Throwback Thursday: another photographers roundtable during lockdown

You know as a regular reader, I’m part of a monthly photographers roundtable. We’re meeting each first Saturday of a month for a photowalk in our region. Under the current condition and rules, although we don’t have a complete lockdown as we had in spring, that’s not possible. So we had a Zoom meeting combined with an exercise to be done during the week before the meeting.

This time I picked a theme for all of us instead of selecting a card from the Inspiracle card deck. Each of has can show up to 5 images wherein a maximum of 2 is allowed to be taken from the archive. We’re in November and in the northern hemisphere, this month is considered dark, unfriendly, and depressing. In Germany, we have a couple of memorial days during November dedicate to the death. When now the Mexican “Día de los Muertos” comes to your mind, you’re completely wrong. Check the link above to learn a bit more about these memorial days. Because of this background, it came to my mind the give us “fading, transient, transience” as a theme for the exercise.

Here are my results:

only the skeleton remains a bit longer

 

make fading sounds visible

 

the flame of a match doesn’t exist for a long time

 

this icy decoration will not stand the rising sun

 

morning fog in its beauty down by the river

 

vanishing smoke

 

the amazing beauty of an aurora changes fast

The first 4 images are taken for the exercise, while the others are from my archive.

Take care!

Throwback Thursday: The viewpoint

The setting sun on Oct. 27, 2010 after a whole day on the motorway to get our daughter back. A couple of weeks she was at a health resort for a cure. We arrived a day ahead because another way it won’t be possible to be there on time.

Take care!

Monochrome Monday 5-41

Wordless Wednesday: winterly Allgäu

Take care!

Waiting for the summer

Monochromia

More of my images can be seen at my own blog.

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Monochrome Madness 4-47

Here we are in Bavaria. Mid February I was in Allgäu with a few friends for our annual carnival escape. This time, we didn’t choose a warm region. Instead, our destination was the Allgäu, a region in the Bavarian Alps. I don’t want to tell much about that trip now. But, here I have one of the images taken there.

We’ve had surprisingly little snow. But, most of the time there were low standing, thick clouds.

This is my contribution to Monochrome Madness organized by Leanne Cole. Look at here site on Thursday (Australian time), to see many more monochrome images created by many other talented photographers from all over the world.

I’d also encourage you to participate. The conditions are  published in each of her Monochrome Madness posts.

Take care!

Wordless Wednesday: Awakening

Take care!

Throwback Thursday: Standing on a higher ground

 

October 27th, 2010; Bad Hindelang in the Bavarian region Allgäu

Take care!

Monochrome Madness 4-22

 

First week of a month means, we have a theme for Monochrome Madness: “doors”

I stood in front of this rich decorated old door in October 2012 in Andechs in Bavaria. I also have an image of the closed portal, but I like the open one a bit more. In the post, I mentioned above, you can find a gallery containing both images and much more of the magnificent church.

This is my contribution to Monochrome Madness organized by Leanne Cole. Look at here site on Thursday (Australian time), to see many more monochrome images created by many other talented photographers from all over the world.

I’d also encourage you to participate. The conditions are  published in each of her Monochrome Madness posts.

Take care!

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Wordless wednesday: right after sunset

Enjoy!

WPC: narrow

This week’s topic for the weekly photo challenge by “The Daily Post” is “narrow”.

Take care have a great weekend!

(as usual, you can see the photo enlarged, when clicking in it)

Visting Walhalla

A few days ago, Leanne Cole wrote a post on the old gold mining town Walhalla in Victoria, Australia. That post reminded me to a trip I made. A few years ago I was in Bavaria for a short vacation. By incident I came along a historical place called Walhalla.

