Interesting things

Ornate Painted Medieval Houses

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If you spend enough time walking around medieval German and Swiss villages, you’ll eventually notice that most of the houses are so-called half-timbered houses (with planks of wood separating the stuccoed exterior) but that a number of houses are painted in a very ornate and detailed style.

Here is one such house that I discovered in Olten, which shows both styles: the half-timbering at the top, and a large painted area below:

What I don’t know is the history of these houses.  Were they always like that right from the beginning?  Were perhaps ALL the houses like this, right from the beginning, and was it only recently that some of the houses stopped receiving this painted attention?  One of the many, many mysteries if you live in Europe!

Strasbourg’s Iron Man

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In a recent post I showed a tram in Strasbourg stopped at the Place de l’homme du fer – which you can roughly translate as Iron Man Square.  If you are curious about how it got its name, just have a short look around and you’ll quickly see this man in armor hanging on the wall:

And he looks even more impressive close up:

This used to be the location of an armory, and the original coat of arms was hung up in the year 1740.  What you see here, however, is just a replica – fortunately, the original has been moved to a museum to be preserved.

When backs are better than fronts – 5

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Continuing the series, this is what you’ll see if you visit the Briner company, at least if you don’t fall asleep first, because in this industrial part of the Swiss city of Winterthur each building tries to outdo its neighbors in achieving the greatest architectural boredom:

But, if you don’t mind a bit of adventure you can walk around to the back of the building, where the building sits next to a railroad spur, and your eyeballs will explode when you see the amazing graffiti:

I didn’t want to photograph each artwork in detail, but I did want to provide at least one snap so you can see the amazing quality:

The amazing underground recycling cisterns of Switzerland

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I’ve written about garbage in Texas and garbage in Switzerland.  I’ve also written about garbage in Germany.

So as long I was in a garbage state of mine, I wanted to finish by showing a very common sight in the Swiss canton of Zurich: a long row of very nice looking, very pretty smelling chutes:

They make it just about as easy and convenient as possible for residents to drive here and empty their recyclables into the appropriate chute.  From time to time, a truck will arrive, and a single driver / operator is all that is needed to operate a boom/crane to unload the cistern.

It’s also just as much fun to see the long list of items that are prohibited:

Incredible Carthusians

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The Order of Saint Bruno, also known as the Carthusian Order, is the strictest order of Catholic monasticism – you can think of them as the Navy SEALs of monks.

I did some work in Grenoble, France, and this gave me the chance to drive by the most famous Carthusian monastery, in Chartreuse.

There is an erstwhile Carthusian monastery not too far from where I live,

and they still grow hops used for a local beer that they brew

 

When bad things become good things – 2

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Continuing the series,  there is an unused building not too far from where I live, and the rock garden in front has been taken over by wild weeds.

The most amazing part is the diversity of the weeds (I stopped counting after spotting around 30 different plants) and how they seem to optimally fill their environment.

Probably almost everyone who drives by this place never stops to look – or if they do, only sees a lot full of weeds. It is truly amazing what wonderful things you can find if you just stop and look.

Things you see but you don’t see

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Everyone will instantly recognize this snap of the Empire State Building in Manhattan:

But if you’ve got sharp eyes, you could in theory notice something else – but it seems nobody ever does. If you look closely, you’ll see that every building has a little tiny box on its roof.

There is a law in Manhattan that every building must contain a cistern of water on the roof that can be released and gravity fed in case of a building fire.

The truly amazing part is that nobody ever notices these little boxes until they’re told about them – but as soon as you know they’re there, you can’t help but see them!

What is a Texas Bar-B-Q?

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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.

That’s not gorse, you idiot, this is

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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

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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

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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.

Amazing Animal Bridges – 1

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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.

Achter Lok

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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

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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.

When blog passions collide

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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.

How can wonders be so quickly forgotten?

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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?

Bubble Architecture – 2

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In a recent post I’ve talked about a trend I’ve seen – particularly in France, but France is not alone – to enclose historic buildings in glass facades.  I call it bubble architecture.

If done right, it can compliment the existing architecture.

If done wrong, it can be an ugly eyesore, as this example in Chalons-en-Champagne shows:

In this case, several streets were enclosed in glass and turned into an indoor shopping center.

As global warming continues to slowly increase just under the threshold where it would have triggered immediate reactions from us, humans will slowly begin to adjust their environment in subtle ways. In 50 years, it is likely the entire city center will be enclosed in a dome, and we humans will have barely noticed how this “new normal” will have come into being. Like a frog being slowly boiled in water.

 

Germans and their Bubbles – 2 of 2

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Continuing the series, when I moved to Germany I was surprised at how passionate Germans could be about their bubbles.

This sight of clear glass inspection windows will raise no eyebrows at any petrol station in Germany:

You’like likely to find a big sign with the words Blasenfrei zapfen – which, loosely translated, means: relax, don’t worry. We’ll show you the gas flowing through the line to convince you it contains no bubbles and we are only charging you for gas, not air.

What people have told me: Americans also were concerned about bubbles in their gasoline – and gasoline dispensers in the U.S. had similar means to see the flow of gas.  In the U.S., however, this practice seems to have died out in the 1950’s.

Most incredible cathedral so far!

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This is the late artist M. C. Escher:

And this is one of his lithographs, from 1955, entitled Convex and Concave:

If you think this complicated and impossible, and if you worry whether seeing something like this in real life could make your brain explode . . . then AT ALL COSTS you should avoid the cathedral Notre-Dame-de-Vaux, located in Chalons-en-Champagne, France:

Why should you avoid this?  Because if Escher confuses you, then the inside of this cathedral will make your head explode!

There are plenty of old cathedrals in Europe, but this one is special. It’s on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites. I never took any photographs of the inside . . . but believe me, it has a complexity of architecture that would put Mr. Escher to shame!

 

 

Verdun . . . it’s all about the hills

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Not a lot of people today know much about Verdun.

Since the 1700’s it was the sight of massive and devastating battles, culminating in the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Around 1 million soldiers were killed in violent combat, at a rate of around 70’000 soldiers per month.  In German, it’s known as the Schlacht um Verdun – in my view more fitting, since the word Schlacht is more than just “battle;” also carries the connotation of slaughter.

The question I’ve always wondered about: why?  What was so special about Verdun?

I only just found out the answer when I recently visited. Here I am on a hill looking north, at the flat region hundreds of meters lower:

The village of Verdun per se has less to do with the reason for the battles here.  Just a few kilometers north of the city of Verdun are hills – high hills – and these hills separate the flat plains in the north from the flat plains in the south.  The difference being: the flat plains in the south lead all the way to Paris.

So . . . anyone trying to invade France (such as the Prussians in 1789, or the Germans in 1916) need to cross these hills.  Over the years and centuries pre-dating WWI the French fortified these hills, with forts and bunkers and tunnels.

(Although its not visible when you visit Verdun, I have read that, at least in the early 1900’s, the French took a great pride in their possession of Verdun.  And that is something that, according to some scholars, the German general Erich von Falkenhayn tried to exploit when he launched his WWI campaign — not strictly to take and control Verdun, but instead to slaughter as many of the French soldiers as he could. There are other scholars who believe this argument was bogus – just his attempt to justify his ineptitude.)