Abroad: The Populist in Munich, Strasbourg, and Paris

I misread a list on my phone and we missed the train we intended to take to Munich, so got there later than we had hoped.  Because every accommodation in the city center was either booked or way more expensive than we wanted, we had booked The Prinz Myshkin Parkhotel, somewhat out of the city center, but which was just blocks away from the Nymphenburg Palace and it's extensive gardens. Because of the late arrival, we only got a half hour or so before the sun set to go into the gardens, but it was far enough to encounter a pair of swans looking elegant in the canal, and this little structure named Pagodenberg by a lake, with the sun setting behind it.

A closer view of the building with the camera supported on a recycling bin, there on the left in the previous picture.

Before Sarah and I were married, she subscribed to a series of Time-Life books about Great Museums of the World. It's always a cool experience to stand face to face with the paintings you've seen in a book for years.  We had just gone to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (on a dark and rainy day), and our first stop in Munich was the Alte Pinakotek.

The building interior was more modern than I expected.

You ascend this grand staircase on the south side of the building.

When you get to the top, there is still this brilliant hallway before you enter the galleries.

My favorite museum moment:  Just beyond that door, to the right is a little vestibule that leads to two other galleries.  There are two paintings hanging on the short bit of wall among all those doors: A Da Vinci and a Filippo Lippi!

We had lunch in the dining room of the Pinakotek.  I love museum restaurants.

After lunch, we went to the Ägyptisches Museum below the University of Television and Film.  A very modern, orderly and disciplined presentation of Egyptology, particularly in contrast to the more traditional, oriental, comprehensive and a little busy presentation we had just seen at the Kunsthistorisches Museum a few days earlier.

After being drenched in ancients and classics, we finished up in the Moderne Pinakotek, with it's voluminous four-story grand rotunda.

The galleries are similarly monumental.

In the central hall that bisects the gallery floor, there are occasional artworks with a bench to set your camera on at the end.

We had to check out and get to the station early although our train was later so we had time to have a beer before leaving Munich, and some excellent pommes frittes. They had really great fries everywhere we went on this trip. One surprise was that the restaurants would only have one light and one dark beer available, usually from the same vendor, occasionally a brand we get all the time in the U.S., and one Belgian fruit beer.

We got the right train this time, but it was forty minutes late. We had a more than hour and a half layover in Mannheim, so we weren't too concerned. The longer we got in to the trip, the more the arrival in Mannheim got delayed, and several times, the trained stopped dead on the tracks.  Technical note: I'm pretty sure those arcs are raindrops.  I had the camera held right up against the window.  Everything in "focus" with pinhole ya know.

Arrived in Mannheim with about 10 minutes to go and had a nice conversation with an American girl from Missouri.  I think that's her in the sunshine to the right.

We joked that we came to Strasbourg to eat. We happened to be in the Cathedral Square (everything leads to the Cathedral Square) at lunch and ate at the Brasserie Au Dauphin. I had an excellent volaille with sauce aux champignons that surprisingly came with this giant bowl of those fantastic frites. And bread.  I hate to see a half of a baguette go to waste. And desert. We overate and ended up having a sampling of Alsatian cheeses and beer in the hotel bar for dinner.

We still made it to a museum or two.

Before lunch, we had gone to the Archeological Museum below the palace.

And after lunch, we came back for the Decorative Arts Museum on the main floor of the Palace.

On to Paris on the 322 km/h TGV.

Got there before check-in time.  We splurged in Paris and were staying about two blocks from the Place de la Concorde, right across the Rue de Rivoli from the The Tuileries, so after having a very French baguette sandwich for lunch, we took a walk in the garden.

Interesting to find a vegetable garden amid all the formal planting.

Crossed the place for a close up of the obelisk.

And scouted out the original Chanel boutique on Rue Chambon.

All with The Populist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame - with the Promaster folding pocket tripod.

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.

Sunbeams and other domestic subjects.

I think I may have gotten some kind of house and garden bug.

The stack of books on the table behind the couch.

A bowl with little pumpkins just to the right.

A pothos on the porch.

A longer shot of the baker's rack with two cameras and a bottle of Aleen's Tacky Glue.

Two cameras in the corner of the living room.

The other table in the living room, with cat.

The fireplace.

After the Farmer's Market.

How I learned to cook.

The mighty breath of the Viking bringing pasta to a boil.

Morning shadows on the garage door.

And a very dramatic bouquet from the farmers market.

All with the Evil Cube. .29mm pinhole 6cm from 6x6cm frame.  Portra 400.