Day 55, Saturday, October 19, 2019
Bob is doing fantastic job finding things for us to see and do and organizing our days. I just tag along, enjoying what he has planned. It is supposed to be warm today so we pack a picnic lunch and make our way slowly towards English Garden.
First stop is the Church of The Holy Spirit. Bob announces that it is decorated for Halloween, but no, it is decorated for a light art video installation and these are angel wings.
We see lots of people carrying home these little pots of colourful heather from the street market.
There are lots of people enjoying the day, and drinking lots of beer, even though it isn’t that warm.
I quite like this gaggle of geese but they are just a bit to big to fit into my suitcase!
There are many charming small fountains in Munich, like this one of Ida Shumacker, a Bavarian actress and comedian who died in 1956.
Another little fountain and more people enjoying the afternoon.
These colourful flowers are artichokes. I had no idea they looked like this when they bloom!
There are lots of flower and dried flower stands. 
We pop into one of Munich’s beer gardens but it is cool today so there aren’t many people. I am sure it was a different story just a few weeks ago during Oktoberfest. We were originally going to be in Munich during Oktoberfest but quickly changed our plans when we realized that. More than six million people descend on Munich to drink beer and party…not anyplace we want to be!
This house looks like it will soon be completely covered in ivy!
Another church! The Theatine Church is all intricately carved white stone.
Here is a close up of some of the carving. Notice all the little angels on the columns.
We are almost at the English Gardens, when we decide to stop and have our lunch near this pavilion instead. We listen to the violinist and watch this couple taking their wedding photos.
By the time we finish our lunch it has warmed up and the sun is peeking through the clouds. We continue on to the English Garden. This is an enormous park created in 1789 in the style of an English country park, hence the name.
There are 78 km of paths so we only see a bit of the southern part of the park, which stretches all the way to the edge of the city! The trees are huge.
We climb up to the Monopteros, which was added to the park, along with the hill, in 1836. 
There are some views of the city from the Monopteros.
People play soccer, ride bikes, jog, picnic and even horse back ride in this park. I wish it had a few more benches! 
These geese like the park too.
On our way back to the metro we stop at yet another church. St. Ludwig is another venue for the Angels installation I mentioned earlier. Maybe we will be able to come back one evening and see it.
St. Ludwig is home to the second largest altar fresco in the world. The large fresco of the Last Judgement (1836-1840), by the German painter Peter von Cornelius, measures almost 19 metres by 11.5 metres! There is a service taking place so we are not able to get a close up look at this enormous fresco.
Just before we catch the metro home we stop to visit this library. The poster outside looks pretty grand…
but other than the grand staircase, the inside is a bit of a disappointment. Lots of study cubicles and hardly any books! As in the library we visited in Berlin, no coats, laptop cases, backpacks or purses are allowed into the library and anything you do take in must be in a clear plastic bag. Seems strange to me.
This
I draw while we listen to the service and choir. Of course we can’t understand any of it!
I was tempted to finish this drawing of the altar from a photo but in the end decided to leave it just as it was.
The cathedral was badly damaged during the Second World War.
But today is beautifully restored. The ceilings are particularly ornate, this is the ceiling of one of the small side chapels.
In the basement is a crypt with a small chapel, and its very own ghostly apparition that flies around the room! Tough to catch its likeness in a photo but there it is on the back wall.
After the service we find a Bio Fair (Organic Fair) right around the corner. There are people everywhere enjoying the sunshine, food and drinks. Great people watching today!
We have lunch here but are too full to have one of these giant donut-like pastries, which are served either with sauerkraut or sprinkled with sugar and filled with jam.
Nearby is St. Peter’s Cemetery. Cemeteries in Austria are very neat and beautifully kept.
We learned that plots are rented in Austria and if the rent is not paid the bones are dug up and the plot is rented out to someone else. The remains are either moved to a mass gravesite or dug up and buried deeper in the same plot and the headstone removed so that the plot can be reused! The headstones are on the wall of the church for exactly this reason. The rent on the plot was not paid so the grave was reused and the headstones were placed here. This explains the many headstones we have seen on cemetery walls and other churches.
Bob insisted we needed a photo of me hiding in the cemetery!
We almost miss seeing the catacombs dating from the 12th century. Can you see the windows high up in the cliff above the cemetery? Pay particular attention to the little door below the windows. This is where Saint Maximus and 50 of his followers were thrown to their death in 477AD, because of their faith.
This is one of the chapels carved out of the rock high in the cliff.
A view of the graveyard through one of the windows as we climbed down from the stone chapels.
