For my trip from Cologne to Berlin, I booked many weeks in advance a seat on a morning IntercCity Express ICE train. I’ve travelled on this route enough to know it’s generally full, which is why I absorbed the cost of a 1st-class fare. For the scheduled 4.7-hour trip, the extra space and quiet (fewer total people in an individual car) is worth the reduced stress. (IC and ICE trains are not included in the Deutschland-Ticket.)
I tempted fate when I reckoned I could reach Berlin by 3pm: sounds simple. But as I write, the express has become a slow march.
With a failure in the overhead power about a third of the way along the route, the train is diverted onto regional tracks rated for a lower travel speed, and the expected duration has ballooned to 6.3 hours. Welp, people here talk poorly about the once-timely Deutsche Bahn, but many years of funding cuts to infrastructure and development have naturally led to something like this, and at an alarming frequency.
After many hours in a train seat, I feel as tired as having been on a plane. Barely awake in Berlin, I head straight to my accommodations, followed by a quick jaunt to the mall nearby to stock the small shelves and refrigerator in the apartment.
The Berlin experiment of 2025 can begin tomorrow. That is, after I go pick up an extra roll of paper towels and a small bottle of dishwashing soap.
The planned stop in Bielefeld is cancelled because of the failure in the overhead power lines in that area. To reach Hannover, our express train ICE 557 has diverted to the east onto regional tracks rated for lower travel speeds.
Arrival: Hannover central station, 95 minutes late.
Expected arrival time at Berlin Hbf (central station).
Screenshot DB mobile iOS App. Total train time 6 hr and total travel time 7 hr: ach sowas! But to reach my final accommodations, I have a couple of short train-segments and a final bus-segment.
I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 14 May 2025. I received neither request nor compensation for this content. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.
Gerhard Mercator was a 16th-century geographer and cartographer whose techniques of the time revolutionized map-making. Named after him is the Mercator projection which he created for a world map in 1569. The Mercator is one of the most widely used projections to map the entire world.
Gerhard Mercator. Duisburg, Germany. I wanted to go and find out.
I purchased a new Deutschland-Ticket (DE-Ticket) for 58€ which allows for travel on all modes of city and regional transport. With the ticket “embedded” in the iOS app, it is a simple matter of displaying the ticket’s digital QR-code for the inevitable on-board fare inspection.
From Köln, I travelled first on one of the city’s trams from my hotel to the nearest train station Messe-Deutz, where I caught a RE regional-express train northbound to the central station in Duisburg (DU). Upon arrival, I got onto the city’s 901 tram for the short ride to the stop at Rathaus. All of this multimodal travel is included in the DE-Ticket, as well as my return to Köln.
Born in Flanders in 1512, Gerhard Mercator eventually moved to the vital imperial trade port of Duisburg in 1552, where he lived until his death in 1594. He was buried in Duisburg’s oldest house of worship, Salvatorkirche (Church of Our Saviour), located next to the Rathaus (city hall). Although bombing in World War 2 brought severe damage, the grave plate remained relatively intact, and subsequently repaired and restored. The epitaph is presently mounted inside on the church’s south wall to the right of the main altar.
I include additional images of the Mercatorbrunnen (Mercator memorial fountain) in front of the Rathaus, and the sculpture “Hommage À Mercator” (homage to Mercator) about 0.5 km walk to the east and near the location where the house in which Mercator lived is now an archaeological site.
In the Mercator projection shown below, the map is centred so that the central line of north-south meridian at 0 degrees longitude goes through Greenwich, England. The ArcGIS also describes:
Mercator is a cylindrical projection. The meridians are vertical lines, parallel to each other, and equally spaced, and they extend to infinity when approaching the poles. The lines of (east-west) latitude are horizontal straight lines, perpendicular to the meridians and the same length as the equator, but they become farther apart toward the poles. The poles project to infinity and cannot be shown on the map.
World map in Mercator-style projection, by Miaow Miaow for Wikipedia (CC3.0). Note the exaggerated projection-sizes for Canada’s Ellesmere Island, Greenland, and the grand apparent whopper that is Antarctica. It’s also the “classic” problem of mapping a 3-dimensional sphere that is our world onto a 2-dimensional plane that is the common map.
Epitaph (grave plate) for Gerhard Mercator, inside Salvatorkirche. The German translation to the original Latin inscription can be found here.
Closeup view of Mercator’s epitaph.
Mercator memorial fountain, in front of Duisburg city hall.
Mercatorbrunnen (Mercator memorial fountain).
