Continuing the series, here is another animal bridge across a highway in northern Switzerland:
Author: kenritley
What is a Texas Bar-B-Q?
Everyone’s heard the word barbeque, even if not everyone has tasted it. And everyone’s heard about Texas, even if not everyone has visited it.
But a Texas Barbeque is really something special. The snap below is of the hugely famous Bill Miller Barbeque, and I’m told it wouldn’t be unusual to see Willy Nelson here – although I never have.
But the amazing part is what you don’t see. These Texas barbecues generate so much heat and smoke, that as soon as you drive into the parking lot it gets a bit difficult to breathe.
For this reason, most people order their food in advance, and even if it takes just a few minutes to pick it up, you leave with your clothes deeply soiled with the wonderful barbecue odors.
The amazing Carthusian Cows of Switzerland
It’s impossible to take a bad picture of a good cow!
These cows are just outside a former Carthusian Monastery located in the North Swiss countryside near Ittingen:
The Carthusian Order is the strictest of all the Catholic monastic orders, so it’s only fitting that these cows lead lives of quiet contemplation.
Harry Potter Dementors
These are not Harry Potter Dementors.
But you could be forgiven for thinking they are. In fact, this is an artistic display just outside of the French town of Verdun. Interestingly, it does not commemorate the soldiers of World War I, but rather it commemorates the French soldiers who fought in the Yugoslavian war.
That’s not gorse, you idiot, this is
I’ve written about trees in the heath and the Gorse of York.
But since my last blog just over 2000 readers have left comments that I made an egregious error!
I showed this picture and referred to it as gorse:
My dear readers, mea culpa. I did make a mistake ad attached the wrong picture! You were right, that wasn’t gorse, it was heath.
This is the gorse:
Interestingly, there is some speculation that certain types of thorny bushes that grow in nutrient poor areas are in fact carnivorous: the thorns are not designed to retard animals but rather to capture them, so the remains of their dying carcasses can fertilize the ground. Gorse seems not to be in that category, as the thorns tend to repel rather than hold trapped animals. But an interesting theory nonetheless.
Tricky to get in, tricky to get out
The airspace in Switzerland is said to be the most complicated airspace in the world, but when you look at the overall chart of Europe, it is quite likely this is just a marketing statement:
Nevertheless, having flown with private pilots in many countries, here I am in the co-pilot’s seat and making a turn over Pfäffikon at the southern end of Lake Zurich, en route to ZRH. For light airplanes engaged in private aviation, there is a 20 minute window during the morning in which the approach must be made.
The amazing garbage vacuums of Germany
I’ve written about garbage in Texas and garbage in Switzerland.
Here is the approach that I see more and more in Germany, as this snap in front of the Rhein River in the South German city of Konstanz shows:
The receptacle you see here is not a receptacle at all, but rather a chute over a huge underground garbage cistern. Periodically a worker in a special vacuum truck will come by and use a huge boom to vacuum all the garbage out of the cistern.
The famous hanging sneakers on the power lines of New York
If you’ve spent any time walking around Manhattan, you’re sure to have come across a sight like this:
Even though I lived for a while in New York, I never understood why this happens or what it’s about.
But thanks to this blog, now I finally know just a little bit more about this practice!
Istanbul
Amazing Animal Bridges – 1
You take some things for granted – and it can be a huge shock when someone points out they are in fact unusual.
Case in point: animal bridges. I never really stopped to consider just how unusual they are, until a friend of mine from India, on her first visit to a country outside of India remarked “What? They actually build bridges for animals?”
Yes, they do! I’ve only ever seen them in Germany and Switzerland – although to be honest, I’ve seen animal tunnels along the highways through the Florida Everglades. In both cases the principle’s the same: let animals cross the road without becoming roadkill. Or perhaps more fitting: let animals cross the road without damaging the expensive cars and trucks.
Anyway, this is a nice animal bridge in Switzerland, just outside of Konstanz.
Mysore Market
Today the city it’s officially known as Mysuru, after a movement that has seen the “Re-Indification” of many names in India (Bombay / Mumbai, Calcutta / Kolkata . . . you get the idea). Anyway, this picture I took just outside of the Devaraja Market is still one of my favorites:
In most every South Indian market I’ve visited, the stalls selling colored powder seem always to be right in the front:
It’s been a while since I’ve visited – and to be honest, I am not sure if the market is still there today. I remember reading a few years ago that part of it collapsed.