Bob has a few more places for us to visit. The Church of Our Lady dates from 1221 AD. It was very dark everywhere except for right around the altar where there are soaring pillars and arched ceilings.
Next is the Horse Fountain. This fountain has a ramp (the white area on the right side of the photo) so that horses could walk right into the fountain to cool off.
This fountain is just a bit smaller!
Notice the dates on these buildings…1360 on the apricot coloured one and 1258 on the brown one. I am amazed that these houses are this old.
We see a very long line up… it is people lining up for ice cream! Soft ice cream in a cup with a choice of fresh fruit and other toppings.
I see this curious ‘wand’ and wonder where it is from.
This is a view of the side of the Salzburg Cathedral.
We walk back through the Bio-Fest on our way home and now I know where the wand comes from. These look like such fun to make.
Walking past this house we notice a sign saying that this is where the creator of the song “Silent Night’ was born.
One more church!.. with lots of paintings and a pretty green and white ceiling. The skull was on a plaque near the door, and the little bronze plaques were in the square outside. They mark the location where a person was arrested and taken to a concentration camp. We looked for these in other cities but couldn’t find any. It has the person’s name, date of birth, date of arrest, the name of the camp and their date of death. 
The horse fountain in the square near the Salzburg Cathedral glows in the late afternoon sun.
I thought tying them up was a clever way to deal with unruly tall grasses.
In a yard near our Airbnb I spot these little rock gardens. I might have to make one of these in our garden at home. I am always collecting stones!
The fall colours are brilliant in the late afternoon sun as we arrive home.
We can see Hohensalzburg Fortress high on the hill above Salzburg. Tour guide Bob informs me we will visit there on Tuesday.
We can see beautiful green alpine meadows in the hills above Salzburg.
We pass dairy cows right in town just a couple blocks from the train and bus station. The advertisement above the cows gave me a chuckle. 
We pop into a downtown church when we get off the bus. It looks like a community church from the outside, with big cheery murals on either side of the door. The inside is much less ornate than many of the churches we have visited and there is lots of information on community programs and events. Nice to see.
We stop at some food stands selling wine and beer, and have a bit to eat. These giant doughnuts look interesting but we pass. They are as big as small plates!
The gardens around the Mirabell Palace are beautiful. In the movie ‘The Sound of Music’ Maria and the children dance around this Pegasus fountain and sing ‘Do Re Mi’.
The grass contains elaborate knot patterns decorated with flowers. These are freshly planted pansies, hundred of dozens of them!
The Zwergerigarten is a surprise. It is the oldest ‘Dwarf Garden’ in Europe and was built in 1695. Yes, a Dwarf Garden! We had no idea there was such a thing. 
This fellow insisted on trying on Bob’s baseball cap!
The collection of 28 marble dwarf sculptures was sold at auction in 1811. 17 of the sculptures have been recovered and put back into the park in their original positions. Here are some of these curious sculptures.
We have tea and cookies in the garden and then I draw for a while.
I used a new brush pen that I got just before we left for holidays. I think it is going to take a while to get used to. I used a water brush to create value with the water based ink in the pen.
Walking through the garden there are some more knot designs created with flowers in the grass.
There is a small Orangerie…
with some goldfish, a turtle and a few birds.
Looking back towards the Mirabelle Palace.
The two towers in the background belong to the church we visited earlier.
These young girls were enjoying the Pegasus Fountain, and I enjoyed watching them.
There seems to be several unicorns here in Salzburg.
I have time for a quick sketch of a beautiful enormous tree while waiting for Bob.
There are a lot of big trees here.
We have never seen a giraffe quite like this before!
We walk along the river heading towards the Old Town.
The Old Town and the Castle on the hill make a striking view.
People are out enjoying the warm weather.
This is the house that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived in with his family until he moved to Vienna in 1781. His family occupied the entire top floor. We were looking for a free film and somehow ended up in the museum instead, so we had a quick look around.
This street was the inspiration for the song ‘Silent Night’. It is a long street so no idea exactly where this inspiration transpired.
This door had interesting marks scratched on it that looks very old.
Here is the entrance to the “Silent Night’ street.
As we explore some of the side streets, we pass this ‘House of Pleasure’, and yes, it seems to be that kind of pleasure!
We also see some graffiti that I quite like. Note how the little ledge is incorporated into the image. Very clever!
This little sidewalk fountain had red roses stuck in small holes in the paving. I wonder why?
We check out the Marionette Theatre, but unfortunately there are no performances while we are here.
While we wait for the bus home I notice an empty store front where someone has written on the glass windows with a black felt pen. It is an interesting different sort of graffiti.
We pass refineries that stretch for more than a kilometre.
