ghost of nature.

in late march i met up with my dearest friend l. from frankfurt to check out one of the cemeteries in her neighborhood, the hauptfriedhof höchst. it was opened in 1925, so it's still a young cemetery, but it still offered a few beautiful statues. angels watching over everything at the entry to the cemetery. outdoor columbarium. cherry blossoms were in full bloom. fresh burial grounds. i managed to take a decent woodpecker photo.  i loved this grave stone the most. soon march turned into april and on one weekend i decided to check out a hiking route in auringen. i managed to totally get lost and after meandering around for a few hours decided to try the route at different time. i still ended up at a few interesting places, like the egg fountain in medenbach. view out to the west.  the little church in medenbach. the glorious easter egg fountain. in villages around wiesbaden it's a tradition to set up easter egg sculpt...

again, my parents were my companions on this very cold day in march, and it was shortly before they had to leave again, so we decided to not drive too far and just check out some villages nearby. kiedrich is neatly nestled inbetween the precursors of the taunus mountains and the city of eltville and it's pretty well known for producing wine ( well of course, it's, smack, in the middle of the rheingau ), but what it's also known for is its gothic architecture, like the church st. valentin & dionysius and the little st michael's chapel vis-a-vis. the whole village still exudes this very old, very medieval feeling, which i totally love. we stopped at a time when they held the sunday's mass, so i really didn't want to go inside the church and interupt it with my unholy presence, so we checked out the surroundings first. organ music was blasting to the outside world and the people in there sang beautiful and sacred songs and wandering on the site was kind of mag...

while my parents were on visit again we decided to learn a bit more about hessian history. what better way to go to a former roman fort in the taunus mountains? you see, once upon a time there was a frontier going through germany ( no, not the gdr one from modern times ) that marked the boundaries of the roman empire in old germania . the frontier in the region i live in was called rhaetian limes ( which was part of the limes germanicus ) and it was one of the most watched borders of the time back then, because there was a so called loop hole in their frontier, which basically meant they had to built a lot of watchtowers and forts as there was no natural border like a river around which would detain people from crossing the borders to the roman empire. well, and some of the forts and watchtowers can still be visited today, and you can also follow along the former limes lines ( there's even a hiking trail ). one of the forts you can visit is the saalburg . the saalburg...