The name Walhalla is derived for the nordic sagas (mythology) and means hall of the fame (literally the place where the heroes or warriors, who died in a fight, will meet their war-god Odin in Asgard – kind of paradise of the vikings) . The building looks like an ancient greek temple and is located on a hill about the river Danube. It was built by King Ludwig I, the father of the famous Bavarian King Ludwig II, who build Castle Neuschwanstein. The cconstruction took place between 1830 and 1842. Inside you can find many busts of famous personalities in German history – politicians, sovereigns, scientists and artists. You can find i.e. busts of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Ludwig van Beethoven, Albrecht Dürer, Nicolaus Kopernicus, Johannes Keppler, Peter Paul Rubens, Georg-Friedrich Haendel, Immanuel Kant, Wolfgang-Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, Martin Luther, Friedrich Gauss, Sophie Scholl, Edith Stein, Johannes Brams, Georg Mendel, Albert Einstein, Richard Strauß, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and many more. The common feature for all of these is, that they all were speaking German. The memorial displays some 65 plaques and 130 busts of persons, covering 2,000 years of history – the earliest person honored is Arminius, victor at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 AD) and the man, who is said to be the man who cast out the roman army from the area east to the river Rhine. Some of the busts are imaginary, because they show people, who were passed away decades or even centuries ago and no-one really knows, how they looked like. Wikipedia lists all of them, each one with her own page to describe, why they are important. For my selection, I picked people, I assumed you might already know them.

Even today, every now and then a new bust or plaque is accommodated in Walhalla.

Walhalla also has their own site in the web. You can find it here. The site also has an english section.

As you can see, we had very bad luck for our visit. Although it was that foggy, we stopped and had a look. We left the motorway and headed uphill. It’s a very huge building. Because of the size, it’s nearly impossible to take some photos. Taking photographs inside was forbidden, so I can only show a few photos from outside.

There is no parking ground at the river. So, you need much time, to walk over the river from the small town at the foot of the hill at the end of the bridge. I needed nearly an hour for the few photos because of the distances, while my wife waited in the car for me to come back. Because of the lack of a parking ground I jumped off the car to shorten the distance and she drove to a parking ground. When I was ready, taking photos, I called her at her mobile to pick me up.

Nevertheless, in case, I’m in that region again, I’d visit Walhalla again (hopefully with better weather).

Take care!

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Walking through Bavarian villages

This is the last post on Bavaria for now.

In this post I want to show you some impressions from different villages.

You can find rich decorated houses in each village. Not only the craftsmen (i.e. butcher, bakery and so on) paint their houses. Also the village major and the government buildings (i.e. post office, fire brigade) are decorated as well as hotels and common houses. I love it.

As a general rule you can say, the smaller the village, the more decorated house you can see. In bigger cities you can also find some, but less than in smaller villages (as a percentage of  ‘all’ houses). Houses are less uniform in smaller villages.

Maybe you want to take some time to review the past posts until my next post will be online. You can do it easily by clicking on the tag Bavaria in the right sidebar.

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Thanksgiving

Maybe you’ve heard about Thanksgiving in a Hollywood movie. But here, in Germany, it has a slightly different meaning. It’s a traditional religious feast for giving thanks to God for the harvest. It’s held in autumn. And even it’s a religious feast, the date isn’t necessarily fix. It’s mostly held on the first Sunday of October, but the date varies from region to region.

For Thanksgiving the sanctuary is decorated with local fruits, vegetables, potatoes, grain and bread. The decoration vary from region to region. There is no rule, what has to be shown. In Bavaria these decorations are very nice and more elaborated, than in other German states. Many traditions are still in place in Bavaria, even they are already vanished away in other regions.

Here are some impression I took in Marienmünster of Dießen and The Wies.

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Inside The Wies

Today I’ll show you the interior of The Wies (Die Wies), as I proposed in my last post. If you wonder, why I write the article with a capital “T”, that’s because even in German the church is called with an article, because there are more churches with that name, but this one is a special one.

Wies is Bavarian dialect for Wiese (= meadow, grassland, grazing land). That’s because it’s located out in the fields.

One of the special features of this church is the ceiling. When standing inside and looking at the ceiling,  you see a white, arced ceiling decorated with stucco and colorful frescos. A fresco is a painting, when the artist had painted the color in the wet plastering. You can imagine, how hard that is. Laying on your back and painting over-head without any possibility to correct any mistake.

