The fragrant city
December 28, 2014
•
4 Comments
Although writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge had little good to say about the city of Cologne or Köln of years past, the modern city is packed with a million people and all the culture that accompanies such a diverse metropolitan area. It is Germany's fourth largest, famous for, among other things, fragrances worn by wealthy women who bathed twice a yea...
Read the Full Post »
Along the Rhine
December 21, 2014
•
3 Comments
On the afternoon of the eleventh day and during the dark of that night on our river journey, we departed Wertheim, sailing past Miltenberg and Aschaffenburg and Frankfurt, before leaving the lovely Main River and merging onto the Rhine near Wiesbaden and Mainz the next morning. It was chilly and foggy, but the skies opened up enough to see ruins, c...
Read the Full Post »
At the corner of Main and Tauber: Wertheim
December 15, 2014
•
1 Comment
One stanza from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge reads 'Water, water, every where, and all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink." This was in reference to a long and stormy sea voyage, but it might have referred to Wertheim. Water is literally the circulatory system of this beautiful me...
Read the Full Post »
On the River Main in Würzburg
December 07, 2014
•
3 Comments
There was a feel about Würzburg that is difficult to explain. I was enchanted by it. This Franconian city on the River Main oozes confidence, and many of its buildings, opulence.
One example is the Würzburg Residence. Commissioned in 1720 and completed in 1744, the residence was designed in the German baroque style by architect Balthasar Neumann....
Read the Full Post »
Center of the Holy Roman Empire
December 01, 2014
•
4 Comments
I did not know nor would have guessed that Bamberg - that lovely, northerly starting point of the Main-Danube canal - was once dubbed the center of the Holy Roman Empire by Emperor Heinrich II. It is one of the few German cities that escaped destruction during World War II, retaining many of its medieval structures. The Roman influence is clearly e...
Read the Full Post »
Nuremberg
November 22, 2014
•
2 Comments
Nuremberg is a city of contradictions. Known as the center of Nazi activities during World War II and home to the Nazi Rallying Grounds, it was also the location of the Nuremberg Trials. Much of the city was destroyed toward the end of the war by allied bombers but great care has been taken to restore the buildings and the history, lest future gene...
Read the Full Post »
rainy city
November 17, 2014
•
1 Comment
When you think of rainy places in the United States, Seattle, Portland, New Orleans, the Hawaiian island of Kauai, and the Olympic peninsula come to mind. But when a German city is named Regensburg, one might have certain expectations. And continuing along the Danube, we arrived in the rain, which continued most of our day there. Even in the rain a...
Read the Full Post »
Travis Webb: Renaissance Man
November 09, 2014
•
2 Comments
My husband and I met Travis when he was 17 and taking tango from dance teachers in Taos. He was a great dancer then, and continued to excel far beyond mere mortals. I would call him a natural when it comes to anything physical. But what has happened in the almost nine years since is astonishing. At the age of almost 26, it would be not be an exagge...
Read the Full Post »
Pausing in Passau
November 03, 2014
•
2 Comments
After a weekend full of tango dancing and conversation during the Albuquerque Tango Festival with friends old and new, this blog is a bit delayed. But now, the photographic journey on the Danube continues with the first stop in Germany - Passau.
The sky was overcast. The clouds produced fits and starts of rain, giving us many reasons to pause and...
Read the Full Post »
food and beverages included
October 26, 2014
•
4 Comments
What is culture? Art, buildings, music, dance, language, some might say religion, and the endless imagination of individual human beings responding to their environment. But just as important, and possibly more, is the food that was grown and altered by humans to sustain life. This week's blog is off the subject of cathedrals, government buildings,...
Read the Full Post »
Melk Abbey
October 18, 2014
•
1 Comment
One of the joys of traveling by river is that you are presented an altered view of the land. During a morning trip through the Wachau Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, we watched hectare upon hectare of beautiful, well-established vineyards climbing up the hills on both sides of the Danube (and later on the Rhine River as well). What astounded...
Read the Full Post »
Gustvav Klimt, art nouveau and the Secession movement
October 12, 2014
•
3 Comments
Ah, Vienna. What can I say? Every turn of the corner, every building, every street, a sigh. After the initial panic of knowing I wouldn't be able to do any of it photographic justice, I settled into the mindset that here was a city worthy of much more time, perhaps a lifetime if one had extras to toss around.
After the bus tour into the city centr...
Read the Full Post »
Bratislava
October 03, 2014
•
4 Comments
At first blush of this innocent in Europe, Bratislava, Slovakia seems to be in the blossom of youth. Younger people were everywhere on the streets and seemed to be enjoying the relative freedom of living in an independent Slovakia. In addition to numerous historic buildings floating among massive, cold concrete apartment complexes leftover from the...
Read the Full Post »
begin at the beginning
September 28, 2014
•
3 Comments
For a week I have been pouring over more than a thousand images, analyzing each, and feeling a bit like I did when we arrived in Budapest. The city has so much history and culture that I hardly knew where to start. Instead, I took a breath or two and said (as another woman on the ship said) to myself, "This requires a do-over." I could not begin to...
Read the Full Post »
Cruising the River Danube
September 21, 2014
•
8 Comments
One of the challenges of a fifteen-day trip is digesting the places, people, architecture, colors, smells, and sounds, not to mention food, and pulling these into a cohesive mental picture. For a photographer, the images shot and developed help in the process. So the cruise on the rivers Danube (or Donau), Main, and Rhein begins to take shape in my...
Read the Full Post »
© Daryl A. Black