Abroad: A Room with a View

I took two medium format cameras with me to Europe: The Evil Cube, and Supper Club Shorty - supported by my Bogen/Manfrotto 76B.

I only took them out with me on three occasions, but I used them for photographs of or out the windows of most of the places we stayed.

In Prague, we booked an AirBnB that had been the studio of prominent Czech painter and sculptor Zdenek Sputa, dominated by this great northern skylight.

It was full of artist tools.  He was very multimedia. These scissors were hanging from nails in the window sill.

More art paraphenalia: a few chunks of architectural stone and a frame leaned against the desk.

Sarah channeling the creative vibe.

Another AirBnB in Vienna, right across the street from the Ministry of National Defence and Sport, and again on the top floor of the building.

Looking directly across the street in the late afternoon.

Looking northeast later that evening.

Looking northwest the next morning in the rain.

We had a lovely view in Munich, but I only made one exposure and didn't pull the shutter all the way out and blocked three-quarters of the frame.  Sigh.

In Strasbourg, there was a bakery just across the street and just before sunrise, their workroom above the store, with several busy chefs, was the only light on.

A narrower view to the right a few minutes later that morning.

In Paris we had a great location, but the view out the window was of the interior courtyard, which did look nice from the breakfast room.

The Evil Cube was loaded with Portra 400.  Supper Club Shorty with Ektar 100.  I'll leave it to you to work out which was which.

Abroad: The Populist in Prague and Vienna

We wised up the second day and got up early and had an Uber take us to the bottom of the castle stairs. Still a climb, but nice light and much more dramatic with only a few people around.

There are numerous serious art museums in Prague including several on top of the hill. We started at the Sternberg Palace with it's Renaissance emphasis just as it was opening. Most of the time we were completely alone in there.

A sunbeam in a quiet corner with a chair for the guards.

A sunbeam in the elaborately decorated Chinese Cabinet.

You have to pass through the central courtyard to get to some of the galleries.

Just as you pass the archway from the courtyard, there are doors to a very nice sculpture garden. There were only two other people there, having coffee, and I think, discussing art.

The corner of the sculpture garden.

Lunch in another quiet courtyard restaurant a few steps from the palace, with an excellent tiramisu for dessert.

Located in the middle of the actual castle is St. Vitus Cathedral, visible from nearly everywhere in Prague. The next three pictures are some of my favorite examples of camera movement. Kind of an appropriate subject for dancing light. (He was the patron saint of dancing long before he was associated with the neurological disorder.)

Looking down the central nave. Most of these cathedrals have three doors on the front. Visitors enter through one of the sides and leave through the other so you can get away with a long exposure back against the middle door.

Sunshine through the stained glass. I was very careful to frame the picture so that it was above the heads of the crowds. Shortly after I opened the shutter a 7 foot tall man stepped in front of the camera, but I think the sunshine made it to the film despite his presence.

Next on to Vienna. Nerdy fact: the train goes southeasterly until Brno then changes to southwesterly to Vienna. The Brno train station is then the easternmost Sarah and I have ever been.

We began with the Schönbrunn Palace. Most of the garden is open without admission, but the Orangerie, with it's giant empty halls where the plants winter over, is a separate ticket. Once again we found ourselves practically alone in there.

One of the modest side fountains.

A side view of the schloß and the Privy Garden, with a few of our compatriots, and my own shadow,  projected onto the courtyard.  As much as I seem to gripe about crowds, and my delight when we were by ourselves, it was fascinating to observe so much diverse humanity on vacation. The infrastructure and operation of tourism is also kind of interesting in itself.

It took us about fifteen minutes to get to the center of the maze. It was particularly fun because we kept encountering the same people several times as we guessed our way to the center. In the nearby labyrinth (one long folded path divided in four quadrants rather than a puzzle), there was a small play area with little structures that challenged children to solve math puzzles.

We had lunch in the Gloriette.  Another vocabulary lesson: If your palace is at the bottom of the hill and you build something at the top of the hill overlooking the garden, it's a gloriette. I found myself wondering if Marie Antoinette had eaten cake up here as a child.

As in Prague, there are significant art collections in numerous venues. We decided on the Belvedere Palace mostly because of the collection of work by home-town boy Gustav Klimt. More vocabulary:  If your garden is on a hill and the palace is at the top of the hill, it's a belvedere.