We find our Flixbus at the airport easily and it is just on hour ride to the airport. After stopping in the town centre of Bratislava we are the only ones left on the bus. We asked the driver to make sure we were on the right bus…it seemed strange that no one else was going to the airport.
Our first view of the Danube River.
When we get to the airport there were maybe a dozen other people there!
The place feels almost abandoned, but we do find an English Time magazine with Justin Trudeau on the cover, so we can catch up on the news.
We discover why there are so few people here. There is only one flight every hour or so departing from here.
We pick up our car rental, a nice blue Škoda Octavia, and we take a side road back to Austria. We see several hilltop castles but no time to stop and explore today.
This route takes us through many small towns. We were hoping to see the Danube as we are driving right along side it, but there just isn’t any place we can find to get down to the riverside. Guess that will have to wait for another day.
The road narrows to one lane to go through this town gate. 
We stop for groceries on the way home and find a place to park our car on a side street near our apartment.
Not sure if I have a photo of the trams we used here in Prague so I snapped this one from the bus window. They run every few minutes and are a fantastic way to get around the city.
Soon we are in the countryside. It always surprises me how quickly cities transition into rural areas in Europe. You are in the city and then suddenly you are not.
The views here are quite similar to the countryside around home in Canada. There are those big round hay bales, and…
then something we do not see at home. We see several huge haystacks of loose hay piled high. They must have a machine that throws the hay up onto this haystack?
No idea what was 
This big double decker bus drives through small villages on narrow roads. I like being up high as I can see over fences into the yards of the houses we pass and sometimes into windows. I am always curious and love these little glimpses into people’s lives.
I also do some sketching today, standing outside waiting for our bus and then later on the bus.
I forgot to post this page from yesterday so here it is today. Most of the museums charge a fee to take photos. That is what the big yellow sticker is about.
We pass several fields of pumpkins, all lined up ready for harvest. Halloween is coming!
This knitted sculpture ‘Carmen’ is the creation of Eva Blahová, an artist and scenic designer living in Prague. 33 knitters from all over the Czech Republic were involved in this project and they knit over 50 meters of red ruffles to dress an existing sculpture. It is pretty impressive.
Walking towards the “Dancing House’ we pass beautiful Art Nouveau buildings with very grand entrances.
These entrances are on this block of buildings. Although Prague was bombed in World War II it did not suffer the catastrophic damages of Berlin and Dresden. There are so many beautiful buildings with lots of carved decorations here.
The Dancing House, or Fred and Ginger, as it is nicknamed, was built in place of a building that was destroyed during the war. We think we know which is Fred and which is Ginger. What do you think?
We crossed this bridge and had our picnic lunch in a little park with this view. Prague has lots of trees and parks.
Here ae some more pastel coloured buildings we see on our walk along the river.
These statues holding up a balcony are quite wonderful. 
I think Bob might have been a locksmith in another life. He is always noticing interesting locks.
We arrive at the most famous Baroque church in Prague, St. Nicholas Church, at Old Town Square. The dome has a diameter of 20 m, with a height of over 49 m, making it the highest interior in Prague. The church was completed in 1735, replacing a parish church dating back to 1273. There is so much history everywhere we visit. Canada is such a young country in comparison.
The ceiling fresco is over 1500 square metres in size and is one of the largest in Europe. 
We climb to the second floor balcony for some great views of the church.
These painted blocks are a fundraising project for disabled people. You pay for a brick and then get to paint it. We didn’t have time today but I see that someone from Canada contributed a brick.
At the Mucha Museum I learn the Alphonse Mucha’s name is pronounced mooka, not moosha as I thought. We see many of his lithograph works that I am familiar with. The Four Flowers..
Evening Reverie…
and the Four Arts, which celebrate Dance, Painting, Poetry and Music.
I particularly loved being able to get close up to some of Mucha’s drawings. Woman on a Bear Skin is drawn with a pencil and a white crayon on a brown ground. It is amazing. A photo does not even begin to do it justice. It was also behind non-glare glass which does not photograph the best.
Winter Night, or Siberia, may have been Mucha’s response to the terrible suffering of the Russian people after the Bolshevik Revolution. There was a famine that killed millions of people. It is difficult to see, but in the upper left of the painting there is a pack of wolves. The peasant woman seems to have resigned herself to her fate. I was not aware of Mucha’s large oil paintings. He completed a series of very large canvases called the Slav Epic, a series of 20 enormous canvases that show the ethnic roots of the Czech people. Unfortunately we weren’t able to visit the Czech National Gallery of Modern Art to see these paintings as it was under renovation. 