But, the ceiling isn’t arced! It’s plane, but the painting is so artistic distorted to create the illusion of an arced ceiling. That’s called: Trompe-l’œil (= cheating the eye). It’s really incredible and unbelievable. You can find this fact only in the German Wikipedia, and of course a local guide can tell you about this. The technique itself is describe in the English Wikipedia, too.

I love this church. It was my second visit. The first one was many years ago on a vacation trip with my parents.

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The Wies

The Wies church is also a famous church. It’s also located out-of-town in beautiful landscape on a small hill. A big parking space is available for busses as well as for individuals. When visiting the church, expect many people, because it’s a pilgrimage church and wonderful decorated inside.

Right next to the parking ground, at the foot of the church hill, there is a small chapel. Even this chapel is much decorated.

I split this post in two parts, as I did with the Marienmünster in Dießen. Today I show you the outside and a view from the hill. The inside will follow in my next post.

The left photo is taken from behind the church, while it was drizzling. In the buildings left of th church you can find gift shops and restaurants.

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St. Coloman

St. Coloman is a church next to castle Neuschwanstein. It’s located outside any village and surrounded by meadows. The next village is approximately 5 km away. It has a small parking ground, so you can make a stop for a visit. Without fog you also would be able to see the castles Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein from here.

The name comes from an irish pilgrim, who is supposed to had made a rest here back in 1012 on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Even this church is small and out-of-town, it’s rich decorated and thus worth a visit.

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Abbey Andechs

The Benedictine abbey of Andechs is located on a hill. So, you can see it from far away. You can visit not only the church and the gift shop, but also the brewery, the butcher’s shop and the distillery.

They are producing different meat products, several kinds of hard liquors and some kind of Weissbier (weiss beer), the traditional Bavarian kind of beer made from wheat.

They also have huge restaurants and a vast parking ground at the bottom of the hill. Both is necessary for handling the masses of pilgrims and tourists. We were lucky to be there, when not that much people were there. But the size of the restaurants and the parking ground were impressive.

We ate something at the restaurant and sat outside. Even it was drizzling, we were still dry because of huge umbrellas standing on the terrace, were we sat. The food was good and inexpensive, and the size was enormous. We also took a glass of beer. You can have a Maß or half a Maß. A Maß is a big glass containing 1 litre of beer. I took a half one. It was good. I liked it much.

But the main reason for our visit was the monastery church. Here you can find some impressions. As I mentioned before, you can find much of white, gold and colorful paintings inside.

You can also visit the tower and have a phantastic view over the Ammer lake, as well as the surrounding landscape. But the way is very hard. Very steep tight wooden stairs leads you up and down. Unfortunately there are small meshed grids at the windows, so that you can’t take photos without having a pattern of the grid in it. 😦

Do you know Carl Orff (July 10, 1895 – March 29, 1982)? He was a composer and is best known for his “Carmina Burana”. A part of the “O, Fortuna” is often heart in movies and TV ads. I mentioned this here, because he is buried in the abbey.

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Inside Marienmünster

In my last post I introduced you to the catholic church Marienmünster in Dießen and put some photos from the outer view online. As I proposed in that post, I’ll show you some from the inside, now.

I was in Bavaria for several times and nevertheless where in Bavaria I was, I found a certain kind of style, how they built the churches.  Now I want to introduce it to you. Keep in mind, I didn’t study architecture, art or history. Thus some of my statements regarding the architecture style or the art period might be completely correct or not precisely enough.

These certain style is called Bavarian Barock, a variation of the Italian Barock style.

The churches are very light (much of white inside and outside), but very much decorated with gold and colorful paintings at the walls, balustrades and the ceilings. Usually there are many people (tourists and residents as well) inside, tourists for watching and residents for a short prayer on their way home, to business or whatever. The churches are usually open from early morning until 6 p.m. (in case of a service or an other event, even longer). But, when closed the door is still open, only the fence is closed, as you can see in one of the photos. It’s just like Jesus told his followers: Who will come to me, whom I won’t recoil.

