A renaissance man for the twenty-first century!
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
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.
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!
Continuing the series, here is another animal bridge across a highway in northern Switzerland:
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.
It’s impossible to take a bad picture of a good cow!
These cows are just outside a former Carthusian Monastery located in the North Swiss countryside near Ittingen:
The Carthusian Order is the strictest of all the Catholic monastic orders, so it’s only fitting that these cows lead lives of quiet contemplation.
These are not Harry Potter Dementors.
But you could be forgiven for thinking they are. In fact, this is an artistic display just outside of the French town of Verdun. Interestingly, it does not commemorate the soldiers of World War I, but rather it commemorates the French soldiers who fought in the Yugoslavian war.
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.
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.
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.
If you’ve spent any time walking around Manhattan, you’re sure to have come across a sight like this:
Even though I lived for a while in New York, I never understood why this happens or what it’s about.
But thanks to this blog, now I finally know just a little bit more about this practice!
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.)
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.