This collection of photographs was interesting. It showed some of Mucha’s models, and the bottom two middle photos are Mucha in his studio and Gaugin playing the piano…without any trousers!
Pages of his sketchbooks are on display. I love seeing artist’s sketchbooks. It is a way of understanding how they think about their art.
Not all the sketches are detailed drawings. There are some quick gestural studies as well.
Another study using pencil and white crayon on brown paper. Just gorgeous!
This is a study for the stained glass window in St. Vitus Cathedral. Mucha was skilled in many areas of artistic expression.
Mucha created this famous poster for the ballet named Princess Hyacinth. I was happily snapping photos when near the end of our visit a docent told me that photos were not allowed. I was surprised as we have been able to take photos, without a flash, every where else we have been. I am very happy she didn’t see me until near the end of our visit!
One of many flower stands in the city. I often see both men and women carrying bouquets of flowers.
We saw a toy store so took a peek inside. OMG! it was huge, very noisy and had a full size carousel! 
This made us think of the Hotel Europa we stayed at in Egypt a few years ago. It certainly was not grand and it wasn’t a pleasant experience at all!
Walking back along Wenceslas Square I notice that someone has knocked over the horse sculptures we saw earlier. I like this statue, all covered in sewn leather, with his hands sewn to his head and groin. Not sure what it is supposed to represent but it does make viewers pause and contemplate.
I keep trying to get a photo that shows how strange people look on these long metro escalators. There is an optical illusion that happens and everyone appears to be either leaning forward or backwards, depending they are going up or down the escalators. Somehow it just doesn’t show that well in a photo. The camera doesn’t see things the same way as our brain does. It is very curious and I comment every time we ride these crazy, long, steep fast escalators.
This church is in the park right beside the metro stop near our apartment. We were curious to see inside but it is under renovation and the doors are locked. We sat and had tea in this park the day after our flight into Prague over a month ago.
I wanted to get a photo or two showing how people drink alcohol walking down the street, in the parks, and even on the metro (although they aren’t really supposed to drink on public transit). We see that in Prague and it was especially prevalent in Berlin. People walked around with their bottle of beer everywhere. Not what we are used to seeing at home.
This is another of those very long, very fast moving escalators. We wonder why the metro is so far underground? A
These fellows gave a little preview of an evening performance in one of the many churches in Prague.
St. 
Here is a close up of the entrance to the bridge in the photo above. Just a few people! Very crowded but such great people watching, which is one of my favourite pass-times. 
The bridge offers a great view of the Prague Castle on the hill. 
As well as views of some of the other bridges along the Vltava River. 
Touching this statue is said to bring good luck and ensure a return visit to Prague. There are 30 statues on this 516 metres long and almost 10 metres wide Gothic bridge.
The sun was setting as we leave the bridge.
On the way home we peek into a Thai massage studio. I wanted to give this a try but we somehow ran out of time.
Prague is famous for its marionettes. Most of the ones we see are obviously made for tourists and not that great but I find this window display of really beautiful marionettes. They had really ‘beautiful’ price tags too!
There are lots of shops selling wooden products.
We see Nemo every time we walk along Wenceslas Square.
The streets are jam-packed with people tonight. It is St. Wenceslas Day today which is also called Statehood Day and is a holiday.
Interesting to see a blacksmith working in the square.
These pastries are sold everywhere in Prague. They are call Trdelník (which means a hollowed out log) and they are made by wrapping layers and layers of dough on a cylindrical spit. It is then baked on an open fire and dusted with cinnamon sugar and crushed nuts. They look yummy just like that but many shops fill them with ice cream and all sorts of fancy toppings. Unfortunately they are not gluten free…so none for me.
These little sculptures in the store window appealed, but they are too big and heavy to buy so I settle for a picture.
In the evening, Bob leaves me at Wenscelas Square where I join a Prague Urban Sketcher group. There are about ten of us, and after introductions we head our separate ways to draw for 1 1/4 hours, before we meet up again. It takes me a bit to get going so I start with what I am familiar with…people.
It started to rain so I found a sidewalk table with an umbrella and drew two of the sculptures on the huge St. Wenscelas Statue at the top of the square.
I tried to draw a part of the National History Museum, but wasn’t too successful, the perspective was way off and the dome lop-sided. People seem easier to draw than buildings, so in the last few minutes before we gather I sketch some of the people walking by on the sidewalk. Wenscelas Square is an awesome people watching place.
At the end of their set, the band members ‘mooned’ the audience to great applause and laughter. There was also a tall, big fellow dressed in a long curly blonde wig and a nightie with a cape! No idea what that was about…maybe a stag party?
