A renaissance man for the twenty-first century!
Continuing the series, arguably the world’s oldest and best-known pillar of moss and slime, located in Aix en Provence, shows that my own name for these objects, pillars of moss and slime, is not half bad: this one is officially known as Fontaine Mossue. Interestingly, it is a natural hot water spring that dates back to the Roman times.
Continuing the series, this pillar of moss and slime is located in Montreux, on the eastern shore of Lake Geneva. As you can see, as far as biotopes go, this one is just getting started. I’ll have to drop by next year and see how it’s changed.
But, there are still plenty of other pillars of moss and slime that I’d like to share as time permits.
The Zibilemärit is held on the fourth Monday of every November. It is a huge, world-class, one-day-only street market in the UNESCO city of Bern, Switzerland. What is so unusual about the market: it opens at 3:00 AM, by 4:00 AM the market is already full of many thousands of visitors, transported here from all over Switzerland by special trains that the Swiss Federal Railways schedule.
And aside from beer and wine, the only product that is sold at the dozens and dozens of stands and vendors: onions and garlic. The best part is all the hot food you can eat: garlic soup, onion soup, garlic bread, onion cookies, you-name-it-with-garlic-and-onion!
The history of the market dates back over 650 years: after a fire destroyed much of Bern, the villagers in the neighboring village of Freibourg volunteered to help rebuild the city. In exchange for this kindness, the Fribourgers were allowed to sell their goods in Bern, free of taxes.
No – the “x” does not mark the golden dome of the famous Dome of the Rock.
Surprisingly, the most interesting feature of the Church of Dominus Flevit on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem is not very well known: the nave does not point east, but rather it is perfectly situated so that the cross in the window points exactly at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Here’s something you don’t see every day: almost every rainbow attribute in just one photograph, taken just outside my apartment on Lake Thun, in Switzerland. Clearly visible are a primary rainbow, a secondary rainbow, supernumerary rainbows, a reflected rainbow – as well as two clear dark areas known as Alexander’s bands. The region between the secondary and reflected rainbow is especially dark, and that is very rare to observe.
If anyone knows what these things are really called, please let me know. I call them “pillars of moss and slime.” It is a column over which water slowly and continuously trickles. And because of this, the column is host to a variety of natural molds, slimes, algae, moss, and grass – growing in different areas on the column, depending on the ambient light, wind direction, and time of year.
This pillar of moss and slime is located in Bern. I’ve seen similar structures scattered throughout western Switzerland (Bern, Zürich, Lausanne, Geneva, Montreux) as well as southern France. I’ll post further pictures as time permits.
The Bluegrass Beans on October 10 at Sybille and Rolf Menzi’s Western saloon in Rottenswil. These guys are not merely good; they are seriously good.
It looks like an unkempt street fountain in the shape of a canal, here at the Place de Zürich, on the Rue de Zürich in the neighborhood of Krutenau, in Strasbourg. And that’s probably what most people would think it is. But they’d be wrong.
Strasbourg is a medieval city, many of whose streets date back 6 or 7 centuries. But the Rue de Zürich is a relatively modern street, created in 1872 by filling in the Rheingiessen Canal. I have not been able to find out exactly why they chose to eliminate this canal, but the timing corresponds to other major canal building efforts in France, most notably the Canal du Marne au Rhein.
Interestingly, there is a fountain just up the street, which celebrates the landing of a group of Swiss in the year 1576. Surely anyone who sees that fountain must be confused (well, I was, until I found out about the ancient canal), because there is otherwise no other indication that Rue de Zürich was once a famous canal!
There are a few other interesting examples of “hidden canals” I hope to share in the near future.
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I just saw this in the wonderful book by Randall Munroe entitled What If? Serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions.
Twice per week, that is. Each garbage bin is much, much bigger than you’ll find anywhere in Europe. The contents of the bin are not regulated by law; anything from old boxes to old batteries to old bananas is ok. And the driver stays in the air conditioned cab and operates the controls remotely.
A few days ago I installed WordPress, because I wanted to create a new personal homepage and start blogging. And to showcase some of my writing and my music.
WordPress is fairly self-explanatory so I didn’t need a manual. And after finding the Radiate theme I quickly got the “parallax” effect I always wanted to have – not the best parallax I’ve seen (no pun), but better than the old static web-pages. But I quickly hit a limit: I could find no easy and straightforward way to create a photo album I was happy with. The only solution seemed to be to download and use various freeware plug-ins, most of which overloaded my system with spam messages inviting me to upgrade to their “pro” version.
So I took a timeout, investigated a few other CMS systems, even installed Drupal – and after another hour gave up in frustration and returned to WordPress.
So far, WordPress seems to be a fine product. But it also seems to be a home for “bait-and-switch” theme and plug-in developers, promising you much but delivering next-to-nothing in their freeware version. And so far, I am seeing a few signs that my web-hoster might also be playing bait-and-switch, trying to get me to upgrade to the “high performance” version.