It’s not about the Albanian’s!

kenritley

Every year there is a street festival in Winterthur called the Albanifest. Here’s a snap, but it really doesn’t do the festival justice:

In fact, the Albanifest is the largest yearly street festival in all of Europe! There are well over 100 stands from local restaurants, dozens and dozens of temporary halls for music and dancing, and it’s visited by well over 100,000 people!

Interestingly, I originally thought this festival was to honor the population of Albanians who live in Switzerland. In fact, it’s name honors this fellow:

That’s St. Alban, one of the patron saints of the city of Winterthur!

English Food Trucks

kenritley

Well, I’ve only ever been to England a handful of times, so I am no expert. But each time I was there I remember being very impressed by the food trucks that park close to office buildings and provide lunch for the workers.

I spotted this one in Welwyn Garden City – just north of London:

And what’s always impressed me the most about these trucks is the large selection of things you can order:

 

Yes, there is a Platform 9-3/4!

kenritley

The last time I was at the King’s Cross railway station in London was not that far after the 7/7 terror attack, and I believe this was some time before the Harry Potter movies. In the first Harry Potter movie, we learn that the Hogwart’s Express calls at King’s Cross, but at the very magical platform 9-and-3-quarters,

Since then it’s been on my bucket list to visit King’s Cross and look for what I could find.

Well, I was recently there – and it turns out that the great marketing forces in the universe have taken full advantage!  They have recreated this track, and – at least when I was there – there was a long, long line with children waiting to get their photo taken, as this snap shows:

Just next to this “platform” there is a Harry Potter store, and the queue just to enter the store was filled with hundreds of people and in fact it snaked outside of King’s Cross station!

Rook’s Close

kenritley

I liked this sight in a local village just north of London, because the street sign says Rook’s Close, and the mailbox reminded me of a rook:

To be honest, it also reminded me a bit of a Dalek, but thankfully most Daleks are not red.

British Intelligence – just letting me know that they know

kenritley

British Intelligence, also known as MI6, recently gave me a call on my mobile phone!  In case you are wondering why they would do this, here’s the story.

In one of the last James Bond movies to star Pierce Brosnan, The world is not enough, James Bond blasts out of the MI6 building on the Thames River in London on a high speed boat,

So on a recent trip to London I was eager to see the real building, which is located in the center of London on the Thames River at a place called Vauxhall Cross. Since there were no “do not photograph” signs I walked all around the building and took lots of snaps!  And . . . I was able to confirm my sneaking suspicion: it turns out that the building is set so far back from the Thames that it would have been impossible for James Bond to blast out and land in the river.

It’s a pretty impressive building from the side:

And it’s even a bit more impressive from the front:

Anyway, I was so impressed that I texted a snap to my father on my Swiss mobile phone.

I think that was the magic moment that set everything into motion, the text message to my Dad.

About 2 minutes later I received a call. We don’t need to go into details, essentially one of the worst Swiss German accents I’ve ever heard. I think the main point was just to let me know that they knew. And by the way, I’m also guessing that they really didn’t know: I’ve had a number of run-in’s and encounters with real spies in my life (one of whom remains a very good friend, and one a Russian KGB officer who taught me how to make pickled cabbage), so I’m very sure if they looked in the right databases I would have been speaking to them face-2-face.

Of course, it piqued my curiosity as to the history of this place (Vauxhall Cross, not the MI6 building).  It dates back to the 13th century to a man named Faulkes who had a big house in this area. People called the house Faulke’s Hall which eventually morphed into Fox Hall which eventually then became Vauxhall.

Amazing things visitors to Las Vegas never see!

kenritley

Zillions of tourists come here every year – but they spend their time on The Strip and they never see some of the wonders that Las Vegas has to offer.

More or less in the center of this sprawling city is a small public park called The Springs Preserve with various hiking trails, and the park tries to re-create the native Las Vegas desert landscape that was here before humans settled the area – or better put, as humans first started to settle this area.

One of the amazing things you’ll see are a few ancient water pumps like this one shown here. This is not a reproduction!  In fact, these pumps are over 100 years old, and WATER was the original reason that Las Vegas got its start.

