Five museums in four German towns and cities

The Teknik Museum in Speyer sure knows
how to announce its presence in some style

A small visual taste of what's on exhibit
in the museum's cavernous main building

Ever since I was a young child, I've been fascinated by museums -- and for a time, museums were my professional vocation as well as extra-curricular love. And even while those days are long gone since I worked in (and studied) museological establishments, I have continued to visit my share of those institutions in various parts of the world. So it won't come as too much of a surprise to know that I checked out my share of museums on my German holiday back in July (more than a month ago now -- how time flies!).

Not counting such as cathedral treasuries, Speyer's Jewish Courtyard (which a woman working though pointed out is a memorial as opposed to museum) and The Sacred Site of Isis and Mater Magna in Mainz, my German friend and I visited five museums in four towns and cities.

First up was the Pharmaceutical Museum housed inside of Heidelberg Castle. If truth be told, it was on the small and dry side as far as I was concerned -- and I was much more enamored of others of the castle's attractions, including its sizable gardens and the views to be had from various parts of it.

Far more impressive (as well as interesting and plain fun) for my money was Speyer's Teknik Museum. After getting "churched-out" in that town, a visit to that vast technical museum filled with all manner of aeroplanes (including a Lufthansa Jumbo Jet), boats (including a German U-boat!), trains (including one from China!) and assorted other vehicles and machinery, including those for farming and leisure (such as a carousel!) was just the ticket to feel refreshed enough so that I actually did end up returning to Speyer Cathedral later that day (albeit to attend an organ concert!)!

A few days later, I had the treat of visiting not just one but two world class museums in Cologne. On my first day in that wonderful city, my German friend and I spent several hours checking out the art on offer at the Museum Ludwig. (And it was sheer coincidence and luck that there was a special exhibition on the works of a favorite artist, Roy Lichtenstein, there when we visited.)

On day two, we spent even more time at the Wallraf-Ritchartz-Museum which I found myself loving not only for the seven centuries worth of art on display within its walls but the superb effort on the part of the curators through such as three different categories of labels (i.e., general ones, those geared for children and gay-focused ones geared to coincide with Cologne's hosting this year's Gay Games) to inform and educate about art and so much more. If only more museums -- including the Museum Ludwig, actually... -- could be take so much pain to inform and educate, and in a really interesting way too!

Finally, in the last German city I spent several hours in on this recent holiday, I visited one of the oldest museums of printing in the world. Mainz's Gutenberg Museum celebrates the work of Johannes Gutenberg and more. With time running out, my German friend and I rushed more through this museum than we did the others we visited together. At the same time though, I also had to skip through and over quite a few sections because they didn't have labels -- only titles! -- in English...

All in all, however, I can't -- and won't -- complain because the truth of the matter is that I thought that my time in the museums I visited this recent holiday were generally very well spent. And money too, actually... even though after getting accustomed to the really low -- generally HK$10, and free on Wednesdays for some (and free at all times for others!) in the bargain! -- of Hong Kong's museums, it admittedly came as a shock to discover that some museums' admission fees actually were over 10 Euros: i.e., more than ten times that of some very worthy museological establishments indeed that are found in the Big Lychee such as the Hong Kong Museum of History, Hong Kong Heritage Museum and Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence!

More Hong Kong wildlife

Spotted this afternoon by the side of
Tai Tam Reservoir Road: a lizard perched so still
it seemed like it was posing for a photo!

In contrast, this colorful snake-like lizard was moving about
so quickly, so it really was hard to spot and photograph

And it's really hard to understand why this crab was
scurrying about in the same vicinity as the second lizard!

Before anyone asks: Yes, I went hiking earlier today -- and I'm so glad I did not least because the afternoon turned out to be one with beautiful blue skies and clear air as a result of the rain of the past few days, nights and this morning having finally washed away the air pollution of the previous week or so.

Because of the recent rains, I elected to hike on a trail through Tai Tam Country Park that was mainly paved but knew also would offer up beautiful views -- including of a couple of the Tai Tam Reservoirs -- as it took us from Wong Nai Chung Gap to Kornhill via Quarry Gap, Mount Parker Road and the Quarry Bay Tree Walk. However, little did I know beforehand that this Hong Kong Island hike would also yield quite a number of interesting wildlife sightings -- including not only spiders and snails but also a couple of very different lizards and... a crab!

