Ken Ritley

I took this snap of a very unusual fountain in Stuttgart:

And recently I came across a wonder iPhone app called “Then and Now” that shows historical photographs:

Now that I have the app, next time I’m in Stuttgart I’ll try to do a better job of capturing exactly this frame. Here’s another view:

The careful observer will definitely notice some changes. These are most likely explained due to bombing damage from WWII. In the top snap you’ll see the upper part of the building in the foreground is new.

I’ve written about a number items of Jewish historical interest in Switzerland, now here’s one from Germany. During WWII the Jewish population of the southern German city of Konstanz was mostly swept up in the holocaust.  Today, as you walk around the residential area, you can spot things on the ground just outside of the doorfronts that look like this:

If you look closely, these are placques that bear the names of the Jewish residents that met their fate in WWII:

Lest you think these are all memorials to victim of the holocaust, some of these markers show that while, yes, they were victims, they did not all perish in the pogroms.  Clockwise from top left, the translations read: fled to Yugoslavia 1935, survived; slandered and disenfranchised, died in 1934; fled to England 1939, survived; fled to England 1939, survived; deported to Auswitz, killed 1942. Since they all have the family name Haymann it is a further tragedy to see how this family unit was broken up in this way.

I took this snap in the southern Germany village of Villingen, but actually there are quite a large number of south German villages that have water canals like this one running through them:

Very similar to this, here is an artistic a snap as I thought I could get of the magnificent Konstanz Münster cathedral (dating back to around the tenth century!) in the city center of the southern Germany city of Konstanz:

Following up on the last post, here is another snapshot from the amazing fountain art in Konstanz:

Following up on the last post, here is another snapshot from the amazing fountain art in Konstanz:

Following up on the last post, here is another snapshot from the amazing fountain art in Konstanz:

This is no normal fountain in the southern Germany city of Konstanz. It is an artistic explosion.

I thought the colors of this fountain looked especially appealing in the autumn:

Each of the individual sculptures is just amazing, such as this:

I don’t know for sure, but I am highly confident these traffic speed cameras in Germany were specifically designed to be intimidating. Here is a highly visible speed camera in a residential area of the southern German city of Konstanz:

I’d much prefer if Germany and Switzerland did what France did quite some time ago: abolish the speed cameras and, where speed is a real safety issue, add street bumps to the streets.