Cannes is just plain wierd
As an American I was eager to visit Cannes, since we hear so much about this famous French coastal town. On the one hand, if the weather is nice there are a few pretty views here:
But by and large, the impression I got was that it was for the ultra-affluent who had a need to show other people who ultra-affluent they were. For example, the beaches are about as totally unspectacular as you can get:
But, I did find one thing that appealed to me: a church dating back to the Middle Ages, now almost inaccessible by foot, having been almost completely buried in what are now back alleys and fully enclosed by hotels:
Bridge over the River Rhein
I’m not sure why, but this is one of my favorite photographs of a bridge over the Rhein River, near the German city of Köln.
Danger in Five Languages
One reason that Malaysia is one of my favorite countries is the extreme degree of cultural fusion: Malay + British + Chinese + Indian + Indonesian, as this rather ordinary sign shows:
Achter Lok
In German I call them “Achter Loks” – but probably nobody else does. In English, the closest translation I could think of might be “the eight train.”
These Re 460 locomotives are a common sight for anyone in Switzerland:
The reason I call them Achter Loks is that all the main design parameters all have to do with the number 8:
- They have 8 wheels
- They weigh 80 tons
- They have around 8000 horsepower
The other cool fact I always remember: when a fully loaded train pulled by one of these locomotives brakes from high speed to a stop, this one braking event uses about the same amount of energy that a family of 4 will spend in one month – and that gives you a good glimpse into just how important electrical energy is for the Swiss Federal Railways.
One cool feature is that these locomotives all have names – and although I don’t like to brag, I started an Internet project to photograph each of the 100+ locomotives.
Home of blue jeans
Just as the villages and towns of central and northern Europe are filled with ancient buildings dating back to the Renaissance, the villages and towns of southern Europe are filled with ancient buildings dating back much further, to the Roman empire.
Here is a Roman building, still in wonderful condition today, at the heart of the town of Nimes in Southern France:
It’s here in this town (Nimes) that the fabric used for blue jeans (denim) was first made famous.
Sailboat on Lake Thun
This is one of my all time favorite snaps, of a sailboat on Lake Thun in the Bernese Oberland. In the cloud covered distance you can just make out the snow covered Stockhorn mountain peak:
Whitby
I took this snap of a seagull juxaposed with a recently restored nineteenth century lighthouse in the seaside Yorkshire town of Whitby:
The famous “ossuary swallows of Verdun”
You’ve probably never heard of the world-famous “Ossuary Swallows of Verdun” – but I predict in a generation you will!
Very recently a huge and impressive ossuary was erected on a hilltop in Verdun, as a memorial to the tragic lives that were taken in World War I. The ossuary looks incredible from a distance:
It also looks incredible close-up:
It looks even more incredible inside – but since it is a religious site I chose not to photograph the inside, which includes a chapel.
But back to the swallows. The entrance to this huge building is open, and a huge flock of swallows seems to have taken advantage of this as their new home. As you walk in and out, supersonic sparrows travelling faster than the speed of sound buzz by your head almost too fast for you to see them.
They are easy to spot if you look out over the cemetery, since the skies are filled with them:
It took me about 30 tries with my mobile phone camera, but last I was able to capture one of these hypersonic birds in flight:
You can see the little fellow racing out of the building, just to the center of left and towards the bottom.
A Swiss city hall
If you’ve ever driven around the rural United States, then you’ll know how much attention many villages give to their city hall buildings. Switzerland is no different, as this incredible architecture in Winterthur shows:
Seven unusual houses near Appenzell
You’ve probably read my post about the artwork of Swiss artist Udo Rondinone, Seven Magic Mountains.
Well, here’s Seven Unusual Houses!
While driving around the beautiful countryside near Appenzell, I spotted a huge field with seven identical houses arranged neatly in a row:
OK, I think I can safely rule out the “seven dwarves retirement community!”
Now if this were in the U.S., particular in a place like Texas, this would be easy to explain. Whole villages and towns (complete with banks and schools and train stations) were created by private companies and offered at low cost to European immigrants, to encourage (or exploit) immigration to new areas.
But here in Switzerland? This is something I really need to research!
What motivated me to stop and take this snap was not the houses at all, but the rather unusual crucifix – typically they tend to be stone, but this one was gilded:
When blog passions collide
If you’ve spent any time reading my blog, then you’ll know about a few of my blog passions. These are Hidden Canals, erstwhile important public works projects that today are slowly slipping into away from our perception; Great European Cathedrals, of which the greatest are generally in the tiniest towns and villages that no tourists ever visit; and Unknown French Villages, unknown by all but the locals, never visited by tourists, and yet holding amazing treasures.
