Leichhof & Dom..#374

The Leichhof (old graveyard) on the southern side of the Dom is home to cafes, antique dealers and places to buy expensive things for your head and your feet. It marks the start of Augustinerstraße - the spine of the Altstadt. Like most of the other squares in the city, it boasts an interesting fountain.

Gau-Straße...#373

Gau-Straße looking up the hill to St Stephens. Gau-Straße is the bane of cyclists in Mainz. It is not overly steep, but it is a long incline, and it is narrow.

Media...#372

Taken today waiting for the bus to take us home from the big tin shed shopping centre that is loftily called the "Gutenburg Centre" (I'm sure Johannes would be turning in his grave). The centre hosts "Real" and "Media Markt" along with a host of smaller businesses. The fact that Real sells Bombay Sapphire Gin is a big draw card.

Mainzer Mädcher Revisited...#371

jb has already posted a photo of this fountain "Mainzer Mädcher" situated in Ballplatz. I couldn't resist posting my version of it. This is my favourite fountain in Mainz. Unfortunately when I wandered by, it wasn't running.

Wall Art...#370

This style of wall decoration on the outside of buildings is quite common in Bretzenheim. I like the 'continuous line drawing' style of it. It is also pleasingly kitsch.

Schiller...#369

Schiller is one of the towering figures in German literature and philosophy (and they certainly don't have a shortage of towering literary figures over here).

This statue is in Schillerplatz (of course), home to Eis Cafes, posh dress shops and a local hangout for those a bit down on their luck.

Spring, why have you forsaken me?...#368

This photo depicts how Spring should be - blue sky with big fluffy white clouds, ridiculously yellow blossoms etc. At the moment it is grey sky, howling wind, and big fat snowflakes.

More Sculpture...#367

Mainz sure don't lack in the sculpture department. This piece of public art is located between the Rheingoldhalle and the Rathaus.

For whom the bell tolls...#366

One could quite happily survive without a watch in Mainz - the many churches in the city and suburbs toll on the hour, and often more frequently.

This is one of the Catholic churches in Bretzenheim, St Georg's, viewed from An der Wied. It is pleasingly pink, don't you think?

Easter Egg Tree...#365

The Cherryblossom trees aren't the only things in bloom.

The 'easter egg tree' is a common sight in German gardens at the moment. If only they were real chocolate eggs!

Curiosity chilled the cat...#364

We've had some crazy weather today - sunshine, hail, thunderstorm, snow...

My cats are very interested in this strange white stuff, but only for a little while - then it is straight back inside to sit on the heater to warm up their cold little paws.

Hello Blossoms...#363

Despite the fact that it has been freezing for the last few days, the cherry blossoms are out in force.

This cherry blossom tree is outside the 'alte mensa' at the university.

Sculpture...#362

This rather enigmatic sculpture graces the banks of the Rhine in Mainz. I wonder what she's thinking about?

What Ewe lookin' at?...#361

There is a flock of sheep in Bretzenheim!

Even though Mainz is classified as a city, the capital city of Rhineland-Pfalz no less, in some respects it maintains the feel of a number of separate villages that have now been subsumed by the city's expansion.

The sheep are penned in the field next to the Römersteine (the remains of a Roman aqueduct that carried water into the city). Given that lamb does not appear to be highly regarded as meat in Germany, I assume these wee beasties are kept for their wool, or maybe just for fun.

Woodpile...#360

Normally woodpiles around here are stacked with jenga-like precision (at the start of game), so this would qualify as particularly 'free-form'.

The texture and colours appealed to me.

Cloister...#359

This weekend has been sightseeing-tastic. We had a visitor come to stay, so we trotted around the city ticking off the sights. The Dom (Cathedral) is one of the big three (Dom, Alt Stadt, River).

The Cloister of St Martins Dom is a quiet haven in the middle of town. You'd never know that just outside was the hustle and bustle of the Saturday Markets.

Merry-go-round...#358

It is fun fair time on the banks of the Rhine again.

Ferris wheel - check.
Merry go round - check
Dodgem cars - check
Coconut shy - check

Wolf or Fox?...#357

jb has talked about the Heuensäule (Giant's Column) before, so I hope I'm not doubling up here.

I have lived in Mainz for almost a year, and have wandered by this column in the Dom Marktplatz many times. So you can imagine my suprise when I took a closer look at the soldier's helmet (I'm assuming this represents the Roman beginnings of Mainz) on the bronze cuff of the column. Ye Gads, there's an animal in there! I can't quite decide if it is a wolf or a fox. I wonder what the significance is? I'm sure jb would know.....anyway, I think he (the fox, not jb) looks quite ferocious.

edited to add: bat has confirmed this is a fox. Also to clarify that the fox is ferocious, not jb...

Of primary importance...#356

...playtime that is.

This playground is hidden away on a cycle way/footpath in Mainz-Bretzenheim. I've never seen any children playing on the equipment. No wonder the paintwork is still in pretty good nick. Have kids lost their love of hanging upsidedown?

