Trip to Landsberg

My friend Johanna brought me to her parents' house in the countryside, about half an hour's train from Munich. Fresh air, fresh food from the garden, lunch on the terrace, horses, trees all around, hills. Cloudless blue sky and sun. Old, lovely house. Paintings old and new on the walls and antiquities everywhere. I cannot thank my friend enough for this getaway trip. I was quite serene after that.

On the way to the railway station, Johanna's parents drove us to Landsberg am Lech, fine little town about 65 kilometres west from Munich. Best known perhaps for its prison where Adolf Hitler was incarcerated after his first putsch in 1924. There he dictated and wrote Mein Kampf, together with Rudolf Hess. Quite famous really.

But all things considered, I prefer Rococo.

Klosterkirche, ceiling. 

End of Klosterkirche

Rococo Rathaus 

 Clock tower

Four pictures above: Mariä Himmelfahrt 

View from the riverbank

Haus der Kunst

Very nice place to spend an afternoon in.

Highlight was the Wilhelm Sasnal exhibition. Very powerful images and sensations. Three paintings have made a deep impression on me (specially the last one), but there were others which were quite interesting too. They're all oil on canvas.

Kacper und Anka (2009) 

Bathers at Asnières (2010)

 Kacper (2009)

Astray

Funny how this picture of Munich's National Theatre got suck somewhere in my camera...found it this morning.

Visionary unheard

"We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy - sun, wind and tide. [...] I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

Thomas Edison, (amongst others) inventor (1847-1931)
 

Nocturnal trompe-l'oeil

The dead of night’s curtain

Which I thought was pulled down

Lets the cool, white darkness in

Thousand-year-old Catch-22

"Cross it, and trouble lies ahead.
Do not cross, and still you're trouble-bound.
Truly a troublous place
Is the Ford of Shikasuga."

Attributed to Lady Nakatsukasa (912?-991?)


Found in As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, sort of diary/notebook/travelogue written by an anonymous Japanese woman in the 11th Century, translated by Ivan Morris, note 42, p 118 (Penguin Classics, 1975)


PS: I know I put this poem under the Tanka section, but really I can't come up with the 'Waka' tag just for this one...especially since waka is the former name for tanka.

Link

This is a very interesting site on the art of Sesshū Tōyō, famous Japanese painter (1420-1506). The site is in Italian, though. Enjoy!

Budd's eye

Nasu-no-Yoichi
Saw Buddha behind the fan
The Spring breeze its breath

Quiet day in Munich

Before anything, the captions have been on the last two posts...at long last.

My weekend here in Munich, with one of my friends, was nothing short of hectic. My first beer festival (starkbeirfest - stout beer festival) was grandiose. Munich's night life is quite diversified, generously sprinkled with beer.

Today was way quieter: long, long walk in the Englischer Garten, occasionally pausing now and then to read from Bashō's The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. I meant to read this book for a long time, but it is difficult to find, and my stumbling on it in one of Camden Town's second-hand bookshops (the one inside the market - there's another one quite away from the crowds, which is equally good) was a godsend. To top it all, it's a first UK edition (1966), only very slightly foxed.

Also, I got to see a downy woodpecker (see pictures below, underneath the Chinesischer Turm). I'm sure it was a specimen of downy (which is more spotted than the hairy woodpecker), and a female one (no red spot behind the head). I couldn't take the male because it was higher up in another tree, and this one proved difficult to catch: she was climbing around the tree as I was going around it, always keeping out of my sight. I eventually proved too cunning for her.

Chinesischer Turm, Englisher Garten

Thank God Spring is here...I was in great need of heliotherapy.

Munich II

"Either follow Jesus Christ and go to Paradise, or be like a puppet of the Devil and go to Hell!"

Seen on the wall of a church.

(My translation...)

Detail on a tombstone set in the Western outer wall of Alter Peter

All of the above are pictures of Asamkirche, Asam's Church (aka St Johann Nepomuk). Easy-to-miss, tiny church (from the outside). The interior is well, nothing short of grandiose.

My apologies for those pictures, taken in the Alte Pinakothek, but the lighting there is quite poor and very badly designed. Cherry on top: they have kept the old glass panes over the paintings (nowadays they only use antireflective glass)