Tue
23.Jul.2013
Bratislava, Slovakia
OK, I'm kind of a sucker for this slightly odd boat sculpture. I pass it on
one of my exercise routes, and it is somehow mythic as well as
photogenic.
Long narrow river tour boats ply up and down the Danube all summer. Local
day trips, excursions from Vienna, cruises from Budapest through Austria
and up into Germany, you name it. Some cruise boats moor here permanently
and operate as hotels, bars, or restaurants..
I have noticed for a couple of years that the Old Bridge is closed
to cars. Only pedestrians and bicycles cross the Danube on it. But I only
recently noticed just how closed it is to motor vehicles; the pavement is no
longer there. From the pedestrian trail along the river, you can look up
right through where the road isn't.
Own back yard
When I took my meager garbage out this week on a lovely warm afternoon, I
found unexpected beauty even in the stark little brick-walled back yard of
my apartment buillding.
This valley below the castle used to be the Judengasse, the
historic Jewish quarter. The quarter, if not most of its people, survived
the Nazi occupation, but most of it was demolished in the 1970's to become
the approach to the New Bridge.
Developers are developers. It would probably have happened, even if the
Iron Curtain had been eastward instead of westward. But the Reds can take
the blame for this one.
Svätopluk
This plaque in the base of Svätopluk's statue features an endorsement of him
by Pope John VIII, in a papal bull (what a wonderful expression!) called Industriae
tuae, after the initial words of its text.
So that everybody can read it, the passage is engraved both in Latin and in
Slovak. Neither my dim memories of Latin, nor my beginner's Slovak can make
head nor tail of it, but I trust his popitude is saying something nice about
the early Slavic king.
At this point, the Danube skirts the hills, the last hills for a lo-ong way.
Looking south and east, the land is flat clear to Budapest and beyond.
Hmm... perhaps Monty Python and the Holy Grail was more accurate
historically than most of us realized.
More evidence that I'd never make it as a pro photographer: letting my own
shadow get in the picture. Grossly un-pro-fessional! Sigh!