Say cheese...#355

The Rheinland-Pfalz Austellung rolls around again.

Big consumer thingie, a bit like the Easter Show in Auckland when I was growing up, but without the sheepdog trials and displays of proficiency with cross-saws and axes.

They have the most amazing stuff - apart from the obviously useful things like lawnmowers, log-splitters, solar energy arrays and the like.

Magnetic pillows, magic acupunctural head scratchers, non-drip paint brushes, things to slice tomatoes so that they could be mistaken for a cauliflower.

And the Spätzle Machine.

Spätzle are fresh noodles from around Stuttgart (where Frank the Potter's wife comes from) made by skilfully flicking a wet-ish dough mixture into boiling water.
We buy them ready made, but I'm tempted by a machine I saw (again) today.

Sieve-type thingy that sits over the pot and you just use a spatula (provided) to squeeze the mixture through the holes and into the water.

Outrageously expensive (for what it is), but I figure if someone's that clever, they probably deserve my money.

Just pop them in a pan with some onions, grated cheese and fresh herbs and away you go.

And talking of cheese...

This is the very pleasant Gundula Gouda Gause, a TV journalist and newsreader for ZDF, one of the national channels, moderating a panel discussion on the new stadium for Mainz 05. (Club president Harald Strutz and manager, Christian Heidel to her left.)

She's known as Gundula Gouda at our house ever since Ms B came home from work and announced that she'd met her buying cheese at the local supermarket.

"Gundula Gouda?" I ventured and it stuck.

I had to VERY careful when I met her at a Mainz 05 game last year.

"Ah, Gundula Gouda, I mean... um...er..."


All yours, Helen.

Tags: Rheinland-Pfalz Austellung, ZDF, Gundula Gause, Harald Strutz, Christian Heidel, Mainz 05, ZDF, spätzle, Frank Jung

Messages from on high - #354

Seeing the church spire and the satellite dish immediately made me think of the wonderful Richard Feynman and his "Inconceivable nature of Nature" YouTube clip.

Watch the entire 5:44 and look at the picture in an entirely different light.

Tags: Mainz, Feynman, church spire, satellite dish

What was that? - #353

Figure this. If it hadn't been for Johannes Gutenberg, we probably wouldn't have been able to read the signs on the buildings behind his statue.

We'd still be identifying services and artisans by symbols, because the only people who could read or write were the learned, with access to hand-lettered manuscripts.

We still do, to a great extent.

Not implying that McDonald's customers are functionally illiterate, though....

Tags: mainz, gutenberg, symbols, McDonalds

Neon? Or Neoff? - #352

I really like Mainz, but "metropolis" isn't a term you could honestly associate with the place.

Except when it comes to parking fees.

Right up there with Munich and Hamburg.

This is the Kronberger Hof, which is vaguely reminiscent of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Very vaguely.

The exit won't win any architectural prizes, but I'm still amazed at how they designed it without CAD and still managed to make it navigable...

Tags: Mainz, parking, Kronberger Hof, CAD, Guggenheim Museum

Shining armour in the night #351

Or was it "The knight in shining armour".

St Martin reloaded, at any rate - a by-product of a night on the town with Frank the Potter

Tags: Mainz, Saint Martin, knight in shining armour

7º - #350

I'm all at 6's and 7's over this.

This being Mainz's new Kunsthalle (literally: art hall) which officially opened at the weekend and attracted throngs, including some rather inept avant-garde photographers to boot.

It's just excellent.

The original power plant building for Mainz's port and the adjacent locomotive depot have been gutted, renovated, reinvented as exhibition spaces/ cafe-restaurant-bar respectively and linked by a stunning glass tower with a 7º list to to starboard. (Has to be starboard, because the port's the other way...).

Inside is pure white, which is initially disconcerting, but it provides curators with the blank canvas that some would surely kill for

But why 7º?

Why not 6º. Or 8º

Mailed the people who run the Kunsthalle.
Not a flicker.

Called them.
Not a clue (which surprises me, honestly)

But they did point me in the direction of the architect's office in Berlin and as luck would have it, I got to speak to the architect hisself, Prof. Günter Zamp Kelp, and a very nice chat we had, too.

So it's a prime number and one that's steeped in mysticism. (Check out Wikipedia - it really is quite amazing. Did you know that 7 is the smallest positive multisyllabic integer?. Me neither. Useful stuff.).

I suggested that 8º (which not being prime and decidedly unmystic) would have been cool, given that Mainz lies on the intersection of the 50th and 8th parallels (sort of) and we got into a good-natured and lengthy discussion about the Tower of Pisa (given that my namesake and v.v.v.v distant relative stopped it form keeling over), the reasons for its tilting and architecture in general.

And then I said "It wouldn't be that you chose 7º so that you could arrange the vertical and horizontal windows to form the letter 7, would it?" (Even more evident in their website)

An innocent, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth denial leads me to believe that that's the true reason.

But nothing detracts from the fact that this a fine work of architectural design and a bold initiative to revitalise the port area.

Well done.

