Category Travel
Getting It Wrong
I was amused when I saw the snake. Even more amused when I saw the apple beside it. It was a half hour wait between trains, so we wandered down Offenburg’s main Street. We saw enough to mentally mark it down as a place for a Saturday excursion. At first I thought the snake was […]
Up And Down
The ruined castle dominates the Staufen skyline. You can see it from pretty much everywhere in town. All you have to do is look up. But if you climb the hill you get a completely different view, as I noticed on a recent visit. You’d never know there was a castle if you didn’t look […]
Castle Chapel
I’m not sure if the castle in the spa town of Bad Wurzach has guided tours or is even open to the public. But its chapel is. Having a few minutes before my bus, I dropped by. Today the building houses a school, some apartments and a religious order. In the early 1940s it was […]
Wasn’t That A Party?
Suppose you threw a party, invited everyone you knew, and no-one showed up? What would you do? I didn’t think to ask that on a recent visit to Freiburg. Maybe I should have. This is a big year for the biggest city in my area. Founded in 1100, Freiburg had lots of events planned for […]
Most Valuable Sculpture
What does it say about the internet (and our society) that every reference I can find for this piece mentions it is the most valuable sculpture in Offenburg? Does it have no other significance? I would have thought that content or artistic merit would be more important. But obviously I am wrong. (And admittedly I […]
Harvest Time
A thousand kilos of grapes picked seems to me like a good morning’s work. Mind you, I didn’t do it alone. When you have friends who own a vineyard you can expect to be pressed into service at certain times. Until this year I had never been in Germany for the harvest. Yesterday’s total was […]
What Is This?
When I look online I can see a plate on the base that I presume tells the name of this sculpture, but I must confess I missed it. So I have no idea what this work is called, nor do I know its significance. This colorful piece is found on the grounds of the Tinguely […]
The Witch’s Fountain
I couldn’t puzzle out the meaning of the inscription on this fountain in the southern German town of Waldkirch, but from the figures I can deduce there is a supernatural element. The character on the left is definitely a witch. Witchcraft is a central theme throughout the Black Forest. The Grimm Brothers collected their fairy […]
That Unending War
I am reading a book about the First World War that brought some memories of a trip to Belgium in 2014 and this post from September of that year. A century later, it haunts them still. The last Canadian veteran of the First World War died in 2010, and I would imagine that is pretty […]
Degenerate Art?
You’ve probably said it yourself. “I may not know much about Art, but I know what I like.” I don’t spend much time in art galleries. I come away feeling I haven’t gotten as much out of them as I should. Do you ever feel that way? As if the art experts are part of […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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