Germany V - A Folkloric Flourish

The old and the new: bridesmaids & groomsmen wait at the cathedral in Regensburg. In the distance note the scaffolding and white plastic tarp where cleaning and refurbishing are being done.

Where did all the cows go?

We happened to be staying in an area that raises livestock. We could smell the cows, but we never saw them. J.J. was obsessed by the absence of cows on beautiful grassy slopes with obvious barns. According to #2, cows are not allowed into the fields to tromp the beautiful grass. Rather they are kept inside the barns and the grass is harvested and brought to them to consume. J.J. was outrée & heartsick for the cows who he felt were denied their basic nature to roam & ruminate at will in the open fields.

At intervals fresh cow manure is spread on the fields for refertilization. Now that is a very stinky day for everyone in rural areas, but also for the cities down wind! 

6 special recycling bins: This poor lady is down wind!

Organized garbage

There are six (yes 6!) recycle bins for German garbage. They are: 1) clear glass, 2) green glass) 3) brown glass 4) plastic 5) paper 6) metal. Woe be unto the citizen who does not recycle properly. Some well-meaning, well-disciplined, fair-minded compatriot will report him for non-compliance. & there will be a fine.

Tax on radio and TV

Surely a descendant of Thor

The same goes for communications. If you don’t pay the tax to enjoy your favorite programs you are sure to be reported. No good saying you never use these services because even if you have a car radio YOU ARE IN INFRACTION & you will probably be anonymously reported, You will be fined & the fine will far supersede the tax.

The church tax

Always busy cleaning a church

This one is easier to evade. There are many shameful believers who claim to be atheists to avoid the tax.  The tax money maintains the beautiful churches & to some extent pays the clergy. We’ve heard that if it was known that a believer didn’t pay the tax   he/she might be denied sacraments!

Baths

One of the things to do if you possibly can is to go to a bath house in Germany. We did this on our very last day. After our long walk through all these countries I’ve been telling you about it was simply divine: outside & inside pools, different temperatures, different sprays & underwater chutes to massage your muscles. The pools are gigantic, but not very deep. With poolside chairs lining the sides one can loll as long as one pleases. The prices are very reasonable. No doubt the hygienic cleanliness of these establishments depends to some extent on traditionally high standards of German patrons. 

Street corner in Passau: Who are the real people? 

A closer look

The Beer Gardens. 

Waiting for the evening crowd

These establishments usually have an outside and an inside. Both are equally inviting. I’m sure the weather dictates which one gets the most customers. When we were in Germany there were takers for both atmospheres because June was only crisp outside and practically unheated inside where there might be games or televised sports events. 

Bonfires for the St. John

This is a big celebration in the nordic countries which coincides with the harvesting of wheat and hay around mid to late June. Around 8 o’clock on our last evening we walked to the open fields just beyond the neighborhood where an enormous bonfire was aglow. We felt very privileged to be invited because this usually is a celebration for residents, & not specially for passing visitors. However, there was beer for everyone & a bit of picnic fare. As night descended between 9 & 10 o’clock “our”  bonfire was big, blazing, & pumping heat. In the distance we could see other community bonfires. Harkening back to an old ritual, a time far from the madding crowd, when folks loved these celebrations for drawing together.  It was a wonderful finish  to a grand tour.

Austria - The Sound of Music Revisited in Salzburg

Salzburg central: Mozart (for better or worse!)

Bishopric Gardens: It was difficult to choose the best photos for the formal gardens.

I liked this one because it shows the artistry of layout with the tourists feasting their eyes & taking photos.

If one believes the movie “Amadeus” Mozart hated Salzburg. He considered it a small and unsophisticated burg. Well, if that was so, Salzburg hardly took notice for today, albeit a relatively small city, it seems to be entirely devoted to its great musicians and performers. 

It is now a town of great beauty and perfection, and amazingly unfazed by modernity. No doubt it makes a good deal of income from tourism, & its residents have every reason to maintain their Sound-of-Music image in tip-top shape.