French influence – or just a good idea?

kenritley

Saigon is a frustrating place for me in many ways. Knowing the French history, as I walk through Saigon my eyes are drawn towards French-looking things, and I ask myself whether they are coincidences – such as a coffee shop with a French name, named so only because it sounds posh, as this example shows with two such French-named coffee shops next to each other:

or truly part of the French legacy (such as the system of Arondissments used to district the city).

Here is a case in point:

As I’ve written about before, French traffic signals are some of the best design traffic signals in the world. Is this just coincidence, or a vestige of the French legacy? Here is a similarly looking traffic signal in France,

No excuses – just plain ugly

kenritley

I love Switzerland!  I moved here years ago, and I’ve never looked back. The people – the culture – the various dialects of a language known as Alemannic (a more evolved version of High German) – there are a lot of things to love!

I’ve also tried my best in this blog to showcase Swiss artists, such as this blog of Seven Magic Mountains shows:

Well, some things I’m not going to defend – or even try. Visitors from long haul flights arrival in Qatar tired and cramped and jet-lagged, and as they de-plane the last vestiges of their good spirits and energy are violently exterminated by a hideously ugly monstrosity that awaits them – a work of art so grotesque that it is worse (if you can believe it!) than the many cases of French bubble architecture:

This hideous monstrosity is called the Lamp Bear, and its the creation of a Swiss artist, whose name I will not mention to protect his reputation. After all – perhaps this was the result if his patrons refused to properly remunerate him.

The amazing thing is that this artist’s website is full of truly incredible visual art. Which perhaps goes to show you: unless you are Michaelangelo (and you probably aren’t because he is dead) then if you are a visual artist please don’t dabble in sculpture, much less Statue-of-Liberty scale sculpture.

 

 

Modified Silvester Method

kenritley

This is something you don’t see everyday!

Well, in fact, a sign like this giving basic instructions in CPR is probably something you do see everyday, such as this sign I saw in a train station in France:

But what you don’t see everyday is the part of the sign giving instructions in the use of the Modified Silvester Method:

I’d never heard about this before – so I looked it up. It is not a version of CPR (which affects the movement of blood) but rather artificial respiration (getting the lungs to inflate and deflate).  I am not sure if this method is actually taught or encouraged anymore, and the date on the sign points to its age:

 

When Pulver is not really pulver

kenritley

There is a small hamlet in the south of Alsace, France called Pulversheim. It is known for its abandoned potassium mines, which remain scattered across the landscape as this amazing, awe inspiring snap shows:

For a long time I thought the hamlet was probably a case of form after function: Pulversheim (or home to pulver) because of the potassium mine.

But nothing could be further than the truth!

It was not easy to research, but in fact the town was long in existance before the discovery of potassium, and it was named after Mr. Pulver.

Go figure!

The landscape of milk

kenritley

I’m currently in a project where I am designing and documenting various IT architectures and landscapes: organizational, applications, infrastructure.

So while in this very “IT landscape frame of mind” I stumbled across this very interesting diagram on Wikipedia,

I think it’s just brilliant!  I’ve always been interested in the vast number of milk products – even more so after living in Eastern Europe and Western Europe and seeing products (such as quark and saline cheese) that are not available in the U.S.

And it is wonderful that someone could classify all the milk products in this way, to create a very colorful and easy-to-understand visual taxonomy.

The amazing electric fishermen of Mỹ Tho at the Mekong Delta

kenritley

The Mekong Delta has a magical name. Say it to any American, and it invokes powerful images from erstwhile conflicts.  But the reality today is much different, as this snap shows:

Here we have an electric fisherman plying the waters with an electric fishing pole. He simply sweeps the electrically charged pole along the bottom and stuns any fish he might encounter. Unfortunately I was a tad late with my camera, but while I was there he pulled a huge one-meter-long eel from the Mekong River:

Basel Badischer Bahnhof

kenritley

The Swiss city of Basel is something of an international enigma, since it sits within walking distance to no less than two countries (France and Germany) and a confederation (Switzerland).  Here you will find not one train station, but two: the Swiss main train station operated by my former employer, the Swiss Federal Railways; and the Basel Badischer Bahnhof, opened in 1855 and operated by the German Federal Railways.

Mystery tower in Alsace

kenritley

When you drive into this small Alsacian hamlet you can’t help but be overwhelmed by this stunning site – but upon closer inspection, there’s nary a sign in sight to tell you its history or what it does or when it was built:

But if you take a little walk around it you come to a an interesting work of art: