Archive for February, 2015

Random debris.

Sunday, February 22nd, 2015

1. We have all had the hype of Fifty Shades of Grey inflicted on us against our will, yes? You can try to avoid it but it will hunt you down and poke you in the eye when you’re least expecting. So I imagine many of us have seen the commercial where Christian Grey vigorously mooshes mouths with Anastasia Steele in an elevator.

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Okay, when you see this do you also think of the mudskippers fighting for a mate?

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Just me? That’s fine.

 

2. Some bread from Japan made into the shape of beetles. Had I seen these, I would have bought them. I would have bought them so hard.

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3.  Spam! I haven’t posted about the spam comments I’ve been getting because they haven’t been all that interesting. But recently the spammers have been using small sentences they clearly pulled from somewhere and I like to try and guess what the reference material is about.

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This one I’m guessing is about the healthful, kimchi-like qualities of ginger and how they can help you naturally recover from psoriasis.

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Wow. Ummm, so maybe North Korea made an app that, once activated, will cause you to bleed from the ears and die, so if perchance you should download it under the impression that it was new emojis or something, be careful because even a short exposure will cause your cat to die. It most definitely doesn’t like you (it’s trying to kill you, after all).

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Awww. This person likes to sew and make their own clothes but they have a tendency to flail their arms a bit. Once, mid-conversation, they hit Grandma in the face and they’ve never really recovered from that. Therefore, all garments must have pockets for them to shove their fists into. Grandma still has a dent where the class ring embedded itself. It haunts this person at night.

Germany Part Done (technically Prague).

Sunday, February 15th, 2015

Our first night in Prague after we returned from visiting Prague Castle we were freezing and keen to eat something warm. We found a traditional Czech restaurant where I saw an interesting delicacy on the menu – “Moravian Sparrow.” Oooh, that sounds intriguing, some little forest bird. Nope. It’s pork. Pork with onions and two kinds of dumplings. I feel like that is false advertising. Do not sell your meat by the name of another meat. It’s deceiving. That being said, it was also delicious, so my intentions to write angry letters to the Czech president were sated with tasty tasty pork ‘n’ dumplings.

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After getting our fill of this scrumptiousness, we walked back to our hotel for some much-deserved sleep (remember our truly atrocious travel experience the day before). I realized our hotel butted up against one of the finest examples of art nouveau architecture, the metropolitan pavilion. Even though the chill pierced your clothes and got down to your bones I made Neenernator stand there for a minute while I gawked and sighed and generally had emotions over this building. So good.

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Then we went back to the room and passed out. The next morning I was in no shape to get out of bed at 9:00 so Neenernator went to the Jewish Quarter to see the cemetery by herself which is fine, I’ve been before. The tombstones are still wibbly-wobbly. We met in the central square to join a tour I had booked at 11:00 to go to Kutna Hora. I’m glad I left the hotel early because I got an opportunity to see the tiny petting zoo right next to the tree.

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Now, both Neenernator and I were looking forward to sitting quietly on a tour bus and having a relaxing time, but I had not read the small print on the tour site so I blew it. We were on a eco-friendly tour that only took mass transit. Lotta trains. Lotta walking in the icy air. I felt terrible. Neenernator was a trooper, but I could tell she was super-bummed. I gave a her a foot massage when we got back to the hotel that night to make up for it. We went to the train station and caught the one that takes one to the bone church. It was about an hour ride which gave me the opportunity to enjoy the communist buildings scattered around the countryside and stare intently at the pattern on the train seats. At first I thought they were abstract elbow macaroni, and then I thought they were peppy modern swastikas. I settled on pasta-inspired third-Reich symbols filtered through the 1960s aesthetic. That seems about right.

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After then taking a little tram we finally made it. Now I felt like the last tour guide I went with gave me a nice overview of the interior of the church but this guide elaborated and I discovered some neat new things. Here is the blog entry of my previous visit. Once you’ve read that I will add additional information. So, same place. Walk in, go down steps, be visually assaulted by a colossal amount of bones. Awesome every time. BUT, here’s some things you did not know. For example. the chandelier, contrary to popular thought, does not contain at least one of every bone in the human body because there’s a rinky-dink bone in your ear and it is not represented on the chandelier so to say there is all 206 bones is false. The Schwarzenburg family crest off to the side, I now know what the four quadrants represent. The top two and the lower left-hand one represent land ownership and growing assets through various marriages, but the bottom right one, that one is an event. Right before 1600, the Turks and the Hungarians were fighting over a fortress. The Turks lost and the rule in war is after the fighting is over you go and retrieve your dead for proper burial. But the Schwarzenburgs who were in charge said No, Turks, you leave your dead there and watch crows peck their eyes out. And now that’s what that lower quadrant is – a skull with bones shards coming out the top representing the high ponytail the Turks rocked at that point in time, and a bird off to the side of the eye. Interestingly, the wing of the bird is made using a hand that had such crippling arthritis that all the bones are fused. Altogether a lovely addition to any home.

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The other piece of knowledge I acquired was a small display case off in the corner. Several special examples of skull damage are there. The one on the left was whacked with an pickaxe, the one in the middle got a solid wallop from a mace and the one on the right had signs of healing so it appears that that skull had rudimentary surgery performed on it, possibly due to brain swelling. You go Europe, doing brain surgery back in the 1200s.

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After we had stayed our allotted time we went to the Church of St. Barbara. I realized that I called it a cathedral in the post from 2010 and I was corrected. Do you know what makes a church a cathedral? I did not. I thought it was about size or how the floorplan was laid out, with transepts and naves and whatnot. Nope. In order to be a cathedral it has to have a bishop. And even though the Church of St. Barbara is huge and was supposed to have a bishop, it never did so it’s still just a gigantic church.

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The inside is gorgeous and lofty with remnants of polychrome on many of the surfaces.

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Another janky tree on display.

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The windows are almost all art nouveau and they’re great.

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One window is very clearly late 20th / early 21st century work and even though I don’t love the style I was delighted to see hedgehogs represented. A whole family of hedgehogs.

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Most of the chapels have an enormous black and gold baroque altar as the centerpiece.

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One had a considerably older Madonna and Child with it. I started chortling because for a long time sculptors didn’t understand how to distribute weight and balance in their figures, and in this Madonna, combined with her bored-looking expression, made me think she was mid-neck swirl. “Oh no you dint!”

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Another altar had a suit of armor with a bit of muffin-top and a bellybutton.

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The pulpit was also clearly baroque.

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The tour guide took us to several different important things in the church. One was a sculptor of a miner holding a lamp. Kutna Hora used to be a major source of silver and was the mint of the area so most of the people working there were miners. Our guide explained to us that the reason the miner is wearing an leather apron backwards is because it took them two days to climb down into the mine. Eventually they built a wooden slide to get them down faster but it still took forty minutes and HOLY CRAP BUTT SPLINTERS ergo the leather apron to cover your hind-bits.

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The miners are represented in various places throughout the church. There are these smarmy rich guys who owned the mines. “I’m Duke de Wealthy Off The Backs Of Others!” “Oh, are you? I’m Lord Haven’t Done A Day Of Hard Labor In My Life! Pleased to meet you.”

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In one area they show how the money was actually minted. There were two people. One had a decent job, the man who swung the mallet. The other guy, wow. Rough. He had to hold the slug of metal and pray that hammer-dude didn’t miss his mark and smash his fingers. This job was so disliked it was offered to prisoners who had committed robbery in exchange for a substantially reduced sentence. The theory was after six months of holding this position their hands would be so permanently destroyed they would never be able to steal again.

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After four hundred years of rockin’ this terrible technique they finally figured out a system that maimed no one and that was implemented.

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There were many medieval paintings throughout the church. Sadly, we as a people did not know how to “make art good” at that time. Perfect example ? an enormous painting of St. Christopher. St. Christopher was a giant, so large that he used a tree trunk as a walking stick. There was a river that would flood and he would carry people across it, giving him the name “Opher” or “One Who Carries.” At one point a small child came to him late at night and begged St. Christopher to carry him over. Even though it was late St. Christopher obliges, and strangely the child gets heavier and heavier as they are crossing, almost drowning them both. But they make it and when they reach the other side it is revealed that the child was Jesus Christ, which is how the “Christ” got added to the “Opher” making his name “One Who Carries Christ.” The act of St. Christopher crossing the river is supposed to be depicted in this mural but no one knew how to paint water so they put fishes near his legs in the hopes that you, the viewer, would understand that St. Christopher is crossing water. But mere fish wasn’t enough, the artist thought. Let’s throw a lobster in there. And hey, why not add the ugliest mermaid in the world? Put her in there too. Every little bit helps.

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While the paintings got better in the Renaissance, there was still some struggling. Another example – This huge mural of St. Ignatius sick and in Africa. Considering that this was probably painting in the mid-1600s, the artist had not been to Africa and had to resort to heresay about how to represent the continent. So, starting from the lower right-hand corner, there’s a blue genie (à la Aladdin), a horny camel making sexy-face at the viewer while licking his lips, a bunch of guys in turbans, a valiant attempt to render a lion, an equally valiant attempt to render an elephant, and one black guy who might be Indian. Africa!

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After the church we went to an authentic restaurant for lunch where I had, what else? Meat and dumplings. This time it was wild boar goulash. And it was lovely.

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The restaurant itself was amazing. First of all, they had a great menu translated in English. Both Neenernator and I had a giggle over 3A.

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A freaking sword, people!

Whoever decorated the restaurant really embraced the weirder side of old European painting. I was totally loving it.

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Post-lunch we headed over to the mint as the sun was setting. We only had a short time there, but we got a chance to see the now-cemented-over doors of the individual money-makers.

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And the fountain that they really should have turned off before it got so cold out.

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As we headed away from the church down the hill to the train I turned around and got this neat shot.

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The next day we flew back home. That was my trip and it was great. Once again, much thanks to Neenernator and her family for making me feel so welcome. Here are a few pictures that were left over.

The train station in Neenernator’s home town. That particular area of Germany uses bricks predominantly in their buildings but they’re all these grim brown ones. The train station used these delightful orange ones. C’mon, rest of Ottersberg! Orange bricks! Get on board!

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This bakery is called Le Crobag. It seems like an insult. I have taken to calling people “crobags” under my breath.

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The perpetual rain in Germany isn’t all bad. Some beautiful moss grows because of it. This was a rock right outside Neenernator’s front door.

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A sign on the side of a German elevator. It appears from the picture that you should not elevator. I wish it was more specific.

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The most terrifying stairwell I have ever seen. It was in the Bremen town hall. The fact that the Amnesty International booth was directly under a railing that looks like a torture device was not lost on me.

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Some beer tankards in Prague that look like startled fish.

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And a stone carving.

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That’s it. My trip to Germany.

Germany Part 6 (technically Prague).

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015

Prague! God, I love Prague. The architecture never stops being the best. So stabby and pointy and riddled with Art Nouveau. It’s got to be one of my favorite cities.

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After we checked into our hotel (The Grand Hotel Bohemia, fantastic hotel, I highly recommend it) we trekked up to the top of the mountain to see St. Vitus’ Cathedral. Neenernator loves Mucha and so do I, so I wanted her to see the stained glass window in the cathedral. I actually prefer St. Barbara’s Church (the church in Kutna Hora that we went to the next day) but St. Vitus is nothing to sneeze at.

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One of the things I enjoy the most in St. Vitus is how they just smashed all the different styles all together with zero concern for flow. The baroque is smacking right up to the medieval which is snuggling with some modern what-not, it’s like a attic of design. A big pile o’ art.

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Plus there’s tall vaulted ceilings and regular, non-Mucha stained glass windows.

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AND there’s a lot of dead people tastefully displayed. I’ve talked in the past about my love of reliquaries, so seeing bits of saints in glass cases just brightens my day.

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I have seen the Mucha window before, but it doesn’t matter how many times you see it, it flattens you every time. Just blows you away with its beauty. Ugh, right in the heart.

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There’s a tomb area where a bishop is laid to rest, but both Neenernator and I showed our complete lack of reverence in our own special ways. I was delighted by the dragons above the grave.

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And Neenernator was convinced the bishop was a giant fish.

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Behind St. Vitus’ Cathedral is an additional, considerably older church called St. George’s Basilica. It’s from, like, 1000 A.D. but at some point the powers that be decided that there desperately needed to be a garish Baroque facade on the front. And so it came to pass.

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The inside continues to be regular old. No baroque.

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In the basement was a crypt with one of the creepiest sculptures I’ve seen in a while.

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St. George is big in Prague. I cannot figure out why, since there are no ties between him and Prague in any way, but periodically as you walk through the city you will find a sculpture or tableau or painting of him on a horse slaying a dragon.

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St. Vitus’ Cathedral and St. George’s Basilica are part of a large complex called Prague Castle. There’s all kinds of buildings in there, it’s pretty much an entire village. There are streets that show where the cobblers and metalworkers and ceramicists lived. In front of the former ceramicist’s house (all the tiny homes have been converted into wee museums or shops) there was a delightful wreath covered with small ceramic wares.

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Many of the storehouses were turned into museums as well. Neenernator’s favorite was the armory.

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I posed with the rack of angry-villagers-attacking-Frankenstein’s-monster weapons.

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There were a great many combo-weapons. This one is a gun-sword.

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And this is a neato device. Fire off your shot, then flip it over – poof! It’s a crossbow. It made me think of The Janitor from Scrubs.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x22yNaLdiGA

Off to one side of the armory was a shooting gallery where, if one desired, one could fire a crossbow of their very own. Neenernator was super-excited to do that. She didn’t do too bad either. When the apocalypse comes and the zombies arise, hang out with her. She can handle her zombie-killing tools.

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After we had checked out all the things in the castle that we wanted to see we walked back down the mountain to our hotel which meant we walked right through the middle of the central square. Still awesome but, as opposed to the last time I was there (around Easter), there is a giant glittering dripping Christmas tree.

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It’s a standard European Christmas market but with a few local twists. For example, you can get a thing that I call a turtleneck. It’s spelled trdelnik and it’s a piece of dough wound around a large wooden dowel and then baked over a fire. Then sugar is quickly poured around the outside and it is slid off the dowel and handed to you. The particular booth we went to gave it to us with plum jam on the inside. As you can imagine, it is delicious.

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A few things before I head into Kutna Hora and the surrounding area:

The Christmas tree at Prag Castle. I’m telling you, Europeans have no problem with jacked-up looking trees. They’re much more tolerant than we (Americans) are.

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Neenernator standing next to a door at St. Vitus. She is five-foot-one, maybe five-foot-two. That gives you an idea of the door’s height.

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An awesome weathervane.

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A chess set that is gnomes versus dragons. I was tempted. I don’t play and have nowhere to put it which is why I ultimately didn’t purchase it, but I thought about it.

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And the sweet (no pun intended) gingerbread house in our hotel.

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Next, the final installment of the trip: Kutna Hora.