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Germany, Day 6: I Can See For Miles and Miles

Today was our first full day in Heidelberg.  We had planned to go to Stuttgart to visit the Mercedes Benz Museum, but we all woke up late, I had a, uh, headache, and Pa wasn’t previously as excited to go as he was before, so we made the decision to stick around Heidelberg instead.  Heidelberg is mostly famous for its partly ruined castle, Schloss Heidelberg, which is perched on the side of the high hills that surround the city, and is accessible by way of one of Pa’s favourite contraptions, the funicular.  We had a lazy breakfast in the hotel restaurant and ambled over to the funicular, conveniently located next to the square over from our hotel.

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There are actually two funiculars on the hill – a newer modern one that takes you from the bottom to the castle and halfway up the mount, and then a creaky wooden 125 year old one that takes you to the top.  We decided we wanted to see the castle first, so we exited the funicular and headed down the marked path, past a couple of small shops and cafes to the partly ruined castle.

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The castle is cool and different – its a mishmash of different styles as it was chronically being hit by lightning and parts of it got damaged.  Construction started in the Renaissance and eventually stopped, leaving half of it ruins and the other parts in differing states of crumble.  The castle overlooks the city and on a clear day (like the first part of today), you can see all the way to Mannheim.

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The castle is enormous.  We spent the better part of the morning and afternoon wandering around the grounds, with a brief stop in the castle cafe to have our standard beer/pretzel/apple strudel.

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A relatively recent feature of the castle is you can get married in a sacred or civil ceremony there, so we got to see a few different bridal parties of varying fanciness.  I am a creeper at heart, so I had to get a couple of snaps in.

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We had had our fill of castle so we headed back to the funicular station and got on board ye olde funicular.  The funicular cars are adorable and shake and sigh through the 10 minute ride to the top of the hill.  The top of the mount didn’t have much to offer – a closed falconry, a derelict boarded up restaurant and more spectacular views.

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We decided that it was time to head back and got on our little shaky funicular, then the smooth modern funicular and headed to the hotel restaurant patio for beers and so that I could write out some postcards.  The next few hours were filled by dinner, ice cream, and a frantic shop at the Lindt chocolate shop and as the rain started, we headed in for the night.

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Germany, Day 5: On the Road Again

Today we woke up to a mercifully cloudy sky and cooler temperature – for the first time since we’ve been in Germany it was under 27 degrees.  We packed our bags, settled our hotel, said our goodbyes to the Mosel Wine Valley and headed to the train.  At Koblenz we hopped off to catch our connecting train to the Baden-Wurttemberg city of Heidelberg for our next set of days.  For those of you who believe that German trains run on time – they don’t.  Our train was 30 minute late today, and the train on our platform before that coming from Zurich was even later.  At about 1430 hrs after an unremarkable journey through Bingen, Mainz and Mannheim we wandered off the train and into the ancient university town of Heidelberg.  We hired a very friendly cab driver who dropped us off at our hotel, Goldener Falke.  We felt like we hit the jackpot – a beautiful 19th century building with a restaurant and patio on the ground floor and faces out into a main square filled with cafes, a cathedral, and a fountain.

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One big difference that we’ve noticed between Heidelberg and the Mosel Valley is the number of tourists.  We sat in the square this afternoon to take a breather from the previous 4 busy days and watched many tour groups come through and heard many different languages spoken.  Pa and I had a couple of Heidelberger beers (another pilsner) and I wrote out some postcards.  _mg_6625_mg_6630_mg_6639_mg_6642

We had an excellent dinner of coq au vin, beer and strudel at the hotel restaurant, took and stroll around the square and turned in to watch some BBC news._mg_6663_mg_6665_mg_6666_mg_6668_mg_6676_mg_6679

Germany, Day 4: Burn Baby Burn

Today was a day that I was really excited about.  I had been looking forward to taking a boat up the Rheine (Rhine) River and looking at all the castles, sipping beers, sunbathing with the German men who seem to take off their shirt even if they have no business taking off their shirts.  Another scorcher of a day was in the cards but it was nice heading out early in the cooler air.  We took the train by way of Koblenz to Bacharach (yes, just like Burt Bacharach) to start our KD Rhein cruise, already in progress (the cruise starts further south in Mainz but there’s not a lot of castles that far south).  Bacharach is an adorable little town and I kind of feel bad that we didn’t get more time to poke around.

