the Crusades, where they most likely encountered many elephants – so that’s the reason.

La Couvertoirade – A templar village in South France – Part 1

kenritley

Continuing the series, here is a snap of La Couvertoirade, a village in Southern France that dates back to the 1200’s.  The templars were a group of fighters first started in 1119 in Jerusalem, during the Crusades. After around 1300 the templars fell (well, they did not really fall, like falling on the ground – they “fell” in the sense of all getting slaughtered by King Philipp IV of France, for corruption and having too much power) – and a somewhat older group (a religious order called the Knights Hospitaller) took over the city. Believe it or not, it was not until the 1980’s that people got smart – and in this case “smart” means “let’s make the village pretty so we can sell souvenirs to hoards of tourists!”