Museum Ludwig - Cologne, Germany

We seem to be visiting many art museums and shows a lot lately here on the Byway. Just click on the "Art" label above to see all the "Art" entries and you will see many postings about museum visits. Just over the past year we have been fortunate to visit some major galleries in Washington, Paris, London, Miami, Basel. Now from our most recent Byway adventure we can add the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany and the Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland to our list.

The Museum Ludwig is conveniently located right next to the Cologne Cathedral and both are worth visiting. The building design and layout are good. The day we went (a Friday afternoon in July) it was delightfully uncrowded. The Museum Ludwig is is a modern art museum with a lot of Pop Art and pieces representing Expressionism, Surrealism and Classical Modernism. It has the third largest Picasso collections in the world - with over 900 works (Barcelona and Paris being numbers 1 and 2). It has an interesting Russian avant-garde collection - something I've seen a lot less of in other museums. Entry fee is 10 Euros - average or less expensive than many museums in Europe.

I shot a few photos with the iPhone. Enjoy!

This piece was composed of thousands of individual caviar eggs, all numbered.  The photo can't do it justice.

Salvador Dali

Picasso

Picasso

Crazy crazy sculptures that looked absolutely alive. The photo can't do it justice.

Warhol Elvis

Freaky life like statue - see below about the artist

Huge, awesome painting

Warhol Brillo

Cologne Cathedral - Der Kolner Dom

We loved the city of Cologne (or Koln) and would gladly visit again. A must see there is the Roman Catholic Cologne Cathedral (the high cathedral of St.s Peter and Mary) referred to as Der Kolner Dom or Hohe Domkirche St. Peter and Maria or simply the Dom. Sitting across from the central train station, you can't miss it. Its striking two spires can be spotted in the distance from many places around the city and it is the image of Cologne. 

The Cathedral is a World Heritage Site and a beautiful example of gothic architecture in Germany. Construction began in 1248 and wasn't completed until 1880. I can never see or visit a Cathedral without thinking about The Pillars of the Earth, the historical novel by Ken Follett about building a cathedral in England in the 12th century. It's interesting and worth a read.

The Cologne Cathedral is one of the world's largest churches and it is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe. Interesting fact - from 1880-1884 it was the world's tallest structure, until it was beat out by the Washington Monument. It has the second highest church spires in the world and it still has the largest facade of any church in the world (due to its two enormous spires).

When we walked into the Cathedral there was a service and the choir was singing, with church goers responding. It was breathtaking. I wish we could have spent more time there just sitting, gazing, listening, absorbing its beauty. Next time.

Lake Zurich

Beautiful Lake Zurich. Sunny, and hot, and hour by hour the Alps became more and more visible in the distance.

Boating on Lake Zurich

We spent Independence Day weekend in Zurich, Switzerland visiting friends, including a beautiful day boating on the lake. It was a wonderful Sunday afternoon.

Lake Zurich, also known as Zurichsee, is a very large, beautiful lake. On a clear day, which it was for us that day, you can see the Alps in the distance. If you are visiting Zurich, I recommend spending some time walking around the lake or taking a boat ride.

My husband created this beautiful video using the iPhone 8mm app. Video credit to him and music credit to the beautiful Michael Whalen. Enjoy!

Happy 4th from Switzerland

Happy Independence Day! Hard to believe it is Monday. Hard to believe I left for Europe a week ago tomorrow. I feel as if I've been gone for weeks and weeks - the way vacations often make you feel.

We were in Dusseldorf/Cologne Germany last week for Paul's gallery show at So What Gallery, then we flew on Saturday to Zurich which is where we remain until we leave on Wednesday. It has been a wonderful time in both places, meeting many new interesting people, seeing old friends and site seeing. It has been a whirlwind, as our trips to Europe often are - too much to see, too many people to visit, never enough time. But we are grateful for the opportunities and gladly take what we can get.

This weekend in Zurich felt like a true celebratory, holiday weekend (for us, not for the Swiss) - hanging with friends and enjoying fantastic food, endless wine and beer, and talking and playing cards until dawn; boating on Lake Zurich and docking for a long, luxurious seafood lunch, then later sunning on the boat and jumping into the crisp lake.

We've been moving about so much, socializing with friends here, that I have not had any time to blog. But there will be lots of posts and photos coming soon once I have time to download all of my photographs and time to sit and write. For now here are a few photos from the show in Dusseldorf and some site seeing in Cologne, all shot with iPhone Hipstamatic. Hope you all are having a lovely long holiday weekend and enjoying with family and friends.

Germany Bound

Headed to Germany in a few hours. Dusseldorf/Cologne. Going for Paul's photography show. Then on to Zurich for a few days to see some friends. Looking forward to my first time in the Cologne (Koln) area. Stay tuned.

Some photos from rooftop Berlin (October 2010) below. Looking forward to seeing more of Berlin in the future, and more of Germany in general. Get in touch with my German heritage...

Paul Hadley's Ambervision: Road Trips and Americana

Images photographed out of focus, resulting in dreamy, cartoonish landscapes that can look more like watercolor paintings than photographs. He calls it Ambervision.

Most photographs taken while driving behind the wheel of a car on some road trip adventure, typically in the western United States.

No images altered with photoshop - just the luck of capturing an image at the right moment and the right angle, with the setting just enough out of focus to retain the image, but give it the dreamy, water color feel. And all of this while behind the wheel, speeding down the road.

