ghost of nature.

stork protecting its nest in schierstein. rhineland-palatinate's own wine region is called rhenish-hesse . it's the biggest wine region of germany and spans about 26 516 hectares. we haven't yet visited most of it, only the borderland, which is directly situated next to the rheingau region ( where i live ). in rhenish hesse you can find ingelheim , a little city which was once a very important place for medieval emperors. an imperial palace was build here from which they could govern their massive empires. there were more of them all over germany, all being important foundations for future cities. but this is not a post about ingelheim, rather a post about a little corner of the city we visited. on a steep hill not far away from the main city you can see a tower from afar, the bismarckturm ( bismarck tower ). this was our goal for that particular afternoon. but before i'm telling you a bit about its history here are some random shots from an evening walk around s...

welcoming bird: the heron. in early march i had one week of vacation and my parents were on visit that week. we decided to drive to stuttgart to visit the zoo there ( i had visited it once before, already, which was in summer, and i really did like it back then). it's called wilhelma because the park and its moorish buildings were commissioned by the swabian king wilhelm I. in case you are wondering why the buildings were executed in the moorish style , there was a time back then when everything oriental was the non plus ultra amongst royal families and high society. since it was all the rage, the king decided to have it's own alhambra in stuttgart and these days people call the zoo the 'alhambra on the river neckar'. and indeed it is what makes this zoo very special! i know, cultural appropriation bears a two-sided sword and there is something to be said about the white man wanting to possess all that actually belongs to other cultures, but one can't deny t...