With regards to the lizards: the first one (which the AFCD's HK Species guide identifies as an agamid known as the changeable lizard) looked like a tiny descendant of a dinosaur while I initially mistook the second one for a snake -- so tiny were the skink's limbs! But while they were more eye-catching in shape, the crab truly was the most unexpected creature sighted this afternoon -- seeing as this afternoon's hike took my regular hiking companion and I nowhere near the sea.

Finding it really hard to believe that someone would carry the crab all the way into the middle of a country park to release it, I think that another hiker's hypothesis may make the most sense: i.e., that the crab was caught by a bird that somehow contrived to drop it as it was flying overhead and a few kilometers inland... In any case, it seems to provide proof positive that wonders never cease, especially those of nature! ;b

Hot (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

The last time that hot was the Photo Hunt theme of the week (back on November 24, 2007), I went for a hot weather option. But seeing much truth as I do in the saying that variety is the spice of life -- and so much so this is the second blog post in a row in which I find it appropriate to mention this idiom in the first paragraph! -- I've gone for a different take on the theme this time around: one which involves hot and spicy food, the kind that can make it feel like your mouth is on fire and cause your sweat glands to work over time...

More specifically, regardless of whether it's served at the eatery that actually has the unwieldy name of Eating in Sanctum of Hot & Spice or elsewhere, the cuisine of Thailand gets my vote for being the hottest food I've ever eaten. For although I do realize that Thai dishes include non-spicy options like delicious mango with sticky rice (and rich coconut milk), items such as nam prik (Thai chilli pastes or dipping sauces) and tom yam kung are so spicy hot that they have often caused me to cry even while I masochistically continue savoring them (because they really are so very tasty as well as often downright painful to eat!).

Considering that Thailand is the northern neighbor of my home country of Malaysia, it can seem strange that I first became majorly drawn to Thai food when living in England. But this is indeed the case -- and due in no small part due to an airline flight engineer uncle of mine introducing me to his favorite Thai restaurant, located in the basement of a Kensington High Street building, that I would make a point to go eat at each time I went to London during a half-term break from boarding school.

In the years since, I also came to have favorite Thai eateries when living in Philadelphia (including a neighborhood restaurant in West Philadelphia whose owners previously had been behind the famous Thai food truck that would park by Penn's campus) and now in Hong Kong (particularly in Kowloon City but also Kennedy Town). Still, it's true enough that Thai food is best eaten in Thailand... so much so that some twenty years on, I still find myself recalling with great pleasure a mouth-watering dinner I had in Chiang Mai, one that of course was characteristically hot and spicy but also oh so very delicious! :b

Cologne Cathedral views from a variety of angles (Photo-essay)

Variety, as the proverbial "they" say, is the spice of life. Hence it was that a couple of days after getting "churched out" while visiting the church-filled and cathedral-dominated town of Speyer, I got my German friend to agree that, even though it also is home to twelve important Romanesque churches as well as a UNESCO World Heritage listed cathedral, we would restrict ourselves to visiting just one Christian place of worship over the course of the two days we spent in Cologne.

As one might expect, the one religious establishment we visited in Cologne was its magnificent cathedral that took more than 600 years to be completed. And while six centuries does seem like an uncommonly lengthy amount of time to devote to constructing a single structure, the following photo-essay should help provide some visual evidence of the Kolner Dom's huge size and the incredible amount of detail adorning much of it; both aspects that go quite a ways to help account for the many man-hours spent working on this undeniably impressive edifice...

The first photo I took in Cologne was of --
you guessed it! -- its monumental cathedral

Even from a few kilometers away, and the other side  
of the Rhine, it's hard to ignore the fact that
Cologne's cathedral dominates the city's landscape

Close up shot of the cathedral's south portal

Zooming in even more to focus on
the portal's central Madonna and child statue

The enclosed location within the Kolner Dom of
the golden gilded Sarcophogus of the Magi that is thought
to contain the bones of the biblical Three Magi
shows how treasured it is

The cathedral also is home to the 10th century
Gero Cross that has been variously described as
the oldest surviving monumental crucifix north of the Alps
and oldest full size cross in the western world

Conservators (and/or restorers) at work
in the heart of the monumental structure

For all of its undoubted artistic value and beauty however,
the cathedral undoubtedly remains primarily a place of worship
for many -- something that, despite not being all that
religious inclined myself, I nonetheless found pretty touching

Hong Kong wildlife

One of numerous large spiders spotted
along Stage 10 of the Lantau Trail
(click on the photo to enlarge it and really get a scare!)