Check out a small sample of photographer/artist Paul Hadley's work on his website: www.paulhadley.com. More work will be posted on the site in the future and for more information, please contact the artist via his website.

He has a show - Road Trip - opening next week in Dusseldorf, Germany at the So What Gallery. You can find more information about it on his website or the So What Gallery facebook page. 

My Scenic Byway will be headed for Germany next week to attend the show and support my man. If you find yourself in the Dusseldorf area, please join us. The show opens on June 30, invitation only, and then opens to the public on July 1.

My Scenic Byway - Paul Hadley, 2008 - Limited Edition Print

Joy

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

From IMDB

Last night the new Werner Herzog film Cave of Forgotten Dreams opened here in Salt Lake City and we went to see it. Last weekend my husband took me to visit my first cave - Lehman Cave at the Great Basin National Park in Nevada - so I thought now I would take him to see a cave too.

(Spoiler alert...if you don't want to know anything about the film before seeing it, then do not read further. Let me just say I would recommend seeing it.)

In this documentary, Herzog gets exclusive access into the very famous Chauvet caves (Cave of Chauvet Pont d'Arc) of southern France where we can see the oldest known pictorial drawings from man. For that reason alone I think this is worth seeing - even though it is a bit slow. Simply to catch a glimpse into a world you or I will never be allowed to enter, and to see these drawings that are as much as 32,000 years old. It really is a wild thing to think about. And it is wild to think about the animals that roamed southern France at that time. The images in the caves are of horses, rhinoceros, cave bears, cave lions, bison and wooly mammoths. There is only one partial image of a human. Way in the back of the cave they found a drawing of a woman from the waist down, with a bison head. That is it for images of people. There are a few places where someone put their hand print over and over again.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

The caves are about 400 miles south of Paris in beautiful countryside (those countryside images make me want to go to southern France tout de suite!). The cave was discovered not long ago, in 1994, by French cavers. They have determined that the cave had been sealed shut for 20,000 years, thus preserving the drawings. It was immediately closed off to keep people out as human presence in the cave can destroy everything. The only ones allowed in are scientists and their time in the caves is extremely limited and their movements very restricted. The Government of France oversees the cave and they are trying to get it designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visit the official government website here for more information.

I learned of this film from a recent story on NPR's Fresh Air program. If you aren't going to see the film, I recommend listening to the interview with Herzog. I really only know Herzog from his other documentary films Grizzly Man (excellent - my favorite of his) and Encounters at the End of the World (beautiful). I think he is slightly kooky, but I like him. There are some kooky old French characters in this film that I love - the old Perfumer walking around the worlds sniffing for cave air, the sweet goofy scientist with the big grey mustache who tries to show us how Neanderthal man may have thrown spears for hunting animals, and the archaeologist who tramps through the woods wearing traditional deer skin and animal fur clothing and plays the Star Spangled Banner on a replica of an ancient bone flute. Herzog wasn't too wacky in the film, but I have to admit that the last few minutes of dialogue where he talks about a nearby nuclear plant and a greenhouse where they are breeding albino alligators and then was talking about the alligators looking at the drawings in the cave...it went completely over my head. I have no idea - none - of what he was talking about or the point he was trying to make. If you can explain it to me, please do.

This film is out in 3-D, but the small, independent, theater (Broadway Theater - my favorite in Salt Lake) where we saw this does not do 3-D. I was puzzled to learn that this film is out in 3-D because I am not sure that this is a film that cries out for or needs 3-D. The film is mostly just a small camera crew walking along a narrow walkway that has been put into the cave, trying to capture the images on the walls and the bones on the ground with hand-held cameras and flashlights, interspersed occasionally with outside interviews with French scientists who work on the cave. I don't get the point of the 3-D. I guess maybe it is cool to have the cave images come out closer? I don't know - I don't think it is necessary. If any of you see it in 3-D and can share your experience and thoughts on that, I would appreciate it.

Signs on the Byway (Europe)

I like to take photos of signs. So many signs in our world. Signs can be interesting, beautiful, funny, weird...

Berlin Wall Museum, Berlin - the real sign that used to mark the wall

Bruges, Belgium

Brewery in Bruges - No smoking. No frites. No ice cream.

Hotel in Berlin

Streets of Berlin

Streets of Paris

Paris

Boulevard du Montparnasse

Boulevard du Montparnasse

by Mary Jo Salter

Once, in a doorway in Paris, I saw
the most beautiful couple in the world.
They were each the single most beautiful thing in the world.
She could have been sixteen, perhaps; he twenty.
Their skin was the same shade of black: like a shiny Steinway.
And they stood there like a four-legged instrument
of a passion so grand one could barely imagine them
ever working, or eating, or reading magazine.
Even they could hardly believe it.
Her hands gripped his belt loops, as they found each other's eyes,
because beauty like this must be held onto,
could easily run away on the power
of his long, lean thighs; or the tiny feet of her laughter.
I thought: now I will write a poem,
set in a doorway on the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse,
in which the brutishness of time
rates only a mention; I will say simply —
that if either one should ever love another,
a greater beauty shall not be the cause.

"Boulevard du Mont Parnasse" by Mary Jo Salter, from Sunday Skaters. © Knopf, 1996. Reprinted with permission.

Writer's Almanac - Merci! Poems, poems...only for this month to celebrate National Poetry Month...

Street Art

Bellagio, Italy, 2005

Bruges, Belgium, 2010

Basel, Switzerland, 2010

Paris, France 2010

Washington, DC 2011

Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2005