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We got on the boat and grabbed some chairs next to some wildly gesticulating Italians who engaged Pa in a conversation (“I think they said something about red wine”).  The Rheine was and still is an important shipping route in Europe as it reaches from Rotterdam to Switzerland.  Many of the merchant barges are privately owned and lived in and we saw many of them putting up and down the river.  Back in ye olde days when Germany was made up of hundreds of little kingdoms, robber barons would set up castles and forts along the Rheine and levy taxes and tariffs for those sailing up or down the river, often setting up a huge chain from one side of the river to the other to stop boats.

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Pa and I bought a couple of overpriced beers and Ma had some water and we settled into our seats.  The river did not disappoint – castles in various states of repair and disrepair around every corner.  There’s a still a romantic in the basement of my chilly heart, so seeing some of these robust stone castles with sleepy little wood timbered villages below made my blood run a little warmer.  A lot of these castles have now been converted into hotels, with one being purchased by an eccentric Japanese bajillionaire who wanted to turn the castle into some sort of Japanese tourism hot spot, but the German government put the kibosh on it and now the castle stands vacant.

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Most of the castles were built in either the 12th or 13th century and a lot of them were destroyed by the invading French army in the 19th century and had to be rebuilt.  Napoleon blew up an impressive looking one to show how much more impressive his explosives are.

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Another part of the cruise that I was really excited about was seeing the Loreley Rock.  This is the narrowest and deepest part of the Rheine and was apparently quite treacherous in the olden times, causing many shipwrecks.  Apparently to people back then it was more plausible to blame a river siren named Loreley for distracting sailors than narrow reefs for all of the scuttled ships.  There were many songs and poems written about Loreley and they’ve even erected a statue of the schone madchen.

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The cruise was about 3 hours long and we got hot hot hot.  I even got a bit of a sun burn.  We saw about a dozen or so castles total.

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After our boat moored at Koblenz we were up to our elbows in castles so we disembarked and headed towards the bahnhof to catch the train to Koln (Cologne) for our next UNESCO Heritage Site building.  The train ride itself was 2 dull hours of mostly field and industry, but when we got into Koln, we could see the spires of what was once the tallest building in the world:

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The Kolner Dom (Cologne Cathedral).  Everyone you ever meet in your life could tell you how big this building is and it still would not prepare for its gargantuan size.  The Dom was started in the 1200s, took 700 workers and 36 years.  What I was most excited to hear about  was it contains 3 football field lengths of stained glass.

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The Dom, like 95% of Koln was badly damaged by Allied bombs in WWII but because the frame was so strong, it was able to retain most of its structure.

The inside of the Dom became a pilgrimage site for two reasons – there was a statue of Madonna of Milan and the cathedral contained the bones of the (alleged) three magi (of ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are’ fame).  The bones are housed in a huge gold and silver box by the alter.

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After we finished gawking at the Dom, there was a second priority in Koln that we needed to take care of – kolsch beer.  Kolsch is a style of beer that originates from Koln and is served in a tall, slim glass.  It’s a lighter, pils-style and apparently one of the best places to get it is an old brauhaus (brew house) called Peter’s Brauhaus, a block over from the Cathedral.  The Brauhaus looked exactly like you would expect it to – low ceilings, dark woods, big long tables.  Pa and I ordered bratwurst and kolsch, Ma had goulash (and water).  6 kolsch beers and a few apple strudels later we were completely full and ready to head back to Cochem for our last night spent in the Mosel Valley.