Feral cows wandering about on Cheung Sha Beach

Unlike the previous two weekends, I didn't go hiking this weekend and thus didn't massively add to my photo collection. (Instead, I attended two Summer International Film Festival screenings and viewed one more movie at the Hong Kong Film Archive -- add a movie viewed this past Thursday and Friday and even this movie geek does think that she's seen more than her fair share of films in the past half week or so! [N.B. For interested readers, I have a regularly updated Most Recently Viewed Movies list on the left section of this blog, complete with links to trailers and/or reviews of the films.])

So rather than share photos taken this weekend, here's sharing two taken two Sundays ago -- and thus 'compensate' for not having a photo of the large snake I crossed paths with last Sunday by showing other photos of wildlife that hikers are known to encounter in Hong Kong.

On the subject of spiders: now that I've come to think of it, the largest spiders I've seen in Hong Kong have been far away from the Sai Kung Peninsula -- not only in the wilds of Lantau but also in Tai Lam Country Park. As for bovine creatures: Yes, I know that I've put up photos of the Big Lychee's not inconsiderable cow population on this blog before (e.g., here and here) but I reckon that the photo in this entry is particularly worth sharing because of how the scene is made really surreal by the amusingly casual disregard of the cows by the humans in the picture.

In any case, I trust that the two photos once again provide proof positive of the existence of a far different side to Hong Kong than the concrete urban jungle that many people most associate with this part of the world... :)

Framed (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

A few years ago on a trip to Bangkok, my mother complained of getting "Wat-ted out" as a result of visiting too many Wats (Thai Buddhist temples) in one day. My equivalent moment came on the afternoon of the fourth full day of my recent German holiday -- and in the middle of visiting a UNESCO World Heritage listed cathedral, no less!

The imperial cathedral of Speyer is an unquestionably impressive monument to Christendom -- and it most definitely is the largest Romanesque religious establishment that I have ever visited in my life. But it also happened to be the third Christian place of worship I was visiting that day -- and fourth religious establishment, if one includes the remains of a similarly Romanesque-era synagogue (in particular, its mikvah that is the oldest remaining Jewish ritual bath in Central Europe) --and seventh in two consecutive days.

And Speyer also is home to a collection of some of the -- sorry if this offends some Photo Hunters and other visitors to this blog, but this is how I have to admit to feeling about it -- more bizarre objects of veneration I have ever seen. Like a jewel encrusted as well as framed human bone(!) that is said to come from a saint; and thus is considered a religious relic. (Other relics in its collection include pieces of wood said to come from the true cross but there really were a lot of human bones on display in that part of the cathedral that also is famous for its crypt being the final resting place of eight German emperorors and kings, four queens and a number of bishops...)

On the other hand, I did manage to appreciate other, more conventional framed objects inside of Speyer's religious establishments -- such as the late Gothic winged Bossweiler Altar of St. Ludwig that dates back to 1485. And even in my "churched out" state, I did (do) recognise that churches and cathedrals, especially in countries like Germany with their long history of Christianity, are homes to impressive religious objects that are bona fide works of art in and of themselves. (Heck, their very buildings often are so as well!) :)

From one end of Speyer's Maximilianstrasse to the other (Photo-essay)

A couple of blog entries back, a few readers wrote in the comments thread of being happy to see Hong Kong-centric entries again after my marked German focus of the past few weeks. But the fact of the matter is that close to one month after my German holiday, I still have quite a few thoughts about, and photos from, that trip that I want to share... including the following photos taken on a day trip to the quiet town of approximately 50,000 inhabitants and a UNESCO World Heritage-listed cathedral that is Speyer:-

After arriving by train into Speyer,
my German friend took me directly to climb
the tower of the town's Altportel (Old Gate),
parts of which date back to the 13th century

...from whose top grand views could be had --
including this one of the Maximilianstrasse
and, at the end of that street, Speyer Cathedral

As previously noted, I found Speyer
to be an unexpectedly quiet and uncrowded town

However, this is not to say I disliked the place --
and, in particular, I really liked the Altportel
and how it inspired me to take artistic photos

A view through an old window of the Altportel
that got me thinking of historical times
and maybe also fairytale places

Puppet Ponyo posing on Speyer's Maximilianstrasse
(after heading out of the cathedral fresh from
an organ music concert that evening)

An unobscured-by-Ponyo view of Speyer Cathedral

Close-up shot of the front of the impressively
monumental Romanesque cathedral that is
the largest Romanesque edifice in Germany