beauty – bruecken_schlag

Schlagwort: beauty

Bridge at Wollaton Hall, England

This is a bridge of great simplicity, and in that I found it to be genuine and unpretentious.

It is a very small bridge that leads across the creek surrounding Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, England – a beautiful country house in Elizabethan style that is most famous for featuring as Wayne manor in Christopher Nolan’s last Batman film The Dark Knight Rises. It sits majestically on its hill, and walking towards it across the infinitely wide lawn I feel like a character from a Jane Austen novel. But I guess that is just what all non-English European girls cannot help feeling when they see a country house in England.

As Andrew and I have walked past the manor and downhill, and have circled the little lake at the foot of the mound where the rhododendron dip their lilac blossoms in the water, we get to the bridge that leads us back into the immediate grounds of Wollaton Hall. Its unostentatious red brick stones and its slight curve don’t match the grandeur that I see on the hill – but as I cross the tiny bridge, I think how good it is that there is both: overflowing, pompous beauty and small, discreet beauty.

If you have read My Mission statement, you know why I love bridges. To me they are the most universal symbol of connection, of bringing people together and overcoming anything that may seperate us. I want to present to you pictures of bridges that I really love in places that I really love on my blog every Sunday. If you have a picture of a bridge that you would like to share with my readers as a guest post, feel free to contact me!

I Left My Heart In Greifswald

Juni 4, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 5 Kommentare

There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed
Some forever not for better, some have gone and some remained
All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living – in my life I’ve loved them all.

The Beatles have left us with much wisdom to cherish in their lyrics, and I particularly love this song – especially in the Johnny Cash version. I recently got to visit one of the very places that I’ve loved in my life, and that I am sure will remain.

I spent three years as an undergraduate in Greifswald, a small seaside town by the Baltic in Germany’s far North Eastern corner and one of my beloved Hanseatic Cities. It was the first place I lived in on my own after moving out of my parents‘ house, the first place I truly chose for myself and that was not presented to me as a „home“, but that I made my home all by myself. My time there was full of life and opportunity and dreams. When I moved away, I cried bitter tears, and whenever I’ve returned, it has felt like coming home. This time around, my last visit had been two and a half years ago. All the more excited I was at the prospect of taking a day trip to this place I hold so dear to my heart.

This is the view from the Draw Bridge onto the river Ryck’s mouth into the Baltic.

Andrew and I catch an early train from Berlin’s main station that takes us through the misty landscapes of Brandenburg into the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The rape fields in rich yellow blossom under the wide grey sky, and passing by all the stations with names that are familiar to me – it makes me so nostalgic. Is it really ten years ago that I first set foot here? As the train passes into Greifswald, my heart starts beating faster. We get off at the main station, and I feel it right away: I am home once more.

From the train tracks we walk through the old bus station directly to the rampart that is encircling the city center where the city walls used to be, and walk along it towards the waters of the river Ryck. The museum port is mostly unchanged from when I was last here. I love the old sailing ships and the boats they have made into swimming pubs, and I love the small and slightly sleeply port with the more modern motor and sailing boats.

This picture was taken during my first visit of Greifswald in 2003.

We walk along the water. How many times I have made this walk I cannot count. The river Ryck is flowing calmly and quietly beside us, and there’s lots of men and boys fishing – no women or girls, I notice. I’d love to try fishing sometime. One man walks through the high wet grass at the embankment with four humongous fish on his hook. To our right, the cherry trees are in blossom. Many families are out and about on their bikes. Greifswald is a young city due to its high student population, but I didn’t use to notice that there were so many young families. Maybe that is just because that phase of my life was so far away when I studied here.

