Travel

The famous “ossuary swallows of Verdun”

kenritley

You’ve probably never heard of the world-famous “Ossuary Swallows of Verdun” – but I predict in a generation you will!

Very recently a huge and impressive ossuary was erected on a hilltop in Verdun, as a memorial to the tragic lives that were taken in World War I.  The ossuary looks incredible from a distance:

It also looks incredible close-up:

It looks even more incredible inside – but since it is a religious site I chose not to photograph the inside, which includes a chapel.

But back to the swallows.  The entrance to this huge building is open, and a huge flock of swallows seems to have taken advantage of this as their new home.  As you walk in and out, supersonic sparrows travelling faster than the speed of sound buzz by your head almost too fast for you to see them.

They are easy to spot if you look out over the cemetery,  since the skies are filled with them:

It took me about 30 tries with my mobile phone camera, but last I was able to capture one of these hypersonic birds in flight:

You can see the little fellow racing out of the building, just to the center of left and towards the bottom.

 

 

When blog passions collide

kenritley

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.

Bubble Architecture – 2

kenritley

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.

 

Bulgarian Cathedral

kenritley

You can’t make a trip to Sofia without seeing this incredible church, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral:

It’s a fairly modern cathedral, as far as cathedrals go – built around 1870 I think. This was always one of my “jumping off” points for long walks around Sofia, where the ancient and glorious architecture could still be found after hiding for a few generations under Communist neglect. In a generation from now, I predict Sofia will be one of the greatest European cities.

Shimoga and Jog Falls

kenritley

Probably anyone who’s spent enough time in Southern India will wind up here one day – since it is India’s second largest waterfall:

It might be different today – in fact I hope it is different today – but many visitors would climb down the rocks, and I was told a lot of them have died trying to do this.  You can see how treacherous and slipppery the rocks are likely to be:

But as usual, for me the real fun was not seeing the waterfall at all, but rather experiencing all the wonderful Indian villages in Western Ghats in and around the area called Shimoga:

I never took any pictures of the pineapple vendors – but pineapples are grown in this area, which is the first time I’ve ever seen an area where they grow.

 

Bitche – how can you resist a village with a name like that?

kenritley

While driving aimlessly across Lorraine I stumbled across a road sign pointing to “Bitche” and I could not help but drive out and see this rural French village:

To me it looked like just about any other small French village – pretty, quiet, quaint.  But then when my eyeballs caught sight of a massive, massive fortress – my head nearly exploded!  This fortress dating back to the 1200’s in this tiny village is almost too huge to really comprehend!

I don’t know exactly how big this “citadel” is . . . but certainly many dozens of football pitches could fit within!

Amazing Bern

kenritley

Tourists come to Switzerland all the time.  Zürich is a natural location for tourists to see. And it seems hoards of tourists (particularly from India) flock to Lucerne.

But the real gem of Switzerland is not well known outside of Switzerland – it’s not at all visited by many tourists – and I think the locals prefer it that way.

Probably even writing this blog could land me in jail for breaking a carefully guarded Swiss secret. This photo just shows about one tenth of this incredible UNESCO site:

Interestingly, what I find most exciting about this city is not the city itself but the language that the locals speak.  They don’t speak German but rather a very special form of a more advanced, evolved language: Alemanic.  In addition to having many features that other languages could only dream about, Alemanic is hundreds of years more “evolved” than German: meaning that subtle changes in vowels and consonants that occur over the generations have yet to occur in German, but are present in modern day Alemanic.

Most incredible cathedral so far!

kenritley

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

kenritley

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.)

 

Middle Age Church – but you can’t go in!

kenritley

Here is something truly amazing that is rare to find in Europe: a fabulous church dating back to the Middle Ages, the Vieux St. Vincent – and you can look at it, but you can’t go inside!

It dates back to the 7th century, and it’s located in Macon, France – but you can’t go in!  It seems to be in a rather poor state, and as far as I could tell there was a renovation effort underway.

Ladies with fruit bowl hats at Westminster Abbey

kenritley

I tried to enter Westminster Abbey – without success.  The guard informed me the church was closed to the public on that day – and about 5 minutes later a huge entourage of ladies wearing huge hats arrived:

These were not just hats to protect against the rain – these were huge hats that look like that contained whole bowls of fruit on top!

Now, were these royal ladies?  Or maybe just the regular meeting of the “fruit bowl hat enthusiast’s club?”  I guess I’ll never know.  But I do have to say, English ladies do seem to like wearing hats that look like they had huge bowls of fruit on top!

 

Cats in Rome

kenritley

Some amazing things you learn after the fact!

When I was visiting Rome I came across a small park, not just filled with Roman ruins, but filled with cats!  At the time I thought it was something quite unusual, so I took a picture of it:

What I’ve only just learned is that this park in fact is quite famous.  And that it houses not just the few cats I photographed, here, but in fact over 100 cats!  You can read more about it here.

Amazing rainbow in Winterthur

kenritley

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.

Schwabian Castle

kenritley

The German language (or its more evolved cousin, Alemanic) is amazing!

Just as eskimos have many words for snow, so too do Germans have many words for castles.  A Schloss is a fancier castle (think Mar-a-Lago), and a Burg is a more defensive one (Camp David).

A familiar sight to just about anyone who’s lived in Southern Germany is the Burg Hohenzollern:

It dates back to the 1400’s, and while it is not the castle that Disneyland’s castle was based, it isn’t far off.

Dubai Dates

kenritley

Dubai is just incredible!

For the people like me who visit in August, when the temperature is around 120 F or 48 C, a real treat is taking long walks outside, where date palms can be found just about anywhere. Many of them are quite short, so you can reach up and (if they are ripe) eat the dates right off the trees!

Your basic everyday transport of the gods

kenritley

This is Nandi, a bull so famous in India that he hardly requires any explanation:

If you drill down to its absolute simplest form, the Lord Shiva rode Nandi – but of course like just about everything in Hinduism, the real story is really, really, really complicated!

And these are the hills north of Bangalore that are named after him, the so-called Nandi Hills:

What’s amazing is that the Nandi Hills are around 60 km north of Bangalore – but on a clear day, from a tall building in Bangalore, you can see them!

Clear skies over Mount Fuji

kenritley

I don’t know if this is a story they tell to tourists or if it is really true, but when I visited Mt. Fuji in Japan, they said it was a truly amazing day: the mountain spends 95% of its time covered in fog and clouds, and it is almost never see with clear skies.

Well, true or not, it is a pretty impressive sight!