 

Germany, Day 2: Oh I Wish I Had A River…

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Cochem Train Station

Today we had to get up bright and early to catch the train to a remote location.  We hoofed it down to the train station, bought our tickets from possibly the most disinterested man in Germany and hopped on the train eastbound, our destination: Moselkern.  Moselkern isn’t really notable for anything, except for its proximity to our destination this morning.  We were met at the train station by Taxi Charly who charged us an unreasonable amount of Euros to take us inland, about 3 km from the river, up the terraced vineyard-riddled valley walls to a plateau, into a forest and dropped us off at a car-park.  Following the marked, steep, paved path, we walked down until the forest revealed to us its treasure:

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Burg Eltz

Burg Eltz.  Burg (castle) Eltz has been in existence since the year 1157, was never destroyed by war or invaders and is still maintained and sometimes lived in by the Eltz family, the current Count and Countess being in its 33rd known generation.  We took a tour with the very  knowledgeable Lisa who told us much of the history of the castle including armour, decorations and practicalities (all the staircases are counterclockwise spirals so that attackers going up the stairs would struggle swinging their sword in their right hand).

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After our excellent tour we decided the castle would be an excellent place to have our first beer of the trip.

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We headed to the marked muster point for people taking the shuttle up the mountain and encountered a rather large queue: as it turns out, the castle’s regular 20 person shuttle had broken down that morning so everyone was stuck with the 8-seater van.  In the line in front of us were about a billion senior citizens, all of us baking together in the 30 degree heat, waiting for the van.  The castle staff were lovely and brought umbrellas to shade us all from the sun and crates of cool mineral water to quench our parched mouths.  After about an hour, it was our turn to board the van and we zipped back up to the car-park where we met our cabby, sped down the valley, hopped the train in Moselkern back to Cochem, just in time to grab another beer at a bustling city centre cafe.

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The beer was delicious and our waiter looked like Sir Ben Kingsley.  He also told me my German accent was perfect (what).

We had heard that taking a Mosel River cruise was highly recommended so we had planned to take one westbound and get off at the tiny TINY village of Beilstein.  So at 1500hrs we shuffled aboard a boat with many of the same elderly tourists we had waited in line with at the castle (ah!  Die burg fraulein!).  We were able to snag a table on the upper deck where we ordered some drinks and drank in the scenery.

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It’s difficult to describe how many vineyards line the Mosel River.  Not just the sheer number of them is astounding, but also how they are laid out. From river bank to valley-wall peak, steep rows of grapes flourish on the sunny hill sides.

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At 1600hrs we docked at Beilstein, and right away we were smitten at how charming this tiny hamlet is.  It was nearly inaccessible for hundreds of years which left it pristine and untouched by more modern architecture.  These days it features mostly inns and cafes, with a ruined castle and now decommissioned monastery thrown in for good measure.  Ma was jonesing for some apfelstreudel which we quickly located at one of the bistros.

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We then had about 20 minutes to explore Beilstein before the last boat left, and honestly it was just about enough time.  The town is so small, there are no ATMS and probably not much to do, but I could honestly picture myself there for about a week just drinking wine and beer, reading, writing and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist as the peaceful Mosel ambles by.

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We caught our boat back and enjoyed some mineral water as the sun started the set and the valley cooled.

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We got back into Cochem at around 1830hrs where we headed back to our in and shared a sweet riesling on the shady terrace.

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Cochem

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Summer Daze

It’s been hot in Vancouver lately.  Like, unbearably hot.  I’m not one of these people who thrives in the heat.   I melt into a miserable little puddle, waiting for the chill of the fall air to move in.  The other day, we had a beautifully cloudy respite:

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Some Told Me It’s All Happening at the Zoo

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Ah, the zoo.  Every time I go to Calgary to visit my sister we go to the Calgary Zoo, which is a fantastic zoo.  It’s been even more fun since I acquired my Canon DSLR.  I feel like a faux-nature photographer, able to take photos of animals I haven’t seen in person or may never get to see.  For the past two weeks my sister has been in town, so we decided to go to the Woodland Parks Zoo in Seattle, so I got my nature photographer on.  Above is a grey wolf.

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These two grizzly bears were awesome.  They’re brothers, the bear in the forefront was very active, walking around, drinking water.

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Both zoos have a butterfly exhibit.  Calgary has had theirs for several years so the butterflies are plentiful.  Woodland Park’s is brand new, so it will need time to breed more butterflies for a fuller room.  Still pretty, though!

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Le lion.

