Interesting things

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.)

 

Garbage in Switzerland

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After showing how Texans deal with their garbage, I thought it would be fun to show how my apartment building in Switzerland has recently tackled the challenge.

Until a few weeks ago, there were huge containers that we’d throw our garbage bags into:

They were smelly, took up a lot of space, and were an eyesore. It was also a lot of work for the garbage collectors to tip every container into their truck, and to clean up afterwards.

That was a few weeks ago, and this is today:

The garbage is contained in an enormous underground bag.  With a key, you can open the lid and toss in your bags.

Now there are no more smells, no more eyesores, and just a single garbage collector can do the job that previously took three – and do it much faster and cleaner!  It is emptied by a single operator using a remote controlled crane.

Bubble Architecture – 1

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There is probably no such thing as bubble architecture, but that’s the term I use to describe it.

Particularly in France you can find many examples of old, historical buildings that are then protected, modernized, and expanded by encasing them in a glass enclosure.  The Gare Centrale of Strasbourg is probably the most famous example – and I’ll post a blog that shows it someday.

And here is another example,

And here is the plaque outside that describes what has now become of the very historical Aubette building, which used to be a military barracks:

Coupling Trains – 1

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How do you couple train wagons together?  That’s easy: with a coupler!

Here is a modern automatic coupler in use with the Swiss Federal Railways (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen):

Sadly . . . I don’t know what couplers are called in German, and I really don’t feel motivated to find out.

Also sadly . . . I’m afraid I can’t truly understand the complexity of these couplers. As you can see from the photo there appear to be hundreds of small parts that are exposed to dirt and the weather – but I assume in spite of this, it must be the simplest possible design.

But wonderfully . . . I had the privilege of working for the Schweizerische Bundesbahnen and also being in the cabin of a train when the train driver used one of these automatic couplers.  He told me the process is to, quite literally, smash his train into the train to be coupled, being sure to use a maximum speed of less than 1 km / hr.  No other effort from the driver is required; the system is 100% automatic.

The older trains use a manual coupling system that requires someone to climb under the train and connect the wagons manually.  As time permits I’ll post a photo of that system.

Amazing rainbow in Winterthur

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Yesterday I saw a rainbow from my apartment. It started out quite faint, then just kept growing and growing in intensity, so I finally took a picture before it disappeared:

Rainbows are actually more complicated than most people realize, with many more optical effects that just the pretty colors. You can read more about it here.

Cleveland and my Dad’s Uncle Eddy

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I grew up in the Cleveland area during the 1970’s.  Some of my fondest memories of that time are of the school field trips I’d take to downtown Cleveland.  They were exciting because it meant travelling to a magical area with dark skies and intense smells.

The dark skies, of course, were caused by the tons of pollution spit out by the many steel mills.  And the intense smells were from the steel mills or the chemical factories.  The Cuyahoga River was an intense chalky bright blue-white from all the dissolved chemicals, and Lake Erie was devoid of any fish.

This was years before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and you could watch nice television commercials with an old Indian in a canoe crying when his canoe got stuck in the river trash.

Anyway, the mills were all shut down, and toxic areas are now high tech business parks filled with high tech people working at high tech companies.

Not everyone was so lucky to move on with the times.  A good friend of the family (my Dad calls him Uncle Eddy) was one of the not-so-lucky-ones – and you can read about his dialogs with my Dad here.

 

Free stuff in Zürich – 1

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Zürich is the most expensive city in the most expensive country in Europe.  Even most cash machines won’t dispense anything less than CHF 100 notes – since that is about the minimum you need here for a light lunch.

But despite this, there are still plenty of things you can do for free, such as using your valid train ticket on the Seilbahn Rigiblick.  An automated, driverless funicular shuttles you to the top of a nice mountain in about 10 minutes:

Springtime in Europe – the rapeseed in bloom

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France, Germany, and Switzerland are amazing in the Spring!

If you’ve visited France, Germany, or Switzerland in the spring time, then you know how amazing it is. The lush green countryside is filled with bright flowering patches of rapeseed, or Raps in German:

Now, I don’t know the fine subtleties between rapeseed and canola, but I do know this is one amazing sight:

It’s more than a bit frustrating when you see a field like this, because you never really know how the plant will be used.  Some of it is used for cooking oil, but at least in Europe, a huge fraction is used for biofuels.

Evolution vs. Revolution?

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. . . Old versus New?

. . . Building a better mousetrap?

To be honest, I could not think of the perfect blog title to capture my emotions when I think about the new clock tower that adorns the main train station (Hauptbahnhof) in the south German city of Konstanz:

The bit that causes me the trouble is the clock on the tower – it’s fully electric!  Those hands you see are in fact LED lights – and if you get close enough, you can even see a little “second dot” that moves around the display.

I don’t know the story of this tower – who designed it, and whether people like it.  For me personally, I have both positive and negative emotions – and maybe that was what the architect was trying to inspire?

Trees in the Heath

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Nestled very deep within Germany’s Schwarzwald, and high on a hill, stands a lonely windmill that generates electric power and sounds like whoosh whoosh whoosh as the blades turn slowly in the fog.

The amazing thing is not this tower at all, but what lives at its base: a field of heath from which Christmas trees seem to be growing randomly:

What’s amazing about this is that, in general, Germany’s Black Forest is now a carefully maintained forest. The original forest trees were harvested many centuries ago, and the trees you see today were all planted by conservationists.  So it is quite amazing to see a little spot like this where the trees seem to be growing on their own!

Stadtmauerente?

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Here’s something you don’t see every day.  This is the medieval city wall of the city of Konstanz, also known as the Stadtmauer (the wall, not the city):

That’s not the amazing bit.  The truly amazing bit is way up on top: a female mallard duck that looks like she is roosting there:

Even if she is not roosting there, it is still an amazing site to see a duck perched high on a monument, like a stork or a pigeon!

Darth Vader Houses in Germany’s Black Forest

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The Schwarzwald, as well as many parts of Switzerland, is filled with houses that remind me strongly of Darth Vader’s helmet. I wonder if this was just coincidence, or whether George Lukas was influenced by these when he designed his character in the 1970’s?

I don’t know specifically about these houses in Germany, but I’ve seen similar ones in Spain designed in this way for a special purpose. During the winter, the animals were housed on the lower level, and the inhabitants lived above the animals. In this way, the heat generated by the animals would rise and keep the occupants warm:

And here without the Darth Vader look is a house on a hill, deep in the Black Forest, near a creek called the Ibach.

Alpsbird

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An Alpsbird is one amazing bird!

I call them Alpsbirds, mainly because I always forget their real name. I just looked it up (for about the zillionth time) and they are called Alpendohle in German, or Alpine Chole in English.

They inhabit the Swiss Alps, and they have absolutely no fear of humans. So if you are hiking the Alps and take a break for lunch, you can be sure to have a flock of these birds join you – naturally you should avoid feeding any wild animals, but if their cuteness and persistance win, they’ll eat your lunch right out of your own hand!