So you can imagine my joy when I stumbled across this site in Chalon-en-Champagne, no less than a hidden canal, next to a great European cathedral, in an unknown French village.
The Hidden Courtyards of Zürich
Every summer tourists flock to Zürich, the most expensive city in the most expensive country in Europe. And they walk around and they see the sights.
But most of them do so quite unaware of some real wonders that Zürich has to offer, namely, hidden courtyards.
Just off of the Bahnhofstrasse shopping district, you couldn’t be blamed for walking past this opening, hardly glancing inside, and thinking it was a driveway.
But in fact, if you walk through, it is one of Zürich’s best-kept secrets: one of the many, many hidden courtyards, filled with huge trees, park benches, and historic water fountains, some of them dating back to the Middle Ages:
How can wonders be so quickly forgotten?
It amazes me that some incredible things – well known to everyone at the time – are too easily forgotten and left for the archaeologists and accidental discoveries centuries later.
In one of the central plazas in the northern Swiss town of Winterthur you’ll see this:
It looks like a boring picture of a boring plaza, at the corner of which sits strange (but boring`) gray metal object, about the same size and shape as a garbage can.
And that’s what most people probably think that it is.
But they’d be wrong! In fact, this is an observation portal built above a set of huge underground water cisterns. Apparently, I was told, these water cisterns were only very recently discovered while installing a new water fountain in the plaza.
If you peer down the portal and activate the light switch, it looks like this:
I still haven’t done any research of my own into this topic. I was told that there were regular wars and fighting during the Middle Ages for as long as there were the Middle Ages. This culminated in a war between the city of Winterthur and the city of Zürich – and these cisterns were created as an emergency defensive measure, deep within the Winterthur city walls, so that the inhabitants could have access to water during times of siege.
When you think of Switzerland, a shortage of drinkable water is the last thing you’re likely to think about – and that shows how different our lives and experiences are today from those that went before us during the Middle Ages.
What other wonders are buried beneath Winterthur, awaiting accidental discovery?
Gabriel in Zürich – The true backstory
If you’ve read my post about Historical Jewry in Zurich, I might have left a few details out. Here’s the “backstory” as told by my father of Uncle Eddy Speaks Up fame:
Gabriel felt uneasy in Zurich at the best of times. The Swiss have made it clear that he was not welcome. But he was back. Worse, he was about to enter the old Synagogengasse and he didn’t much care for company. And yet here, in the evening mist, was someone else, pretending to read the plaque that told of the old pogroms there and holding a cell phone camera.
Gabriel’s hand went under the black slicker he wore and gripped the Beretta in the small of his back. Standing in the shadows was a figure, quite tall and seemingly bald, he held a baseball cap to as to get closer to the plaque that marked the end of the alley. No one went to Synagogengasse, not even Jewish tourists. Gabriel hoped that this was a coincidence, and that his cover wasn’t blown. No one was supposed to know he was in Zurich.
This was not a time for caution, and against his better judgment he had to move. He slipped up quietly behind the stranger, pulling the Beretta, and jammed it into his ribs. “If you want to live”, Gabriel said, “tell me who sent you.”
“Hey, man, quit the gun stuff”, said the stranger. “I’m Ken, and I live here in Zurich”. Gabriel’s eyes narrowed: “You have a slightly American accent – Ken. If that’s your name. And why take a picture of the Synagogengasse plaque?”
The stranger pushed the Beretta away from his ribs, and said: “the pictures are for my blog, you moron. I travel all over the region – France, Germany, Italy – take interesting pictures and publish them in my blog. This is a little known Jewish relic in Zurich and I wanted to see it. I was trying to read the plaque when you came sneaking up, you jackass”.
Suddenly, it made sense to Gabriel. “Wait a minute. Ken — blog — Zurich. You’re Mr. Tradecraft’s friend Ken?” “That’s right”, said Ken, now uneasy at the mention of the seldom-spoken name. “I’m sorry.”, said Gabriel, “I’ll just slip away quietly and leave you to your reading. Have you heard from Mr. T, lately?”
Ken looked at him, and made a what-a-dumb-ass-you-are face. “When Mr. T wants you to know where he is, he’ll call you.”