Marginally creepy, some would say..?

Warning: if you get easily creeped out by statues of skeletons, I don't recommend reading this post...

I've just been flicking through some of my photos from Germany, and realised just how many really creepy-looking statues involving skeletons are prominently displayed throughout some of the places I went to. For example, Nürnberg (spelled Nuremberg in English for some reason) has these two glorious masterpieces sitting in its city squares - the first seems to have something to do with a sailing ship (don't remember exactly what it's meant to be depicting):



And the other is called the 'marriage merry-go-round' or something like that, and depicts several different stages in the relationship between a man and a woman, from courship through marriage to having children to, for some reason, turning into skeletons and strangling each other:



However, having said that, no post about creepy-looking European sculptures would be complete without a discussion of cathedral-based creepiness. So, just for a laugh, here are a few of the best I've got in my collection...

In Mainz, Germany:



In Milan, Italy (this one isn't a skeleton, but he does appear to have been flayed and is wearing his own skin as a scarf):



And finally, in Vienna, Austria (although this one is actually in a crypt as part of a coffin, so it's not entirely unexpected...)

…and a partridge in a pear tree

So this week finds me in Germany, where I’ve been discussing particle technology with various other ‘Young Researchers’ from various different places, and taking a couple of days of holidays to see some of Europe in winter while I’m at it. And, at least some of you may be glad to hear, flatly refusing to do any work whatsoever during those days on which I’m taking my annual leave (well, except reading a few emails and replying to the ones that I feel I *want* to reply to, and which don’t involve proofreading, revising or compiling any documents to be sent to anyone!) This is actually my first time in Germany (well, I’ve transited through Frankfurt airport before, but that doesn’t really count), and in spite of the weather, I think December is actually a really good time of the year to be here. This is mainly because Germany takes Christmas really really seriously, and does a really good job of it – not like the commercialised “buy this new gadget because your family won’t love you otherwise” attitude most of the English-speaking world seems to adopt, but in a refreshing sense of “the weather is awful, but the town square is full of stalls selling mulled wine, sausages, chocolate and trinkets, so we’re all going to put on our warm coats and hang out with everyone else while ingesting aforementioned mulled wine, sausages and chocolate and buying some trinkets while we’re at it, while standing next to a cathedral.” And strangely, that sort of attitude seems to make the complete (and occasionally eye-burning) kitsch of the trinket stalls fun rather than weird. Oh, and the chocolate-coated bananas and foot-long (or even longer) hot-dogs make a really nice lunch.

And on the subject of food: I think I’ve eaten enough meat this week to last me for months. Not that that’ll stop me at all – I do love a good meat-based diet – but the Germans seem to really have the whole carnivore thing working very nicely. Although, one of the local specialties here in Frankfurt translates into English as ‘hand-cheese with music’ – it’s a chunk of cheese served with bread (i.e. held in the hand), having been pickled in vinegar, onions and other things… so apparently the ‘music’ is what happens to your digestive system after you’ve eaten it. Given that I’m about to get on a plane for a 22-hour flight home, I’m staying well clear of that one.

One of the things I have to say I’m somewhat less excited by is German television. Yes, I know that not speaking a word of German is likely to be a problem to me in figuring out what they’re saying – but a lot of places have at least some of the shows (or channels) in English with subtitles, rather than dubbing absolutely everything. Even my good old friend Eurosport – who can usually be relied upon for something borderline watchable, although again usually in German, regardless of where in Europe I am – seems to be showing endless heats of some snooker tournament. However, in my current hotel I’ve found a Russian channel called ‘Sport Planeta’ (if my attempts at transliterating the Cyrillic alphabet are accurate), so I’ve been watching some bobsledding, biathlon and boxing in Russian while typing this post. Also, in my channel-flicking, I’ve discovered that Big Brother isn’t actually any less interesting when it’s a language I don’t speak, because I’m left guessing at how vapid the contestants are rather than having it explicitly confirmed by understanding what they’re talking about.

I’ve also been wandering around a number of cathedrals in the past few days, which has been interesting in a handful of different ways. Partly just because I love a good cathedral – not in any religious context at all, but purely because so much work over so many centuries has been put into making them as spectacular as possible, as the primary outlet for people’s artistic, architectural and cultural expression – and partly because most of the ones I’ve looked at were actually rebuilt to varying degrees in the mid-20th century following some unpleasantness in the early/mid-1940s. And most of this has been done pretty well, although they tend not to go in for the sheer sumptuousness that the Italian or French cathedrals have – the Gothic architecture really can look pretty special if it’s done well, and they do seem in general to have put the time in to getting things right when they were putting them back together. Yes, it’s occasionally a bit patchy (the interior of the Frankfurt cathedral having had its ‘bricks and mortar’ effect – photographed below) painted on, for example), but I’m not one to be too picky about these sorts of things when they’re rebuilding from a burnt-out shell.



So anyway, having had my several cents’ worth in words, here are a few photos. Starting in Erlangen, where it had just finished snowing when I arrived, so everything looked really nice (but really really cold):




A few from Nürnberg:







Mainz:





And Frankfurt (which had the best Christmas market photos – they all looked roughly similar, but I went to the others mainly in the evenings when it was dark)

Yes, yes, I know...

With apologies to the two or three people who actually pay any attention to what I'm writing here, here is a long-overdue post. And yes, I do have an excuse in that I've been staying in a conference centre in NZ with inadequate and overpriced internet access, so to make up for it, I'm now posting some nice holiday happy snaps...

Anyway, I've been in Queenstown, and I think the best word to describe it is 'picturesque'. So, in between a week of talking about how best to solve the world's environmental problems while sitting in a tent that was set up on a golf driving range, and gorging myself on some pretty special all-you-can-eat buffet offerings, I did actually manage to get a photo or six:







The pics that look like they were taken from up a mountain were from the conference dinner - which was in fact up a mountain, accessible by gondola-things which trundled gently (and pretty much vertically) past that bungy-jumping platform. One of those pics is now becoming my desktop wallpaper...

Oh, and I've finally now been to NZ - the closest overseas country to Australia, and yet one I'd never previously made it to. Looks like a place I'll need to go back to, though - and next time rent a fast car and go for a drive in the mountains, which looks like a lot of fun.