Finally we make it to Wieck where the beautiful Draw Bridge makes my heart wide. It must be one of my favorite bridges. We cross it and buy Fischbrötchen at a road side stand – smoked salmon in a bread roll, and it tastes like heaven. Then we walk all the way up to the very front of the pier. Greifswald is set by the Bodden, a kind of lagoon, and not right by the wide open sea – but it is still the Baltic that we have a beautiful view of, and Andrew has never seen it so far. I wonder what that does to him. I get very excited about seeing places for the first time that I have heard much about. I want to ask him, but then it seems so much more natural to just keep quiet and look at the eternity that is the grey and mighty pulsating of Baltic Sea waves.

We take a different route back into town, past the housing complex where I used to live, past the university library through the rose garden and past the theatre, across the big street crossing into town, the university cafeteria to our right, and memories keep flashing in front of my eyes. We enter the pedestrian zone, new shops have opened, it is so much more posh than it used to be. As the narrow street opens up onto the wide market square, I slow down a bit, but we keep walking, and only stop in the middle of the square. Instantaneously, tears are running down my cheeks, and I am glad I have Andrew to hold on to. It is only now that I notice how much I miss this place.

This is also an old picture, taken from the cathedral tower. We didn’t go up there this time around, but on a clear day it’s absolutely worth it!

From the market square and past the town hall – the large red building you can see in the picture – we make our way to the cathedral. My beloved red brick stone, but white washed inside, with beautiful painted ornaments in the cupolas, simplistic and without too much pomp. I think about how everything about Greifswald speaks to me. It is unostentatious and simple and honest, it gives me space to think with its width and the fresh breeze that is blowing through the streets.

I take Andrew to see the university and the buildings where I used to have my classes, and I have stories lined up about all these places. They are laden thickly with the force of memory. I keep thinking – and saying – how different it all looks – but while in other places it sometimes irritates and confuses me what time does to a place, in Greifswald all the change cannot take away from the bond I feel with the place. I am sure one day is really enough to *see* it, but of course one day can’t tell the story of the town, the story of three years of lived life here. As we board the train back to Berlin, my heart is cram-full with memories and feelings. But the beautiful thing about a place that has become home is that you can take it with you when you leave it. And Greifswald is most definitely in my heart forever.

St Paul’s Cathedral the Non-Touristy Way

März 19, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 8 Kommentare

Dieser Post basiert auf diesem deutschen Originalpost.

Sometimes the reasons that make me want to see a place are not the most rational. The reason I wanted to see Prague, for example, was a Donald Duck pocket book that had an adaption of Franz Kafka’s „The Metamorphosis“. It started by the words: „Prague – the golden city by Vltava river…“ I read it when I was 9 years old, and I imagined golden rooftops and a golden river and golden sunshine, and I heard in my head the sound of Smetana’s Vltava, a piece I had already learned to love back then, and I wanted to see this magical place more than anything. When I went there 12 years later, it was every bit as golden as I had always pictured it to be, and the music played in my head and heart all the while I was there.

I had a similar reason I had wanted to see London for a long time. Not because of Big Ben, or the London Eye, or the Houses of Parliament, or Westminster Abbey. Not because of Oliver Twist or Peter Pan. I was always just drawn to one place – St Paul’s Cathedral. And again the reason was musical: Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins and her song about the little old bird woman selling breadcrumbs to feed the birds with.

Originally I had wanted to visit a service at Westminster Abbey that morning – but there was security and a lot of people in uniforms moving about in a concerted way that struck me as rather funny and not as awe-inspiring as it maybe was supposed to. At any rate the service could only be visited if you held a ticket. Sometimes fast decisions have to be made. I ran to catch a tube, and another, running up the streets, and I reached St Paul’s having to catch my breath.

