MyRTW | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘MyRTW’ category

My around the world journey: Dec 2011-Jan 2013

IHolocaustdenkmal, Berlin, Germany, fotoeins.com

International Holocaust Remembrance Day: observations from Germany

Primo Levi, Italian-Jewish author, chemist, and Auschwitz survivor, delivered a set of essays about life and survival in Nazi extermination camps in his 1986 book “The Drowned and the Saved”. Levi wrote:

… For us to speak with the young becomes even more difficult. We see it as a duty and, at the same time, as a risk: the risk of appearing anachronistic, of not being listened to. We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experiences, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental, unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It took place in the teeth of all forecasts; it happened in Europe; incredibly, it happened that an entire civilized people, just issued from the fervid cultural flowering of Weimar, followed a buffoon whose figure today inspires laughter, and yet Adolf Hitler was obeyed and his praises were sung right up to the catastrophe. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say.

On 27 January 1945, Soviet Red Army troops liberated the Nazi concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in south-central Poland. Over 1 million men, women, and children were murdered.

The United Nations declared January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day; the designation came during the 42nd plenary session of the United Stations when resolution 60/7 was passed on 1 November 2005.

Accepting and openly stating responsibility are critical first steps, but spending time, money, and effort to ensure the simple motto of “never again” is also an ongoing reality that isn’t solely up to the citizens of Germany. It’s a collective responsibility that we all should have to remain vigilant; that we all have to recognize and bolster actions which encourage and strengthen the universality of human rights, and reject the erosion and withdrawal of those rights.

I believe responsible tourism also includes paying appropriate respect at a memorial, especially the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. It’s my view this important memorial is not (supposed to be) a playground.

And yet, there’s something to be said about what it means to have freedom in the early 21st-century, allowing people to laugh and frolic in the public space, an undulating sculpture of featureless massive grey cement blocks, a testimonial to the systematic murder of millions of people.

Naturally, you have the freedom to play here, take selfies, and have a grand time. But it doesn’t mean I’m gonna laugh with you; for example: Yolocaust art project (DW 2017).

( Click here for more )

Laupahoehoe Point, Laupahoehoe, Hamakua Coast, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, myRTW, fotoeins.com

Hawaii Big Island: A Tranquil Tip at Laupāhoehoe

I’m standing in the warm ocean breeze, with rustling palm trees and crashing ocean surf for company. My friend appears from around the corner, and she tosses me a look before breaking out to a smile; I must be sporting a ridiculous gobsmacked expression.

New land laid with volcanic lava takes days, weeks, even years; but breaking the land down takes millions of years. Even with abundant foliage as partial deterrents, the absolute power of moving water and the unstoppable process of erosion must produce the inevitable; the hardest of rock gets pounded into submission, broken and ground down to fine particles of sand. But all that fun geology is forgotten in this rural idyll next to the open ocean, and it’s a big reason why about 600 people make this place their home.

On the Big Island of Hawaii, the drive on the number 19 Mamalahoa Highway north from the state capital city of Hilo turns northwest along the Hāmākua Coast. The scenery becomes a mix of grassy meadows along the descending flank of the Mauna Kea volcano, accompanied by deep gulches and steep cliffs dropping into the Pacific Ocean.

The word Laupāhoehoe means “a flat or tip of smooth lava” for the tip of land that sticks out into the water. At its peak in the late 19th- and early 20th-century, more than two thousand people lived in the town, self-contained with a school, stores, and a hospital. Taro root farms, cane plantations, and the Laupāhoehoe Sugar Factory (1880) provided employment and the local economy. Factory operations ceased in the mid-1990s, bringing a century of sugar-making along the island’s east coast to an end.

On 1 April 1946, a strong earthquake occurred inn the Aleutian islands on the Alaska coast. The resulting tsunami swept across the Pacific Ocean, and arrived at Hawaii at about 7am local time¹. Waves up to 15 metres (50 feet) high hit the Big Island, creating widespread damage and killing over 150 people in total. At Laupāhoehoe, multiple waves struck, wiping out the only rail link to Hilo, and causing property damage; over 20 died, drowned, or went missing. After the tsunami, the school and houses moved back and further up the slope. The loss and subsequent abandonment of the rail line connection to Hilo meant a loss of transport, shipping, and tourism; the town population never recovered to the numbers in its heyday. The 1946 tsunami’s reach, power, and resulting destruction raised calls for an early warning system, and by 1949, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre was in operation in Hawaii.

Near the shoreline is a memorial to those who perished in 1946. Not far from the memorial, someone has jammed a fishing pole between rocks next to the breakwater. Life continues here, slowly and surely. The warm breeze still comes onshore, fallen palm fronds lay scattered on the beach, and ocean meets beach in a wet foamy crash.