The grand staircase from the top with Sarah wondering why I'm not right behind her.

Klimt's painting The Kiss is the most popular work they have.  Just next to it they have a room with a full size copy just for people to take selfies in front of.

I think palatial gardens must make up half the market for hedge trimmers.

All with The Populist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x35 frame with the Promaster pocket tripod.

Abroad: The Populist in Dublin and Prague.

We left Chicago at dusk.  It was 94° F.

Arrived in Dublin in mid-morning in drenching rain, wind, and 45° F temperatures.  The depot for the hotel shuttles is about 300 meters from the terminal.  The walk mostly, but not entirely, goes under canopies and crosses at least two busy streets in the open.

The shuttle from our hotel was supposed to come every 15 minutes.  After waiting 45 minutes and seeing all the other hotel busses go by at least twice, we walked back to the terminal and took a cab.

When we got to the hotel, the bright yellow, clearly marked bus was sitting in front of it, but they insisted it had been following it's normal schedule. It was still morning, but they had our room ready.  We dried off and headed down town.

The Book of Kells was something we had heard about all our lives, so we headed to Trinity College.

The other thing we were going to try to do was go to the Guinness Storehouse for the rooftop bar (and the Guinness). The rain was lighter but still going on.  Between that and jet lag (a rooftop bar - in the rain  - really?), we got kind of lost and every time we checked Google Maps, we were slightly farther away than we were the last time. Passed the famous Temple Bar in this quest but didn't go in.

The Guinness Storehouse had closed by now, but we had passed the Irish Whiskey Museum earlier which I had noticed had later hours. It was an entertaining presentation by a red-haired young irishman who joked about how stereotypical he was, and a tasting with three pretty generous samples. The word whiskey comes from the Gaelic uisce beatha.

The cab driver who brought us in had recommended The Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Dublin. I had gotten my bearings a little, and possibly with a little liquid courage we set off to find it.  I knew where the river was in relation to the whiskey museum and the map showed the pub just off the river, so I didn't think we could miss that and we made it without incident. I had bangers and mash, and of course, several pints of Guinness. The people sitting next to us were from Iowa City and also had just arrived from the U. S.

Dublin was basically a layover on our way to central Europe so the next day it was back at the airport.

We also had a layover on our return and familiarity with this duty-free shopping area made our duty-free shopping experience much more efficient on the way back.

Our next stop was Prague. My great grandparents emigrated from what was then Bohemia to Texas in the 1870's. I've always thought it was cool to be a real Bohemian.

The tourist center of Prague is pretty compact and very popular. The squares and narrow streets of the old city are full of tourists wandering around. One surprise was that although all these streets were teeming with people, there were also cars threading their way through the crowds and the occasional tram that I'm surprised doesn't take out several people a day.

We had lunch in a small restaurant in a courtyard that was very quiet and peaceful although it was just meters from the crowds.  (Notice how I've been using metric units?)

We had both made the erroneous assumption that the other had done extensive research on what to visit in Prague, so we set off in the direction of the vaguely defined castle.  On the way we passed a private museum with works by Picasso, Dali, and Mucha, each on a separate floor with a separate ticket. Mucha seemed like the obvious choice in Prague.

Probably the center of the tourist carnival with full-band buskers, caricaturists, and souvenirs is the 15th century St. Charles Bridge, and also a fine view of the castle rising over the city.

We made it as far as the St. Nicholas Church. The sun put on a pretty good show shining through the windows

and illuminating the main altar.

Faced with the steps to get up to the castle, we declared beer-thirty, and sat in the square, and out of contrariness, had a dark, although still Czech, beer.

On the way back we briefly considered a set of decorative glasses, but thought better of hauling them around for the rest of the trip.

We stayed at an AirBnB just a little outside of the tourist area. There is a multilane road and a railroad that sort of divides the city.  On one side is the tourist district including the bustling Wenceslas Square, which I expected to be some medieval courtyard but turns out to be sort of a rough version of the Champs-Elysees. On the other side is a commercial district, but it's completely closed in the evening except for this little one room grocery which seemed to have just about everything you would find in a supermarket - something we found in every city we stopped in. I love these stores. I remember businesses like this when I was a child. They still had one four blocks away when we moved to Oshkosh in 1985

All with the New Glarus Populist, and the ProMaster folding pocket tripod.