Horse drawn buggies resting in the shade; I suppose they work more at night.

Typical fancy dress for women

Two for one: this is the best photo I have for fancy dress for men

Salzburg boasts year-round concerts, operas, ballets, & puppet opera productions. It also hosts a variety of festivals, not the least of which is of course, is the famed Mozart Festival. 

Papagena & Papageno

Period opera

Obviously an opera set in the '50's

The story book image is for real. One will observe these Austrians wearing fancy folkloric costumes, groups of gaily dressed street performers, & even small mixed choruses all decked out in something Heidi might have worn.  

Salzburg isn't so small!

Wouldn't you like to take tea or coffee and watch the passersby here?

Salzburg is located in a valley in the  foothills of the Alps on the Salzach River. A fun thing to do is to take the funicular up to the Mönchsberg (mountain of the monks), a wooded ridge where the Hohensalzburg, a fortress, was built in 1077, to defend the city below. 

Inside the courtyard of the Abbey of St. Peter

Here also, the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter was constructed in the 17th & 18th century. Both of these structures serve for open air & indoor concerts, and to house an extensively diverse museum. 

Inside the museum

I liked it for two things: 1) the part of the museum devoted to opera puppets and 2) the magnificent view.  

The Abbey of St. Peter & the old Fortress tower; In the background clearly the Alps

The hills are truly alive with the sound of music!

Germany III - Rich Old Regensburg

Beautifully restored rathaus: "New"golden  city hall 

Inside the Rathaus

Regensburg!…. I never knew anything about it & well I should have. What makes it special is the extent to which its ancient structures have survived & there’s nothing “cosy” about it. It’s big, bustling and prosperous. 

Central Platz: Nothing Cosy!

Romanesque church almost destroyed in WWII; protected, but not cleaned or refurbished just yet

Could just be that after all the wars and tumult this city is not really so different than it was in its medieval heyday. Without too much stretch of imagination we could envision the city whose purpose as a major port on the extremity of the Danube was well established very early on. 

Let’s go way back. In its tender beginnings Regensburg was a celtic town called Radasbona. It became Castra Regina under the Romans during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. During the campaign against the barbarians (179 - 180 A.D.) he fortified the town for the purpose of protecting the southern portion of Germany along the Danube-Rhine border. 

A lot more peaceful now, but still just as utilized

Castra means fort, but (surprise!) Regina doesn’t mean queen, it was the name of a small river that empties into the Danube. This name naturally morphed into the German Regensburg, as the city no longer functioned as a fort.

This Renaissance mansion was built straight up by a rich burgher. It was impossible to photograph the entire structure with the top.

Two things made Regensburg a major city. First, in 845 the Bishopric of Regensburg received the visit of 14 Czech & Slovak noblemen seeking Christian baptism. Regensburg then became the center of catholic evangelization of Czechs & Slovaks. This single event determined that these slavic people would go toward western Europe in terms of culture and civilization and not, as might have been expected, with the Orthodox slavs of eastern Europe. 

Early Czech and Slovak nobles on a mission

Second, in 1142 a stone bridge was built over the Danube and suddenly Regensburg became a major transit town between northern Germany and Venice. By going through through the northernmost point of the Danube, Regensburg, saved time for merchants of northern Germany trading with Venice & vice versa. 

How old? Even older than ol' J.J.

The bridge quickly paid for itself through tolls & brought prosperity to the town. This enabled its bishopric to build a fabulous gothic cathedral, still standing, while all the others were destroyed & replaced by rococo churches at a much later date. 

Statuette of Pope Boniface who initiated construction of St. Peter's Cathedral

St. Peter's flank: All repaired and cleaned up

Modern Regensburg remains the most upstream port on the Danube. It is on the list of UNESCO’S prime protected historical cities. 