Memorial to the perished at the 1946 tsunami (picture by Wmpearl for Wikipedia, CC1 license).

From Laupāhoehoe Point: east-southeast towards Welokā (centre) and Pāpa’Aloa. (centre-right)

Built in 1983 by the US Army Corps of Engineers, this breakwater consists of concrete tetrapod wave-breakers.

Life in the harbor.

¹With Google Maps, the distance from Scotch Cap at the southwest tip of Unimak Island in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands to the northern tip of the Hawaiian island of Oahu is about 3700 kilometres (2300 miles). After the 1946 earthquake in Alaska, tsunami waves arrived at Hawaii about 5 hours after the earthquake, making the “surface speed” 740 kilometres per hour (460 miles per hour) which is consistent with general speed estimates. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center created a model animation for the 1946 earthquake, and the video animation is on YouTube.

With one exception, I made the other photos on 21 January 2012 at the beginning of my year-long RTW. Thanks to MK for guiding me to new and unseen (for me) parts of the Big Island. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-9jx.

My Cologne: there’s a lighthouse that never goes out

Above/featured: Mural of the Helios structure, Köln Ehrenfeld, 9 Jan 2013 (450D).

Why is there a lighthouse located in the middle of the city? That makes no sense!

Did the Rhine river once flow here? Is that why there’s a lighthouse?

Is the structure some kind of forgotten remnant of the past?

Maybe that’s not a lighthouse, but rather a beacon that lets people know about a fire somewhere in the neighbourhood.

These are some of the questions and statements posed by Cologne residents when asked if they know anything about the lighthouse in their midst.

Located in the Ehrenfeld¹ borough of Cologne is a red brick 44-metre (144-foot) high lighthouse. But why is there a lighthouse at all in the “middle” of Cologne? The Rhine river flows through the city, but the river is hardly visible from the lighthouse at a distance of about 3 kilometres (2 miles). The structure is not an actual operating lighthouse; it’s a symbol of early 20th-century enterprise from what was once one of the most important companies in Europe and marking the location of a big factory that once manufactured electrical equipment including maritime lights.

Founded in 1882, Helios² established their presence in the town of Ehrenfeld before the latter was incorporated into the greater city of Cologne in 1888. The company once boasted a staff complement of over 2000 people, with products sold in Germany and Europe ranging from electrical generators and transformers, light bulbs, light fixtures in public spaces, and electrical streetcars. Helios also built light towers for the North and Baltic Sea coastlines, including ones at Roter Sand (Weser river estuary), Borkum and Wangerooge (East Frisian Islands), and Sylt. The onsite lighthouse in Ehrenfeld was constructed as a testing facility and never used as a navigational aid or marker. The company overextended its financial reach until Berlin’s AEG³ purchased Helios in 1905. Manufacturing operations in Ehrenfeld ceased in 1930, bringing a final end to Helios’ business presence in Cologne.

The present-day buildings which remain are used as office- and art-space. As historical landmark, the “Helios Leuchtturm” remains as part of the urban heritage in Ehrenfeld and Cologne. If the people in both borough and city have any final say in the matter, the lighthouse will never have to go out.⁴

( Click here for images and more )

Augustusbruecke, Neustadt, Dresden, Germany, fotoeins.com

Dresdner Weihnachtsmärkte – Dresden’s Christmas Markets

You’re visiting Dresden, either on a day-trip from Berlin or Leipzig, or you’re staying in Dresden for a couple of nights. By day, you’ll see, for example, the Semper Oper and the Zwinger, and you’ll walk through the Neustadt. At night after dinner, you might catch the golden glow cast by lights on the architecture.

But by late-November in the Saxon state capital city, you will likely encounter at least one of the following Christmas markets in the city:

( Click here for images and more )

Altstadt, Inn river, Inn, Innstadt, Passau, Bayern, Bavaria, Germany, fotoeins.com

Passau: the town of Three Rivers (Dreiflüssestadt)

Next to the Austrian border in the southeastern corner of Germany lies the Bavarian town of Passau. At the city’s so-called ‘Ortspitze’, three rivers converge: the black Ilz from the north, the green Inn from the south, and the blue Danube from the west. The unique setting provides the city with the nickname or moniker “Bavarian Venice.” Facing east and up and over the hills in the distance is Austria.

With a few short hours of late-autumn and winter daylight, I chase the remaining light on foot through a bitter windchill. The following pictures show it’s worth the effort and the sacrifice of comfort: “always for the shot(s).”

( Click here for images and more )