The service hadn’t started yet, but it was high time, and so my first impression of the building was very different from what I had envisioned. I had seen myself carefully approach the church and slowly take in all the details, I had pictured myself walking about, barely being able to keep myself from humming the song about the old bird woman. Instead I ran and rushed up the stairs, „To the service?“ someone asked, I nodded, had a leaflet stuck into my hand, the sound of the ringing bells in my ears, and only found it in myself to calm down when I had already crossed through half of the nave. Finally slowly, I took step upon step forward to finally reach the dome, lift my head and let my eyes wander across it. Instantaneously, tears were running down my cheeks. I never even noticed the moment when I started crying. The beauty, the sublimity of it was completely out of this world. An usher approached me and asked: „Alright?“ I stammered: „It’s so beautiful!“

I sat down in one of the benches rather shyly. I love going to church in foreign countries, because every service in a different language or of a different confession that I have seen has only made my belief stronger that faith is universal, and spirituality transgresses the ideas of different religions. In this place of such great festivity, however, I was a little uneasy at the thought of someone realizing that I was somehow different, somehow not part of this. After all I had – and, as I shamefully must admit, still have – practically no idea about the Church of England and their principles.

As soon as the service started, however, all of this went away. There was a men’s choir all dressed in frocks. Their singing was unearthly, the sounds resonated with something deep inside my soul, and the melodies stretched out into the church dome and felt eternal. They were more solemn, more mighty than I knew church music at home to be, and they seemed to dissolve barriers inside of me and allowed me to fully give in to the entire emotional range that was at my disposition.

The sermon on the other hand was a graceful combination of philosophical depths and true-to-life happiness. It was about equality, and there was one sentence that has never left me since, and that said: „We are all one in Jesus Christ, whether we are male or female, black or white, straight or gay.“ I had never heard someone speak about matters of sexual orientation equality in a church, and I was equally impressed and touched. I do not think the sentiment of that sentence only holds valid for those who believe in Jesus. Equality is a value that is rooted in humanity, not in Christianity. This phrase is just a specifically Christian way of saying something that is bigger than any specific confession.

I left the service happier than I had gone in. I think that is what I like about religious services. They keep me from becoming cynic and restore my idealism somewhat – however much religious institutions may also have the power to destroy that same idealism when I look at other actions they take every day. Is it phony of me to concentrate mainly on those parts of it that go with my own belief system? I don’t know – what harm can it do if it may help me to be a better person?

Street Art in Polish – Gdańsk Zaspa

Februar 13, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 17 Kommentare

One of the things that I love about Gdańsk is the fact that every time I have been there so far, I have discovered new places and yet more incredible things. I owe this largely to the wonderful people I have met there and that have taken me to see things I wouldn’t have thought of myself. My latest visit gifted me with another hidden gem of the city – the quarter called Zaspa.

I sit in the hostel common room in the morning attending to my blog when next to me someone says: „Przepraszam!“ – which is Polish for „Excuse me“. I look up mechanically, and my friend Karol is standing next to me smiling. I’m up hugging him within split seconds. He is one of the people who, when I leave Gdańsk, ask me not if, but when I will come back. Having made friends that look forward to my returning there – that is a gift that I truly treasure. Karol is off to show a bit of the city to two hostel guests, and I am totally up for joining them. So we’re English Terri, Belgian Dries, Polish Karol and German me as we set off for the discovery of Gdańsk beyond the Old Town.

After having shown us the university and the cathedral and the park of Oliwa (which I have written about before, but in German), Karol parks his car here:

Doesn’t look so spectacular, eh? But Karol is not only passionate about showing people around, he is also knowledgeable about the city’s past. This used to be the landing strip of an airport. Immediately things fall into place in my head. My dad has asked me a few times if the airport in Wrzeszcz still existed. I have also read about that airport in some of the novels that are set in Gdańsk and that I love. I never knew where that airport used to be, I was just sure that it didn’t exist anymore. Now all of a sudden I’m there, on the pavement of a former landing strip. And this is an important moment for me, because when my father, who was born in Eastern Prussia, today’s Mazurian Lake District, was five years old, in 1945, he fled from the Russian front with his mom and his sister, and they fled on an airplane that left from the place that I am right now standing on. Have I mentioned that I am in love with places that are densely filled with history? Gdańsk is paradise for me.