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Those who know me well know that I am terrified of primates, mostly gorillas, chimpanzees and baboons.  They scare the crap out of me.  I do, however, love orang-utans.  They are solitary and generally docile.  I mean, look at this guy’s face.

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Usually when my sister and I are at the Calgary Zoo, the red pandas are hiding and/or sleeping.  We got a little bit of action from this adorable guy, who climbed the tree branch and promptly fell asleep.

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Finally, my favourite animal at the zoo – the tiger.  Calgary has Siberian tigers.  Shown here are the Malayan tigers that Woodland Park has.  They’re so striking looking, and I love that the guy in the bottom photo has spotted something delicious.

Croatia (Part 6: Rovinj)

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Our last ‘home base’ in the Croatian leg of our Balkan odyssey was a peninsula called Rovinj (pronounced Roh-VEEN).  Rovinj sits at the northern bit of the country and the reason it looks so much like Venice is because it was occupied by the Venetians however many years ago.  Rovinj juts out into the Adriatic and is a haven for seafood and pasta lovers.

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Rovinj has the same beautiful, shiny brick streets as Dubrovnik and Split does, but the city takes on a different character than its Dalmatian brothers.  The climate is still warm and mediterranean but where Split and Dubrovnik has palm trees, red roofs and tourists, Rovinj has colourful buildings and laid back locals.

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We spend several days in Rovinj and we loved every minute there.  I had probably the best spaghetti and meatballs of my life there.

The sunsets were unbelievable.  Late September is my favourite time of year to shoot because the light is such a beautiful golden glow in the evening and I was so lucky to be in such a vibrant city at this time of year.

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Another one of the things I loved about shooting Rovinj was the colours.  As you may know by now, I love shooting in bold, bright colour and Rovinj had a lot to offer, with the neutral coloured buildings, pink, orange and red sunset, the brown of the rocks and the blue and green of the water.

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Ah!  If only I had brought my bathing suit I would have joined these sun bathing beauties on the rocks!

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If I lived here, I would drink a press of coffee and watch the sunset at this little table.  Every.  Day.

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We were lucky enough to close out our stay here with a sunset evening inlet boat cruise on the last boat of the day on the last day of the season.  I insisted we sail the Adriatic in Rovinj because we had to cancel our sail in Split, and we totally lucked out.  We headed out and the boat’s crew passed out glasses of juice and wine.  We were entitled to one glass of wine on the cruise but one of the deck hands kept refilling Pa’s glass.  We sat right up front to that I could get some uninhibited shots of the city from the sea as well as the sunset.  Then we got some unexpected guests – Adriatic dolphins!  The dolphins swam right up to the boat frolicked beside us as the sun went down on Rovinj and our time in Croatia.

Croatia (Part 5: Zadar)

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Our pleasant-est of pleasant surprises on our trip to the Balkans was the coastal town of Zadar.  We decided to stay in Zadar randomly – it was a coastal town almost a straight line from the more inland Plitvice Lakes.  We read that it had a pretty old town and a newer interesting waterfront feature – the Marine Organ.

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After most of our day in Plitvice lakes we decided to head into town to check out the Organ and get some dinner.  We wandered through the old town and marvelled at the beautiful Venetian stone work – it was like a miniature, less crowded version of Dubrovnik.  The city is very clean and the stones shiny, like they polish them on a regular basis.  Little art galleries and pizzerias were strewn about the town.

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When we made our way outside of the old wall we were thrust upon a vision of utter majesty – the orange-red sun setting on the restless, white-capped Adriatic Sea, the sound of Nikola Basic’s award winning urban art instalment – the Marine Organ.  As mentioned in a previous post, the Marine Organ is a set of polyethylene pipes of varying lengths and widths set into the concrete seafront with slats on one end to allow the wind, waves, and water in and an opening on the other to the let the chance music out.

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We sat on the steps, watched the sailboats pass by in the choppy waters and the sun set, and listened to the music.  The music was enchanting, harmonious, hypnotizing.  I could have listened to it all day.  We noticed that there were a few cafes set back from the concrete steps and decided that some day, one day, when we return, we will spend more time in Zadar and sit at one of those cafes for a day, drink the delicious coffee and listen to the music of the ocean.