She's off to give a guided tour of the town. I've noticed that Germans provide entertainment & such in authentic costume. Fun!

It is traditionally known as a great university town where catholic theologians are groomed in league with an enlightened bishopric. Many will know that Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger, is a product of this tradition & was for 10 years a professor of theology at the university. 

Can't you tell how scholarly these 3 gents are? 

Maybe they used to study and debate unter dem linden

Germany II - A Stark Comparison

So sober and elegant!

This church stands in stark contrast to the rococo of other churches we visited. Shall we call it neo-gothic? All statues, plants, flowers & icons are against purest, unadorned white walls. I love the clear round ball-chandeliers suspended from the ceiling. 

Beautiful madonna & child

The Apse: no stain glass; only potted parlor palms

Side Chapel: Note the exposed crypt in the 2 clear diamond shaped floor windows.

Blessed Gisela - first Abbess of Holy Trinity

After the death of her husband in the early 1000's Queen Gisela of Hungary returned to Passau to live the rest of her life. Passau belonged to her father, Duke of Bavaria. She lived an exemplary life and in the late 1800's she was beatified, but surprisingly, not sainted. If the Papacy did not believe she was a saint, the Hungarians certainly do; her tomb is the object of a pilgrimage for Hungarians all over Europe. If not a miracle, it was certainly a great event when the first Magyar king was converted from a pagan tradition to Christianity. He was sainted and became the patron saint of Hungary, Saint Stephen.* And who but his sweet wife might have been the instrument of his sainthood? 

Gisela's Tomb: Notice the fresh flowers.

*See earlier posts on Hungary: # 47 Hungarian History 

Presidential Election - Post Mortem IV

#6 replies to #4. Recall that #6 is our lone "liberal." It's only fair to give him the last word. 

I think #4 hit the mark. But he fails to acknowledge that he and his kind are part of the problem. White flight to the suburbs similar to red / blue state migration in which people move to areas so they can be near people that think and act like them has insulated people from really having to engage in debate with other people with differing views. Instead of being an example for minorities,  low-income people, and others, the middle and upper middle class have instead established their own exclusive hubs where outsiders with different social mores feel alienated. Instead of sulking about how dumb and gullible the overall population is becoming, maybe the right should take real action and send their kids to urban public schools, gentrify neighborhoods in transition, and participate in urban renewal efforts. But all we see from the the middle and upper middle classes liberal or conservative is an emphasis on the individual with less and less regard for the community. The result is already visible at DISD*. Largely abandoned by middle class families, DISD is left mostly with kids that come from uninterested parents and broken homes which makes it impossible to get good results. Couple that with a disinterest in local schools from an increasing number of singles in the community and the result is inevitable failure. If the right wants to lead nationally, they better start trying to lead locally in the big population centers.  Otherwise, the right is doomed to be a minority. And while they may be comfortable in their little "gardens," they won't be able to escape state and national policies that will affect them too.

#6  

    

*Dallas Independent School District 

#4 opines.

Election Post Mortem

Friday, November 09, 2012

12:33 PM

Very well said, #7. You basically described everything I would have said, and then some.   I'm always impressed that anyone can arrive at their own conservative opinion on matters in spite of the massive and accelerating onslaught of liberal culture and education that engulfs our younger generations.  It is difficult for our parents to understand just how extensive the rot in our institutions have become, that to think differently in any way from what one has been taught or exposed to in the media  should be considered almost miraculous.  Add to the fact that many of us work in professions or public institutions where the liberal mindset is dominant and intolerant of debate, and it's amazing that we've maintained our own sanity. 