Tags: Mainz, Kunsthalle, Prof. Günter Zamp Kelp, Pisa, John Burland, seven

A friend in need...#349

...is a friend indeed. 14 of them, in fact.

The Fourteen Holy Helpers (street sign here in Gonso and the name of the chapel where Magdalena's Mum and Dad got married) are venerated in the Catholic church and just get a passing nod from the Protestants.

When the Black Death descended upon Europe in the 14th century, folks were understandably concerned about their ongoing well-being and started praying as if their lives depended on it.

Which was doubtless the case.

First to the 3 virgin martyrs - Margaret (for safe childbirth), Barbara and Catherine (both against sudden death) - and when that didn't have much effect, to the other 11.

Christopher and Giles against the plague itself, Denis for relief from headache, Blaise for ills of the throat, Elmo for abdominal maladies, Vitus against epilepsy, Pantaleon for physicians, Cyriacus against temptation on the deathbed (eh?), Christopher also against sudden death (they MUST have been worried...), Giles for a good confession, and Eustace as patron of family troubles.

Plus George for the health of domestic animals so that there'd be fresh eggs if one evaded the Grim Reaper.

Martyrs to the man (or woman) except for Giles, who obviously had a USP in his skill set.

"If you top me, I won't be able to take your confession AND YOU'LL ALL GO TO HELL..."

Not a bad little line.

I shall remember that one...

Tags: Vierzehn Nothelfer, Fourteen Holy Helpers, Mainz, Gonsenheim, Magdalena Bühler

Igor ist weg - #348

Mrs jb and Frank the Potter's wife, Ingrid, toddled off to the ballet in the Staatstheater in Mainz (foyer above) yesterday evening, leaving Frank and I with instructions of a) not to get into too much trouble and b) met them back there at 10 pm. Frank and I shot through to the Eisgrub - jam-packed (and smoke-free, which makes a pleasant change) - and were just starting to have a good time (which invariably involves ignoring instructions vis a vis staying out of trouble etc) when in they walk.

An hour too early.

What happened was this:

The ballet had 3 bits.

Bit 1 was slightly confusing by all accounts (and this from people who understand and enjoy that sort of stuff) with lots of running backwards and forwards across the stage and not much else.

Bit 2 involved a somewhat disconcerted v. elegant lady standing on the empty stage and announcing the sudden disappearance of Igor Mamonov.

Search parties have been sent out, police involved, high levels of concern all round.

Given that Igor was evidently a key player in Bit 2, fast forward to Bit 3 which was enjoyed more than Bit 1, by all accounts.

Nothing in the papers this morning, so the Gummint's obviously involved.

Wouldn't surprise me if he was an undercover agent, intent on tempting Kloppo away from Mainz 05.....

Tags: Mainz, Staatstheater Mainz, Frank Jung, ballet, Eisgrub, microbrewery, Igor Mamonov, Mainz 05, Jürgen Klopp

Oh, deer - #347

Shortly after I moved to Germany way back in mumble mumble, I showed a girl I went to school with a map of where I was living.

"What's all the green stuff?" she asked.

"Dark's forest, light's countryside" I said.

"Oh" she said "Forests."

Brief pause.

"I always thought Germany was like all INDUSTRIAL..."

We're 10 minutes out of Mainz, capital of the Palatinate, 20 minutes from Wiesbaden, capital of Hessen, 23 minutes from the 2nd largest airport in Europe and 30 minutes from the HQ of the European Central Bank.

And we can see it all, too.

But we're only 2 minutes walk from scenes like this - a leash (had to look that one up..) trying to maintain a safe distance from people out for a walk.

And there's more.

Blue jay sat on the fence this morning, we used to have loads of squirrels, then a colony of owls in the birches, subsequently a marked reduction in the squirrel population which is slowly recovering, foxes in the copses in the motorway cloverleaves plus a whole lot of very slow moving flat furry things that live on the main roads.

Plus magpies, one of which stole my bike.

And too many bloody pigeons.

Tags: mainz, leash of dear, Klein-Winternheim, nature

Pictures at an exhibition - #346

The Kunsthalle opened in Mainz on Saturday, more of which later during the week.

More people than you could shake a stick at yesterday (was going to write "every bastard and his brother" but that would be sexist and this is a family programme, after all) and I wanted to capture the almost Brownian motion against the pure white background of the exhibition space.

Crikey, they might even ask me to exhibit at this rate.....

Tags: Mainz, Kunsthalle, Brownian motion, 7º Cafe

Subtlety....... #345

.....isn't something that you'd often find in advertisements over here.

There's still a lot of numbing awfulness around, but ones like this play on words show that there's hope

Literally: "And? How do you find that"

Colloquially (and the way people will read the billboard: "So what do you think of this?"

And then the clever tagline from the travel agent:

"We find it quickly"

Smart stuff.

Almost as good as this.

Almost

Tags: Mainz, billboard, tui, advertising, language, Paulaner

It's a fine line...#344

...between art and vandalism.

The eye of the beholder, as usual.....

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Tags: Mainz, art, graffiti, monthly theme day