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God Only Knows…

I’m not religious.  Or spiritual.  It’s not that I’m particularly anti-religion, I’m more a-religious, but I can definitely appreciate some of the positive things that have come out of religion – Johann Sebastian Bach stated that all of his music he created for the glory of god.  There is a lot of music that I love that was created for that reason, from the aforementioned Bach to Mahalia Jackson and Stevie Wonder.  I also love the architectural, artistic and engineering feats that people have built for their god, and I love photographing it.

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I really enjoyed taking photos of these mosques in Sarajevo.  Where I’m from we don’t have a very big Muslim population so there aren’t very many mosques.  I would have loved to have entered and seen/photographed what it looked like on the inside, but sadly it was closed.

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The above photo is of a statue of Jesus (obviously) located at the front of the Catholic Cathedral in Sarajevo.  Again, closed to the public.

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The photo below is the inside of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Ljubljana, Slovenia.  I had never been inside of an Orthodox Church and there were no photos allowed, but the kindly old priest made a concession for me.  He explained to Ma, Pa and I why the entire interior of the church is adorned in paintings of the icons, why there were no pews, the main differences between Orthodox and Catholic.

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I’m excited for my upcoming trip to Germany, where I will be taking more photos of religious buildings!

Ryan and Cris

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So, I don’t photograph people.  Not posed photos at least.  But when my close friend Ryan and his fiancée Cris asked me to take some photos for them, I thought, why not?  Ryan is one of my top-tier friends, the upper echelon of my circle of friends, the exclusive group of few who see the real me.

I met Ryan my first year of high school.  We were in band together and I was immediately attracted to him, not just because he’s my “type” (tall, dark and handsome) but because he was devastatingly funny, supremely charismatic and profoundly intelligent.  We grew closer throughout high school and drifted apart somewhat after graduation, only to rekindle our friendship in our 3rd year of university.

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After graduating from university I foolishly made the decision to get married and Ryan and I lost contact all together until about five years after my husband and I had split (probably about 8 years since we had last spoken) I added Ryan to Facebook and we started messaging.  On one of his trips to the mainland (he had moved to Victoria) we decided to meet up for cake and coffee and it was like no time had passed.  Ryan was the happiest I had probably ever seen him, he was finishing up on some carpentry classes and had started maybe sort of seeing a girl that he had known for quite a few years – Cris.

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He and I pretty much poured our hearts out to each other in some of the most cathartic conversations I’ve had in a long time – we shared about our battles with depression, anxiety, ennui, and crisis – and ended up sending each other funny videos that we watch when we start feeling edgy.  Ryan soon made the decision to move back to the mainland, much to my delight to be closer to his family and Cris (and me, as I like to think).  He talked about how their relationship was progressing and how I should meet her.  He told me how into music she is and that she’s bright and warm and kind.  I was interested in meeting her as I had met several of Ryan’s previous girlfriends, and a lot of them were of the dramatic type, to put it euphemistically so on one of our White Spot get togethers Cris came too.

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We talked about classical music and fashion and things like that.  I felt completely at ease with Cris, as if I had known her for a long time.  I remember leaving dinner thinking to myself, “she is the most normal, grounded girl Ryan has ever dated”.  Ryan and Cris moved in with each other and Cris spent more time hanging out with me and Ryan on our get togethers.  Cris was so easy to get along with and Ryan’s eyes flashed whenever he spoke about her.  There was never any doubt in my mind that the two of them should be together.  It got to the point where Cris and I have become close friends and text between the two of us.

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When Ryan told me that he was thinking of buying a ring, I immediately thought, “yes.  This is the way it should be”, which is counterintuitive to my natural reaction of marriage, which is “RUN”.  Ryan and Cris had a private proposal and have set a date for an intimate and what will I’m sure be beautiful ceremony in December.

Photographing these two was not only fun, but natural.  I didn’t feel contrived.  The whole process was easy, thanks to Cris’ natural beauty and ease of being and Ryan’s infectious playfulness.  You’ll definitely be seeing more of them in blog posts to come.

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