“Hommage à Mercator”, by Friedrich Werthmann, 1963. Across the street in the background is an archaeological site including the location of Mercator’s house.
Duisburg Rathaus & Salvatorkirche at left & right, respectively, as viewed from Alte Post. The Salvatorkirche is the city’s oldest building of worship with a temple first established at the site in the late 9th-century CE. The roots of the present-day church go back to the 14th-15th century CE.
The city’s central station is presently undergoing massive construction. The signage shown here used to hang above tracks 12 & 13.
Deutschland-Ticket for May 2025, purchased on the mobile iOS MVV-App the day before my scheduled flight to Europe. The purchase details ran almost identical to 2024.
Except the first Wiki image, I made all remaining images above with an iPhone15 on 13 May 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.
It’s good I’m able to catch up with former colleagues. I.D. and I used to be astronomers, pursuing different lines of research on the evolution of dwarf galaxies. They now work for the respectable European Space Agency; and as for me, I’ve gone picked up “flâneur.”
After my short trip north from Frankfurt to Köln, we meet in the latter city’s Heumarkt for beer, followed by a stroll through the Old Town to the Cathedral and central station, where we go our separate ways.
Heumarkt (former hay market).
Sünner im Wahlfisch / sinners in the whale; the building dates back to 1626.
Whale 🐳 lantern
It’s about knowing where I am. “Alles nur für dich” / everything just for you.
Domplatz (Cathedral Plaza), for last light of the day.
I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 12 May 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.
A lack of consistent sleep and a punishing yet rewarding Saturday meant Sunday and travel day 4 was tuned way down. But the forecast was sun and +23C. I’m on the move, but on a gentler pace around the city.
Dornbusch
With the U-Bahn north to Dornbusch, the underground passage leads to a small memorial wall, emphasizing the presence and traces of the Frank family in the neighbourhood until their move to Amsterdam in 1933. Artist Bernd Fischer created the memorial wall which the city inaugurated in 2009. The picture is one of the last family portraits, made by patriarch Otto of his wife, Edith, and two daughters Anne and Margot; the location is believed to be in the city, possibly near Hauptwache. All three women in the picture perished in the Holocaust. Otto survived and went to join his relatives in Basel where he spent the rest of his life.
Fotogedenkwand / Photo memorial wall.
One can almost hear the two daughters pleading with their dad to get on with it so they can get going, even as mum tries to placate them.
Dornbusch station: U2 southbound to Südbahnhof.
Neuer Börneplatz
Once the centre of the city’s Jewish community, the synagogue was destroyed in the 1938 Pogrom. The surviving adjacent cemetery is an important part of the city’s Museum Judengasse. On the wall surrounding the cemetery are over 11-thousand blocks, each with a name and representing a person from Frankfurt who died in the Holocaust. This is the memorial where I find the names: Edith Frank, Margot Frank, and Annelies Frank.
Gedenkstätte Neuer Börneplatz.
Edith, 1900-1945.
Margot, 1926-1945.
Annelies, 1929-1945.
I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 11 May 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.
Good timing is everything. Only yesterday did I learn Frankfurt is hosting Nacht der Museen today (10 May). Over 40 museums and institutions open their doors tonight at 7pm, and close between 1 and 2am. One nifty 17€ price purchasable online includes access to all participating venues, as well as public transport.
I decide to visit the Jewish Museum from 845pm to 1030pm, and the Städel Art Museum from 11pm to 145am.
Queue to the Jewish Museum Frankfurt (JMF). JMF staff went down the queue and took orders for drinks at the patio bar.
Frankfurt, 1929: 3-year old Margot Frank with her baby sister Annelies. Photo likely taken by their father Otto.
Frankfurt, 1929: Frank family nanny Katherina Stilgenbauer with baby Annelies as her big sister Margot looks on.
42 internationally translated versions of Anne Frank’s diary.
Otto Frank displays the Auschwitz number tattooed on his left arm. “It’s a miracle that I’m still alive,” he said. On Otto’s maternal side, the Frank family have been present in Frankfurt since the late 17th-century.
Städel Art Museum. The queue to the east was about 100-people deep. The queue to the west was “only” 20 deep; I chose wisely.
“Horde”, by Daniel Richter, 2007.
There’s very little doubt who and what these figures represent.
“Untitled (Genoa Riot)”, by Armin Boehm, 2007.
“Mountain King (Tunnel) 2 Planets”, by Joseph Beuys, cast 1971.
Very appropriate for Frankfurt: “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”, by Andy Warhol, 1982.
I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 10 May 2025. I received neither request nor compensation for this content. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.
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