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Posts tagged ‘Heidelberg’

24T06 Heidelberg: Church of the Holy Falcons

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The Church of the Holy Spirit stands tall over Heidelberg’s Market Square. But up top its central steeple is an annual springtime renewal: a new family of falcons.

For a number of years, volunteers have managed the “nest box” in the steeple above the clock face, and run the Wanderfalken website. A couple of falcons pair up, mum lays eggs in the cozy church box on high, and parents raise the chicks over a timescale of weeks: until the chicks “disappear” in flight. All of this is in view of everyone who has Internet access.

The nest’s entrance faces “out” to the east, as seen in “Webcam 1” with Heidelberg’s Karlsplatz and Kornmarkt visible. Webcam 2 faces “in” to the “back” of the box, and Webcam 3 from the outside faces west to the roost next to the entrance.

*Church of the Holy Spirit, facing west from Marktplatz (Market Square): 1x digital zoom.*

*Falcon nest in the square “hole” above the clock face. In shadow to afternoon light, the presence of a falcon on the perch is barely discernible in this 10x digital zoom. At 1535h, on 13 May 2024.*

*Perched is a winged guardian out front, from the live stream.*

*Two sleeping chicks, from another live-stream camera.*

*Two chicks awake 35 minutes later and grooming themselves.*

I made the first two images above with an iPhone15 on 13 May 2024, plus remaining same-day screen captures from webcams on the Wanderfalken website. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

24T05 Heidelberg: my take on a classic shot

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This is a place I once called home.

I have no pictures or images of my 2 years in town and schlepping up to and down from Königstuhl hill. 2001 to 2003 remain firm in heart and mind.

But this image of Königstuhl and Heidelberg’s Old Town I got today: this will do very nicely as well.

*In evening light, castle ruins sit on Königstuhl’s lower flank (centre), with the Old Bridge over the Neckar river and Church of the Holy Spirit (right).*

I made the image above with an iPhone15 on 12 May 2024. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

My Heidelberg: 40+ Highlights from Home

Above/featured: From Philosophenweg: across the Neckar, over the Altstadt, and up to Königstuhl – 21 May 2016 (HL).

Heidelberg is “eine adoptierte Heimatstadt” (an adopted hometown). Some have called this place “scenic, natural, and spectacular”; some call it “boring, provincial, and extortionate”. I could be referring to Vancouver, but that’s a subject for another time.

I’ve long struggled with questions of place: what defines “home”? Can those definitions and qualities change with time? Do people have choice(s) and do they apply their choices in their search? Can people find meaning with “home”? Must “home” be restricted to only one place, or can different needs be met from different places?

Images can provide access to memories of having lived in a new country, experiencing the shock of the new, and settling into the mundane. I remember advice someone once gave me which became constant companion and reminder: that I was inhabiting a place at the same latitude as my birthplace, 8000 km in distance and 9 time zones apart on the other side of the planet, a place that’s seen its compact share of activity with flair and impact.

Most recall is naturally connected to sight. Occasionally, it’s a rush of the senses: the quick breeze on the skin, the ankle-spraining undulations of the cobblestone, how fog clings like a cold clammy cloak, the sing-song of birds among tall trees in the forest on the hill, the smell of grilled sausages in town by day, and the satisfying late-night noms of a spicy Dürüm Döner with a cool Ayran. And other times, human history leaps out and buries its claws, when the unthinkable must be acknowledged and understood in a synapsis of memory and senses.

In the autumn of 2001, I moved to Germany and Heidelberg: both sight unseen and without having learned any of the language. I stayed in town for a little under two years. What’s astonishing is I have no pictorial record of my time in Heidelberg, Germany, and Europe: I had no camera before the dawn of the smart-phone.

I have some great memories, even if time is casting long shadows. What I lost (no, gave away) was some part of me that actually has little to do with the “Schlager” hit song “Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren“. It might be a piece of the heart, a part of the soul, or simply a scrap of good sense; but what it is precisely still remains undefined and shapeless. Finding solid answers about what I’ve surrendered might take years. And so, for the sake of clarity, I’ve returned many times since leaving town in 2003. A sharper focus comes through the post-departure blur whenever I step off the train in town.

I couldn’t have possibly known the experience of moving to and living in Heidelberg would be life-changing. Time so far has been kind, because it didn’t take long for me to adopt Heidelberg as “home”.

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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).

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street art, mural, Herakut, Metropolink, Heidelberg, Germany, fotoeins.com

My Heidelberg: Herakut street art for Metropolink

It’s amazing what gets discovered after going the wrong way.

I head straight for a full city-block before realizing my error, that I should’ve turned right about 5 minutes ago. I bow my head, and release a deep breath in frustration. I raise my head to the sky, when I catch sight of something out of the corner of my eye.

What’s that across the street?

I have to reach my destination which I know isn’t far.

But I am coming back here to get the shot.

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