But the airport is not what we came here for. I have passed by Zaspa on the SKM, Gdańsk’s version of a metro, many times before, but I never seem to have made much of looking out the window – I figured this was basically just a residential area with socialist blocks. Seen those. Lived in one in fact. Not a huge fan. Now that we approach those blocks, I can’t understand how I have overlooked their beauty so far – which lies in the murals.

A large part of the residential block buildings are dressed – yes, that is what it feels like, they are dressed up in enormous wall paintings. Socialist block residential areas have always freaked me out a bit – I find it so strange that they are really just residential. No shops. No life, really, at least not nowadays. Just house beyond house beyond house. Now what I see here, with the art surrounding us every step through the area, is very very different from that impression that I had so far.

This must be one of my favorites. I love how it is hard to tell if the fingers are putting thet puzzle piece into the gap or if they are taking it out, and how that central dominant part of the picture is red and white – the colors of the Polish flag.

This surely wouldn’t be Gdańsk if not at least one of the over-dimensional works of art referenced the Solidarność movement, the trade union established in 1980 (notice the number in the mural!) that played a significant role in bringing down socialism in Europe and that originates here. The writing says „Budowa Jednostki“ – „The Building of Unity“. This is not just graffito. These walls ask to be looked it again and again. Karol tells us that their coming about was inspired by street art in the style of Banksy – cheeky, funny, yet deep. I find most of the pictures to be very Polish though, and very original and typical for this country.

This one is dedicated to Chopin, or Szopen, as the Polish spell him. Yes, he was Polish, not French. In fact he was so Polish that even though most of is body was buried in Paris, his heart was taken out and buried in Warsaw, as he had requested before his death. And while we’re at it, just for the record: Marie Curie? Also not French. Polish. Her name is Maria Skłodowska-Curie, as street names in Poland will proudly tell you.

Terri, Dries and Karol go on to do more exploring after Zaspa, I have to be back in the Old Town. Karol drops me off at the SKM stop. As the train moves through Zaspa on its way toward the main station, I pass by a bunch of the murals again. Going through here won’t be the same anymore. Another stop on the SKM route has gained its own specific face. I am getting to know this city better and better, and I am loving it.

„Eastern Europe? Why???“

Januar 31, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 44 Kommentare

Ever since I have more seriously joined the travel blogosphere, I have met all kinds of great people, read very many wonderful stories, narratives and articles on all kinds of different destinations, been part of a few excellent twitter chats on travelling and gotten to know a lot of different travel ways, fashions and likes. I am learning so much and I really love the community. There is just one thing that strikes me again and again, and it is time that I took up the cudgels for something that is almost ridiculously under-represented in the travel blogging community – and that is my beloved Eastern Europe.

Montenegro – did you know that Eastern Europe was this beautiful?

When I told people that I would travel for a while after grad school, the most common response was: „Oh cool. South East Asia or South America?“ When I said: „South Eastern Europe!“, faces went aghast and a little freaked out. The most common verbal response: „Whyyyyyy???“

I never really know what to say to this. I guess „Why not?“ is an appropriate response. Or more like „Why the hell not??“ I do notice that both in- and outside of Europe, a lot of people still think that Europe ends at the Eastern boarder of Germany. Travel bloggers write that they have been to Europe, but by that they mean Rome, Paris, London, Barcelona and Berlin. There are the few odd exceptions that include Prague, Budapest and Krakow. But while no one would have to justify why they want to see Bretagne or Andalusia or Tuscany, a lot of people don’t even know about Mavrovo, Tatra or the Curonian Spit (FYI, those are in Macedonia, Poland/Slovakia and Lithuania).

There are still many misconceptions about the countries that used to be hidden behind the iron curtain. I would really love it if I could eradicate some of them here. Most of the things I have heard are variations of the three things I discuss below.

1. There’s not really anything to see in Eastern Europe. It is ugly and has nothing to offer apart from relics of its Socialist past.

