On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
Adam here still filling in for Alain, who should be back tomorrow.
Anyhow, on with your regularly scheduled post!
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Since I don’t have access to the pictures you all send to Alain, we’ll go with some pictures of Castle Frankenstein I took when I was in Germany prior to deploying to Iraq in early 2008.
It is believed that Mary Shelley drew the inspiration for Frankenstein from a long deceased resident of Burg (Castle) Frankenstein, which overlooks Darmstadt, Germany. Johann Konrad Dippel, who was born at Castle Frankenstein in the late 17th Century, was an alchemist who, according to legend created potions and applied electrical stimulation to dead body parts in an attempt to reanimate the dead. And while there is no conclusive proof, given the name of one of the two main characters of her novel and the legends and history surrounding Dippel, a decent argument can be made that at least some of the inspiration for Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus came from Dippel and Burg Frankenstein. Some have argued that she actually visited the castle in secret while she cruised the Rhine four years before she published the novel and/or omitted any mention of her visit to maintain claims of originality. Since we may never know the truth, here are some pictures.
The two gothic towers – one of which you can see in the pictures above, as well as below – were actually added in the 19th Century to attract tourists.
Here’s some pictures of the chapel.
The other gothic tower.
More late edition tower.
More of the gothic towers.
And here’s a bonus war memorial that’s near the castle.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
NotMax
Wow. Truly a jack-of-all-posts. Do you do windows?
:)
otmar
fyi, the German inscription on the last pictures reads (if you’re not used to German Fraktur, it’s hard to decipher)
“.. treuen Turnbrüder … deutscher Turnerschaft” (looks like the text continues on the other side) and “Gedenket der Toten und dessen wofür sie starben”
That translates to “faithful brother athlete … German association of athletes” and “remember the dead and the cause for which they died”.
“Turnerschaften” can be also seen as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnerschaft. Let’s put it that way: they are not the most liberal fraternities.
NotMax
So it is not totally out of line to refer to Ms Shelley’s story as an epistle to Dippel.
(Donovan cringes.)
:)
Quinerly
?
Schlemazel
@otmar:
THANKS! It was driving me nuts trying to read it.
Thanks also to Adam for sharing the photos.
JPL
@NotMax: I had the same thought.
Thanks, Adam for the pictures.
Amir Khalid
@otmar:
@Schlemazel:
I had trouble reading it too. In what war did the Turnbrüder die?
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
The only Turnbrüder I have ever heard about were a gymnastics club that lost 38 members in the Great War
Turnbrüder = “turn brothers” which I thought was an amusing way to think of gymnastics.
debbie
Even on gray days, Europe is beautiful!
bystander
Was the war memorial also a 19th century addition? Germans have so many wars to memorialize.
The Palais Universitaire in Strasbourg is ringed with the names of great German writers and philosophers. At first I was puzzled the French were paying such homage to their traditional enemies, the sales boches. It took me a month to figure out the Germans had built it after seizing Alsace in 1870.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Werewolf!
There, wolf…
Citizen_X
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: “Are you sure it’s not Frahnk-en-SHTEEN?”
Waratah
Thank you Adam I really like the photos looking through the bare tree limbs so it looks creepy. Also the the one at night.
kattails
Very cool photos, Adam, and wow that’s a lot of rocks. I wonder what the local geology is?
Completely OT, I just heard a loud rapping on the house, looked out the dining room window to see a pileated woodpecker taking chunks out of my window trim! There’s a wire suet feeder there which always draws the smaller birds, but jeez Louise, there are 6″ splinters of painted house trim lying on the ground below. I’m going to have to go put up some kind of flashing. There must be some bugs in the woodwork. I couldn’t catch a photo.
Origuy
I love the first picture of the Burg looking up through the bare trees, very spooky. Burg is cognate of the Anglo-Saxon burgh, meaning fortified place, as in Edinburgh or Bamburgh.
Following the link to the article about Turnbrüder led me to Mensur, the style of fencing done by those societies. It’s still done with sharpened rapiers and bare faces (except for wire mesh spectacles.)
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: @Schlemazel: It is a WW I memorial to them.
otmar
@Adam L Silverman: the style is definitely post WW1, but they added 39-45 to also include WW2 dead.