Throwback Thursday: Elbe

The river Elbe near Rathen in Saxony in October 2015.

There is a childrens story by Josef Guggenmos (1922-2003) around.

The trees in the forest asked the fall upon arrival, what he has brought along, as each season brought them something. As he didn’t have anything, he stated they should be satisfied by their green clothes. But, they were not satisfied. Instead, they asked him to at least color their leaves. They want to be colorful at least for a certain time of the year. They would throw away their leaves once the winter would come to avoid making him angry. Therefore the fall sent the wind to ask the winter for permission. Finally, winter gave the permission but with a side condition: Fichten, Tannen, Kiefern, Lärchen (Spruce, fir, pine, larch – all plural) have to stay green. Unfortunately, the wind was sooo exited, that he mixed it up a bit and told the trees: Fichten, Tannen, Kiefern, and Föhren (Spruce, fir, pine, pine) would have stay green. That’s the reason, why you can’t have a Christmas Larch.

Ok, now the explanation. In German, the pine has 2 names depending on the region. While it is called Kiefer (singular) in most of the regions, it’s called Föhre (singular) in the Alpes region: Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland, and probably in South-Tirol (northern Italy). According to Wikipedia, Föhre is the older word, while Kiefer appeared first in the 16th century.

In case, anyone wants the read the full fairy tale, you can find it here. But, you have to either read it in German or ask a translator app for help. I’d recommend giving it a try. It’s a very nice story and not too long!

Take care!

 

Wordless Wednesday: autumn foliage

Monochrome Madness 3-30

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.

Take care!

Monochrome Tuesday

Although Monochrome Madness is on vacation this week, I have a monochrome image this week. It’s a rework from an image taken during my trip to Dresden last year in October.

Take care!

Wordless Wednesday: Nightfall above Dresden

Take care!

I’m back …

from Dresden and the Saxon Switzerland.

First we stayed in Dresden for 3 days, than we followed the river Elbe upwards and made Rathen our base camp for some hiking and photographing tours.

While the weather in Dresden was perfect, but it was quite cold (between 0°C and +10°C).  Thus, we saw a lot of the old town, like Zwinger, Semper Oper (Opera House), Frauenkirche, Residence Chateau and so on. Everything is reachable by foot, although the city is way bigger. But these historic parts are all on a few square kilometers along the river Elbe.

Once Dresden was the capital of the Saxon kingdom. The last king had to resign in fall 1918.

At the end of WWII all these buildings were destroyed by the allied air-force bombs, but after the war they were rebuild and reconstructed. The last reconstructed building was the Frauenkirche from 1994 – 2005. The reconstruction costed about 180 million Euro. Donators collected 115 million Euro, while the city government and the state government covered the remaining 65 million Euro.

In Rathen, instead, we didn’t have had such a good luck with the weather. It was raining constantly with only few dry moments. The clouds also were on a very low level. Thus we were nearly unable to see the most impressive mountainous parts, this region is famous for. 😦 And, the worst part of this: our goal was to see and photograph these famous mountainous region. Sad, sad thing.

Fortunately, we were able to use one of the rare moments ,when the rain only was drizzling, and started our hike uphill to the Bastei. Over a short distance, you have to cope about 200m height from the village to the (former castle) above the river Elbe. A very, very impressive sight, even with the bad sight as a result of fog, drizzling rain and the low clouds. About 3 hours later, we arrived back in the village at our starting point. Glad, that we made the trip, because of the fantastic sights. Despite we were outside for about 3 hours on our roundtrip uphill to the Bastei and back by the Schwedenlöcher, we weren’t wet. Reality was better than the weather forecast. And, I know, I have to return (with better weather!).

Nevertheless, I have some photos for you in the gallery below.

Enjoy!

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