If you think this is true, you could not be more wrong. Eastern Europe has it all – thriving cities, gorgeous little villages, beautiful mountain ranges, beaches, swamps, forests, even what is widely considered the last European jungle (in North Eastern Poland, it is called Bialowieza). It is both for the nature lovers and for the culture lovers amongst us. It is extremely rich in history; from the Balkans that used to be under Ottoman rule and show the Muslim influence via Central Eastern Europe with its Austro-Hungarian grandeur to the Baltic Republics with their very own strive for freedom after being forced to be a part of the Soviet Union. Or would you say that this is ugly or uninteresting?

Bosnia and Hercegovina – in Sarajevo, you have a minarette and the towers of the orthodox and the catholic cathedral all in this picture.

Macedonia – at Lake Ohrid you have a gorgeous view onto Albania

Albania – yes, Eastern Europe holds beaches that can stand their ground in an international comparison!

Slovakia – this beautiful town, Kosice, is actual European Culture Capital 2013!

2. People in Eastern Europe are rude and unfriendly. They don’t like Westerners there.

Ok, this must be the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I have never experienced hospitality like this anywhere else. Couchsurfing hosts insisting on me sleeping in their beds and taking the floor instead. The genuine interest in any traveller and the smile on someone’s face when they learn that you are in their country just to see it for its beauty. The enormous amounts of food people will get from the most hidden corners of their houses when someone comes to visit. The bus driver in Albania between Tirana and Berat who didn’t speak English, but called his son, passed us his phone and had his son tell us in English that if we needed anything, he’d gladly be of service. The girl in the internet cafe in Plovdiv in Bulgaria that ran after me for two street blocks in 40 degrees heat to bring me my water bottle that I had forgotten. The boy in Riga in Latvia who took us to the train station personally when we had asked the way. Need I say more?

Bosnia and Hercegovina – Hostel hospitality with Bosnian coffee in the morning

3. Travelling in Eastern Europe is challenging because the living standards are low and they only speak those weird languages with the many consonants.

Clearly anyone who says this has never been to Eastern Europe. Most of the countries that fall under this category are part of the European Union. Even if they aren’t, the Union is funding lots of projects in other European countries to maintain infrastructure and help growth and development. Out of the Eastern European countries that did join the EU in 2004 and 2007, Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia have the Euro. This is where another misconception comes in – Eastern Europe is not necessarily cheap anymore. I found places like Tallinn, Estonia to have higher prices in their downtown coffee places than Berlin. Living standards rising is a complicated issue, and sometimes I wish my favorite places could forever keep their morbid, slightly run down charme (like the Wroclaw Train Station in Poland). It is a fact however, that travelling in Eastern Europe is hardly a challenge anymore. All the young people speak English, and if the lady at the ticket counter doesn’t, someone is sure to help you out (see above). And the languages are weird, but really, are the languages in Asia any better? At any rate, Eastern Europe is more Western than Western Europe at times. Capitalism has hit hard and fast. Coffee places, bars, clubs, restaurants, but also opera houses, museums and theatres will shower you with a diverse offer that you won’t even be able to digest so fast. How about a visit to one of these places?

Ukraine – Opera House in Lviv

Serbia – National Museum in Belgrade

Estonia – having the richest hot chocolate ever in a living room coffee house in Tallinn downtown

Summing it up, I really don’t understand about the weird looks and shocked reactions. I can just strongly advice everyone to go and experience the amazingness of Eastern Europe for themselves. But hurry. Once word is out, the place will be flooded with tourists.

Have you been to anywhere in (Central, South or North) Eastern Europe? Did you love it or hate it? What other places are there that people are suspicious of travelling to?

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Brückenschläge und Schlagworte

Schlagwort: beauty

Bridge at Wollaton Hall, England

I Left My Heart In Greifswald

St Paul’s Cathedral the Non-Touristy Way

Street Art in Polish – Gdańsk Zaspa

„Eastern Europe? Why???“

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