Et tu, Neuenkirch? – 4

kenritley

Continuing the series, this shows that the clockface on the main gate to the  medieval  village of the North Central Swiss Neuenkirch is also blue,

“I don’t like mysteries – they give me a bellyache, and right now I’ve got a beaute.” That was Capt. Kirk, but I am the same way. It drives me nuts that almost 100% of the more modern clockfaces on medieval Swiss churches – and there are dozens of them – are the same blue; whereas the somewhat older clockfaces are an orange-red. Presumably, there was a movement (no pun) to refurbish the clocks – but until now I could find no historical record of this.

Wintherthur Church

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It’s not Winterthur – sorry about that – but one of the dozens and dozens of small villages that surround Winterthur and whose names are too numerous to mention: Elsau, Seuzach, Rätterchen . . . I’ve been to all of them so many times that their names and their sights blend into homogenous obscurity. Some of them were named in a time when people had no education – such as the Swiss Dorf named, appropriately enough, Dorf . And some of them dating back eons, when Switzerland was home to enclaves of Neanderthal humans with their massive jaws and presumably unique language, and the names of the villages are linguistic remnants of that pre-paleolithic time gone by – such as the village named Thaa.

This one is a bit different:

It’s different because the clockface on the church is red, not blue. I have a theory – unconfirmed until now – that the overwhelming majority of churches in North Central Switzerland were outfitted with new – and blue – clockfaces at about the same time. Clockfaces on churches that are demonstrably older are universally orange-red in color.

FAKE: Colmar columns

kenritley

This is what I did to one of my snaps of a stone column adorning the window of a house in the Alsatian village of Colmar:

Just for the record: the photos I post are never in any way retouched or enhanced or changed – except for cropping.

But in this series of blog posts entitled FAKE I publish some rather interesting images I have enhanced in some way.

Zwiefalten Flowers

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Yes, that’s Zwiefalten – not Zweifalten – and you can see some earlier snaps of this mind-blowing Southern German monastery that I took here. In fact, even the insects surrounding this place must soak up the goodness, because on a recent trip I spotted an insect almost as big as a man’s head. I also spotted a fish in a small brook that was almost the size of an American alligator.

If you step inside, there is a very real risk your brain will explode. And as you can see from the outside, the stunning sights are hardly less interesting:

The mighty Sequoia trees of France

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Continuing the series . . . It’s amazing – I’ve lived in Europe for over 20 years, never really paying much attention to whether you can find the mighty Califormia Giant Sequoia trees here or not – but, once I spotted one, it seems I am spotting them all over the place!

Here is an example of a Giant Sequoia tree I spotted in the Parc du Champ de Mars in Colmar, in Eastern France:

There is a small plaque beneath this behemoth, which reads

Sequoia Sempervirens

provenance: California

Don du peuple americain

au peuple francais,

a l’occasion de bi-centairre de

la Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen et du

Bill of Rights of the United States

1789-1989

Parc du Champ de Mars

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Colmar is an interesting city on the border between France and Germany. As you can see from this snap – and indeed, as you can see from just about anywhere in Colmar – there was significant damage from centuries of war that leaves ancient buildings standing next to new ones:

Roulade au Poulet

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Idea from a friend of mine in the UK: chicken breast (Poulet) that I butterflied and pounded even thinner, wrapped around a tiny piece of sausage (Nürnberger Bratwurst) and including thin slices of cheese (Emmenthaler Käse) in the roll (Roulade), finally wrapped with slices of ham (Vorderschinken). I then wrapped it very tightly in aluminum foil, and baked at 220 C for 30 minutes:

The amazing thing is that, after baking, it retains it shape very firmly, almost like the more well-known Fleischkäse.