MyRTW | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘MyRTW’ category

My around the world journey: Dec 2011-Jan 2013

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD, USA, MLB, baseball, Baltimore Orioles, fotoeins.com

Baltimore: Oriole Park at Camden Yards

I’m a longtime baseball fan, going way back to the days of watching on CBC Television many Montréal Expos’ home games at Jarry Park Stadium, and back to the inaugural seasons for both the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays. I’ve been looking forward to visiting Camden Yards in Baltimore since its completion in 1992. I’m visiting friends in Baltimore as one of many North American stops in my 2012 around-the-world (RTW) trip. With the added bonus of the stadium’s 20th anniversary, we’re on a weekday-afternoon tour of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Although baseball season is already a few weeks in, there are only six of us on the tour. It feels like we have all of Camden Yards to ourselves.

I’m also a fan of sports history. A few weeks earlier, I returned to Toronto for the first time in ten years, and I found some ‘religion’ in the presence of “The Holy Grail” inside the Hockey Hall of Fame. Here at Camden Yards, it’s special to examine an important part of Oriole and baseball lore, reading about Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson, and seeing the various displays for Cal Ripken Jr.

At home plate, I imagine I’m at bat, and smacking a 3-2 outside fastball towards the warehouse wall in right field, and I’m rounding the bases …

( Click here for images and more )

My Berlin: Schöneberg

Above/featured: Entrance to U-Bahnhof Rathaus Schöneberg.

It seems as universal as the common opinion about how cool and interesting Berlin is.

Both residents and visitors mention the same names in conversations throughout the city: Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte, Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, Neukölln, and the hybrid “KreuzKölln”, even as Wedding and Lichtenberg begin weaving their way into the dialogue.

Of the neighbourhoods within the city’s Ring, what about Charlottenburg or Schöneberg? The answers often arrive as expected. Why would anyone visit there or live there? It’s boring! It’s too quiet! It’s dead! Lots of sniffy snobby dismissive exclamation points! That few choose the area is precisely why I’m in Schöneberg for three months at the tail end of my year-long around-the-world.

For many in Berlin, they’re living, working, and playing in areas where they’re close to the action and housing costs may on average be slightly cheaper. There’s something to be said about proximity and small “stumbling distances” after a night of drinking. For some, Schöneberg is too far, too expensive, too quiet, or all of the above. I don’t mind the 20-, 30-, or 45-minute travel times to places where friends eat, drink, or hang out.

It’s always a matter of choice for me to be in Schöneberg. There’s a comfortable stillness here that always sets me at ease, where I can tune out or turn down the noise, and find my calm. For a very special time, this area in Berlin, “der schöne Schöneberg,” is home.

( Click here for images and more )

Canberra: Remembering Gallipoli at the Atatürk Memorial Garden

In Canada, places like Ypres, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, and Flanders Field resonate in the collective national history.

For Australia and New Zealand, it is Gallipoli, known in modern Turkish history as the battle of Çanakkale.

On 25 April 1915, Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) troops stormed the Turkish Gallipoli peninsula in support of the British Empire’s efforts to secure the high ground over the narrow Dardanelles strait and approach from the eastern Mediterranean into the Sea of Marmara and beyond to the Black Sea. The Turks repelled the advance and the British retreated from the region eight months later after suffering great losses. In total on all sides, there were up to 400-thousand casualties.

( Click here for images and more )

"Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope" : Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, National Mall, Washington, DC, USA, fotoeins.com

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: symbol of hope & inspiration

Martin Luther King Jr. is honoured in the United States annually on the third Monday in January. Since 2011, a memorial to the civil-rights leader resides as one of many parks and memorials in the US national capital (District of Columbia). A walk through the trees and lawns of the Mall slowly reveals a magnificent sight on approach, and leaves you breathless in front of the statue, standing tall in solid white granite.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a `thing-oriented’ society to a `person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Standing proudly and steadfast, the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial is seen above with the Washington Monument to the right in the background.

I made this photo on 19 April 2012 during my year-long RTW. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-6qa.

Anatomiegarten, Hauptstrasse, Heidelberg, Germany

My Heidelberg: science at Anatomiegarten with Bunsen & Kirchhoff

It sounds like an unusual pairing, for science and Christmas to come together in a place called Anatomiegarten, or Anatomy Garden, in the German university town of Heidelberg.

During the Christmas season, the Anatomiegarten is host to one of the key Christmas market locations along Heidelberg’s main street (Hauptstrasse). Prominent are two names from a historical and scientific perspective: Bunsen and Kirchhoff.

( Click here for images and more )