As #7 and myself can attest, what's been going on in our schools growing up and what our cohorts have been consuming in media has now finally come home to roost in this election. Young people have been taught to think emotionally, praise narcissism as a noble act of being 'genuine' or 'real', and to be celebrated for just simply being instead of accomplishing something.  It's about you're identity, and who you can identify with, which means race and ethnicity matters more than actually solving problems and making everyone better off.  Voting thus becomes about who the candidate appears to you, rather than if he can actually deliver the goods with any competency.  The results of that kind of thinking can be clearly seen among the most destitute voting precincts  in this country:  crime-ridden, uneducated, vulnerable to outside shocks, and pretty much uncivilized. Look at Detroit, South-side Chicago, D.C., the Philadelphia wards, and South Dallas. They vote for people who look and act "like them" time and again, only for them to continue to be worse off and to be at the wrong end of the widening gulf of inequality.  The patronage system easily takes root among such infantile populations, where self-proclaimed "champions of the poor" turn their constituencies out to the polls (with a lot fraud involved) and then get their cut of the spoils from the party leadership, and their constituencies get some sort of meaningless freebie that often shackles them to a life of penury.  Then, when the occasional storm or hurricanes plows through, it is those very same people who wait around helplessly for someone else to rescue them, since they have never know how to do it themselves (if they did, they wouldn't be poor in the first place.)  These people are persuaded by symbols, and simple narratives that blame the other.  Their ranks continue to grow, and now they are making their impact felt on national elections.

I agree with Papa that the U.S. is sliding inevitably in decline, as all great civilizations at some point must, simply because human nature succumbs to its primordial flaws at some point.  The American constitutional republic was founded on a reserve of the best enlightenment human virtues, which can only last so long before the sin of envy takes over. Class warfare, making fun of a candidate's professional success , accusing him of not caring because he'd rather not talk about it out of personal modesty (even if he donates 40% of his income to tax and charities)--it's all influenced by envy, and even the most intelligent people in our own forum are prone to thinking enviously.  Only they rationalize their envy by claiming that it's driven by their own personal compassion. Sure, whatever.  You're only giving the disadvantaged even fewer advantages by giving them some small tangible benefit while robbing them of their ability to take care of themselves.  And then you go back to your own cushy life with your cushy friends talking what a great person you are because of your compassion.  I've seen this time and again with many of the people of gotten to know in my life, and it makes it so difficult to want to care about them all that much.

As my wife can attest, I don’t like Facebook much anymore, since I'm constantly appalled by my so called 'friends' spouting things that are so contemptuous of all the things that I value in my life.  I've shut the TV off most nights, since most shows have ceased to entertain  so that they can instead spend more time instructing us on this topic or that.  Nothing's funny, everything seems contrived when I turn the TV on.  The prevalence of politics in our media has gotten so nauseating that I can only watch the most boring and neutral stuff, even if it's completely unimportant (sports, home improvement shows).

Papa is totally justified in his concern for the fate of his kids and grandkids as the U.S. embarks on its road to some form of statism. Life in general won't be easier than for previous generations, but the pain will not be inflicted equally among all people.   Those that are smart enough to take advantage of the system will thrive, never mind the obstacles put in the way.  For these people, obstacles for others are their safeguards.  Those that have exceptionally marketable skills in the knowledge economy will do fine, since their value in the global marketplace is so high that they can easily afford to pay whatever taxes coming their way.  They have earned the luxury of thinking abstractly, and think little about imposing their idealism on others who are not as smart.  They are what Joel Kotkin calls the new clerisy, with a whole class who in their relative material comfort consider their primary role as championing a certain kind of social morality consisting of a cocktail of environmentalism, social justice, sexual rights, abortion, and chiding those who choose not to follow because it damages their livelihood.  They are less and less entrepreneurial, since they tend to live by the rule that as long as they follow everything they are told, go to the right school and follow the right career path, they will be awarded with bountiful riches and prestige (sounds kind of like France).