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The Marienmünster in Dießen

A minster (Münster in German) is a kind of catholic church and the German name Maria is Mary. Minster means, the church belongs to a monastery or was once part of a monastery. Now it is a parish church.

So, the church was donated to Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, while it was part of a Augustinian monastery.

The church is located on a hill above the city of Dießen. Thus you can see it over a long distance. I’ll show some more photos from inside the church in my next post. When already knowing catholic churches (i.e. some in France or in Italy), you’ll be a bit surprised, when seeing the inside of this one, and also some other Bavarian churches.

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and another waterfall

and this one is really big!

Do you see the people hiking uphill? On the right side are 2 hikers. One is wearing a light green jacket and the other on has a red backpack.

It’s also the Pöllat. Only a few hundred meters below the cairns we have another waterfall.

Right below this waterfall the path might be closed, when too much water runs downhill in spring or after hard rain. They mounted open meshed flooring at the side of the mountain, a few meters above the water. Now, think what might happen when the Pöllat will go wild in spring because the snow melts and all the water flows downhill.

This waterfall was really load. You can’t imagine, how loud water can be.

Next waterfall

Walking downhill next to creek Pöllat we came to a plateau (or kind of). The creek goes even out but broader because the plateau gave him room enough. Though the water goes more slowly here.

Many people set up cairn (stonemen). It’s kind of a funny scene.

These cairns can be found everywhere around the world. They are ancient path marks as well as remembrance places. Take some stones and try to stack them yourself. How high will your cairn grow? It’s not as easy as it looks like.

I haven’t count all the cairns set up here, but there are many of them.

At last we went further, still along the creek.

It was a very impressive place.

Come along with me, along the creek. There is another post to come, soon. In the meantime you might have a look at my last posts and enjoy some other photos taken in Bavaria or on one of the other places I’ve visited and published here.

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washing away

On our way down from Castle Neuschwanstein we took another way: through the Pöllat gulch.

The name comes from the creek flowing through the gulch. Even we were there in fall, there was much water in the creek and the waterfalls were very loud.

At first we passed a viewpoint, where we were able to see the landing pot of the creek right below the Marienbrücke.

While the first part of our path down consists of stairs, it soon became a usual tracking path. But we wondered about parents walking uphill and downhill with very small kids and even a couple with a push chair.

Later the path consists of open mesh flooring mounted directly above the creek on the side of the rock. What a strange feeling. This part of the path had metal doors on both sides to close the path during winter and / or the melting season in spring, when it is too dangerous to walk that part of the path.

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And … another lock bridge

You know, I already posted photos taken on several bridges in different countries, where I found bridges decorated with locks. These locks are mounted by couples in love to have a proof of their love combined with the hope, their love will last forever or at least, as long as nobody is able to open the lock with the key. You know, they usually throw the keys in the river below the bridge.

I already found such bridges in Prague, Paris and several other cities (but without taking a photo).

Most of the other bridged were decorated with hundreds of lock, while there were only a few of them at this bridge. I guess, that’s because of the location of the bridge up in the hills spanning over a canyon 90m above the ground.

A view from a bridge

 Castle Neuschwanstein was built on a hill growing out of the plain. A very hard foundation. Hard for the builder, but a dream place for the owner. A castle with a wonderful view.

As I mentioned in my last post we were unlucky and had heavy fog that day. So, I’m unable to show you photos of that view.

There is a valley right next to the castle, where a wild creek goes its way down to the valley. A bridge was built to connect both sides of the valley. The bridge is called Marienbrücke (bridge of Mary) and is build from iron with wooden planks to walk on. The bridge is located 90m above the valley. Because of the fog we were not only unable to enjoy the view, but also unable to notice how high above the ground the bridge was built. Even the waterfall was hard to seen, as you can see in my photo.

Right beside the end of the bridge on the castles side sat two artists: a musician and a painter. The musician was playing a medieval instrument and the painter tried to sell his watercolor, ink or crayon paintings of the castle.

I don’t mention all the other things you can buy in one of the gift shops.

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