While waiting for everyone to gather back for our last ‘show and tell’ I had time to draw these three. This is only the second Urban Sketcher Meet-Up that I have attended and it was fun. The other sketchers were very welcoming and there were some fantastic drawings. I wish I would have taken a few photos of their work. I just checked and there is a 
As I was leaving, the National Museum looked beautiful lit up against the night sky.
Here is the very, very long, steep escalator I go down to catch the metro home.
Do you remember the TV tower from near our very first bnb when we arrived in Prague a month ago? We are in the same neighbourhood. It looks quite spectacular at night. It is only a ten minute walk from the metro to our apartment.
The Prague Astronomical Clock, or Prague Orloj, is a medieval astronomical clock. The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest clock still operating. Crowds gather here to watch it strike the hour.
We enjoy this street performer and the poor lady volunteer who is terrified by pretty much everything he does, including pouring lighter fluid in a circle on the ground around her! He never does light it but her reactions made the crowd laugh.
We find the Senat, where there is a free concert. We were expecting classical music but a group of students perform and sing more modern songs, including Hey Jude, These Boots are Made For Walking, Can’t Buy Me Love and Cabaret. Some of the songs are in Czech and some are sung in English, with a heavy Czech accent! It started to rain during the performance but we had brought our umbrella so we stayed dry.
I tried to draw but didn’t manage much. 
We stand and watch for a while…
and then decide that we need to take part so we joined the protestors. Here is 
The march is going in the opposite direction, away from the Berlin Dom, so we step to the sidewalk and spend the next hour watching the people march by. Imagine crowds like in the pictures below walking by steadily for more than an hour, and there was still no end in sight.
We think that there has to be more than 100,000 people protesting here, people of all ages, and ethnicities. Here is 
The protest march continued but we thought we better go do the last bit of our sightseeing in Berlin. The Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship below held just one piece of sculpture, Käthe Kollwitz’s famous ‘Mother with Dead Son’, created in 1938.
It has quite an impact, all alone in this big stark space. I discover there is a Käthe Kollwitz museum, but it is not nearby and we have run out of time in Berlin. Too bad, I love her drawings and would have liked to have seen them.
Just across the street we see a very colourful exhibit and head over to find out what it is…7,000 pompoms that form a ‘Wall of Love” installation.
Right across from the pompoms is this absolutely enormous Platane tree. I think this is the same kind of tree that is on the boulevards by our apartment. It has a 30 metres spread!
Bob wanted to find the plaque in a nearby square where the Nazis burned 25,000 books in 1933. There is also a clear glass panel that looks down below the square onto a room filled with empty bookcases. The glass was too cloudy to get a photo.
Walking toward the Berlin Dom we pass the park we had our picnic lunch a few days ago. There is no grass, only a packed gravel surface. The parks in European cities are used by so many people that grass would not survive.
Finally we arrive at the Berlin Dom, much later than we had planned.
This is a Protestant church that is every bit as ornate as the Catholic Churches we have visited in Europe.
The dome above the altar is magnificent. The Church was hit by a napalm bomb in the Second World War and the dome collapsed into the church. It was open to the elements for many years before it was finally restored to its former glory.
This photo shows the bombed Berlin Dom. I had no idea how badly bombed Berlin was before we visited here. 
This is where we are climbing to.
The 367 steps were worth it! Here are some of the views from the dome.
We can hear music from way up here. Turns out it is this fellow far below.
He is the person on the left side of this bridge with a guitar case on the ground in front of him. I even zoomed in a bit to take this photo. It was surprising how clearly we could hear all the words of his song.
The park area in front of the Berlin Dom and the Altes Museum.
Bob is getting to be quite the photographer.
Looking down some of the stairs we climbed. At least they were good sturdy stairs, unlike some of the rickety belltower ones we have climbed in the past.
Part way down there is a small museum with models of the church. The plaster and wooden models used to build the original church were used in the reconstruction of the church after it was bombed.
We were way up there walking along the outside of the rectangular windows. 
We weren’t sure if the buses were running after the protest march, so we walked back along the river towards the metro station On the way we see this parade of boats.
Turns out is is another protest “march” with lots of music and dancing. Take a look at the back of the boat in the second photo. We wondered if it was about to sink, it was so low in the water.
There were all sorts of spectators watching the boats.
There are lots of beautiful big trees in Berlin.
Just before we get to the metro we pass a store with hundreds of old sewing machines lining its windows. Kind of neat reflections too. It was a much longer day than we expected but I was so glad we got to see and take part, even for a bit, in the Climate March. When we get home we discover that there were marches like this all around the world! YAY!! Finally people are realizing that we need to change the way we live.
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