Your kids are smart, and work in the knowledge businesses that will keep them in demand. Your grandkids will do fine, though they will be paying a lot more taxes, and hopefully they will also join the upper ranks of the knowledge economy and they will  have been nurtured by stable and educated families, something that is no longer a given these days for much of the working classes. Although we would like to expose our kids to people of all walks of life, how we live now and how we will live in the future makes it more difficult.  Simply put, the smart and not so smart have been sorting themselves away from each other over the years at an accelerating rate, and nowadays it is easy to live one's entire life among people very much  like themselves, with nary a contact with anyone outside of this bubble.  Charles Murray's Coming Apart: the State of White America makes this very clear.  Social cohesion has continued to fracture along cognitive lines (read Murray's Bell Curve, and right now, a new kind of aristocracy is ascendant, while our dependent serf population continues to expand.  Enguerrand is right, this growing class of mindless serfs constitute the new "silent majority", even as their lot in life continues to decline (African Americans) or  plateau (Hispanics), especially under the economically clueless leadership of Obama.

Following the political developments of the day has become too depressing, even stressful, and it convinces me that I should tend to my own garden instead.  I am more engaged on what goes on in my community, be it at city hall, the church, and my kids' schools. I continue to do things with my local professional group, where my contributions are valued and I have more control over the outcome I  favor.   I try to find situations where political partisanship is off limits, and instead talk or do things that anybody could agree on (that's why I don't like to talk politics at the dinner table much). I find more fulfillment in my creative endeavors than who wins this or that political race (though it's always a good day when a Republican wins a seat somewhere, and I'm grateful to live in a place that is well governed by people who agree with me, even if most of them will never see eye to eye on matters relating to art). And that's the lesson for me in all of this: though the majority of the nation may vote according to their self-serving interests, as long as I live according to "conservative virtues", I'll be more content and better off than those people anyway.

 

Germany I - Pretty Passau

Best overview I have

Passau, a beautiful city in southern Germany. A visit is like walking into a picture postcard. Someone long ago saw this site where three rivers merged wedged between ridges of the Bavarian hills & said, “This is for me!”

Not an especially great photo, but it shows very well the different colors where the Danube & the Ill rivers meet. The Ill coming from the Alps is greener than the Danube coming from the Black Forest.

As is so often the case, beautiful places do not become big, wealthy cities. Nevertheless, in the case of modern Passau, the waterways have contributed to its historic stability as a cultural & learning center, boats for pleasure and transport of goods, surrounded by small, contained industries and farms. 

#2: Our fearless guide -- The water is very high. Note the submerged tree where people can usually walk. Notice in the background a luxury liner that plies the rivers.

The old historical town is a pedestrian’s paradise with its churches, municipal buildings, universities, small shops, & eateries.

Symphony in Rose: The Rathaus (town hall) has a handsome clock

An outdoor cafe/restaurant is behind the fountain.

We park outside the old town along the riverfront & take our place among other old town strollers.

Old: Universität Passau Katholische Theologishe Facultät in the old town

New: Universität outside the old town

Greater Passau is a feast for the eyes everyday, as one must drive along the rivers, cross beautiful bridges, and take in the cultivated countryside. All this & one never has the impression of crowding or pollution, or any of the usual city ills associated with urban areas.  And once again, colorful structures, as you will see. What’s not to love about that? 

Passau for sure has a proud history, but I must admit that I haven’t quite gotten a proper grasp of it, as yet. I have only witnessed bits & pieces of it, & mostly by visiting places.  I know that it’s important to keep in mind that Passau is in Bavaria which is historically Roman Catholic. I’m sure there are Evangelical (Lutheran) churches, but I did not notice many. Most of the churches are what I would call Baroque in style, grandiose, & as the photos will demonstrate, they are richly gilded with art all about.

A good example of decorated arches and a pipe organ

Imagine a wedding procession here!

A bit dark... one of many ceiling murals: angels playing musical instruments 

A baby pipe organ

None would be complete without a beautifully exposed pipe organ...and sometimes more than one.

Baroque size organ - not very big

Modern and big organ

Our special guide was #2 who works as a dentist. He’s become charmed by this Neverland, even learning to love beer which defies his French roots.