A photo per day, 2025 edition

This worked well in 2024, so here's the 2025 edition.

May 31-June 2: Malerweg

June 3: Dresden Semperoper with the Duke/UNC/NCSU research abroad cohort. We saw a staged performance of Handel's oratorio Saul. It was full of intrigue and politics and worked impressively well staged. We had seats near the ceiling, thus the stairwell photo.

June 4-6: Malerweg

June 7: Berlin with the research abroad cohort. On Saturday, we met up (because they used mass transit and I walked) at the East End Gallery (Berlin Wall).

June 8 morning: free time in Berlin with family--H, S, V, and R. We walked up Teufelsberg, a non-natural hill in the Grunewald district of Berlin built after WW2 from 98 million cubic yards of rubble and debris. It's located in the former West Berlin, and during the Cold War, the US built a large intelligence-gathering "listening station" on top. The station is no longer used and has become a street-art gallery, with almost every available surface covered in murals.

June 8 afternoon: Tour of the Reichstag with the cohort. 

June 9 morning: Our last day in Berlin. The cohort took a boat tour rather than join S and me for the long walk we invited everyone on. Ostensibly we were looking for the graves of the brothers Grimm, but we only got as far as the graves of the Familie Mensdelssohn in the Dreifaltigkeit cemetery in Kreuzberg. (We also visited the gravestone of grandpapa Moses Mendelssohn, the 18th-c. philosopher and theologian whose writings became central to the "Jewish Enlightenment" of the 18th and 19th centuries; he's buried in Berlin's oldest Jewish cemetery, which was desecrated during the Nazi era--to the point that his is the only gravestone still erect, but not in its original location).

R to L, Wilhelm Hensel, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn...

June 9 afternoon: We had a little time to kill before our train, so zipped through the Alte Nationalgallerie with a few of the students. We happily revisited many of the Friedrich paintings that we had seen in New York, but the photo of the day goes to "Liszt am Flügel" (1840) by Joseph Danhauser, one of two music-historical paintings I recognized from across a room and of which could immediately say, "hey, that's George Sand swooning while Liszt plays the piano!" The other painting was "hey, that's Frederick the Great playing the flute!," a.k.a. Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci [1852] by Adolph von Menzel. I coulda sworn both paintings graced covers of Dover scores that I owned, but I can't identify which scores.

Liszt and his adoring fans...

June 10: Back in Dresden. I needed a walk, so  built a loop route to the Loschwitz neighborhood via the Blaue Wunder, and for the sake of thoroughness, included the recently enhanced gravesite of Caspar David Friedrich at the Trinitatisfriedhof.

June 11: Before meeting up for a farewell gelato with the students (they were staying on, but faculty advisors, including S, were leaving the next morning), we had some open time, so made a too-short visit to the Albertinum. The photo below is of the work Palianytsia (2022) by Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova. The work is made from sliced river stones. The accompanying label says the stones "become a symbol of welcoming culture and community in leaden times." It also notes that Russians' inability to pronounce the word Palianytsia correctly "became a phonetic identifier to distinguish 'friend' from 'foe.'" (And if you Google the word Palianytsia, you'll learn it's both a hearth-baked bread and the name of a Ukrainian turbojet drone missile system developed by Ukraine during the Russian invasion.)      

Palianytsia (2022) by Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova 

June 12: Early morning train home to Steinebach. On the way, we planned a layover of a few hours to visit Bamberg, nicknamed "Franconian Rome" because like Rome, it has seven hills.

June 13: first day back in Steinebach, and we were homebodies, walking no farther than to the grocery store and back. The new Edeka opened a year or two ago, so now instead of walking 3-4 mile RT to the old Edeka near Etterschlag, we only need to walk 1.6 miles RT.

Fence shadows in Kukuksheim, en route to EDK

June 14: Bastille Day = "No Kings Day" for over 5 million mostly USAmerican protestors mostly in the U.S. but also internationally. On our way to join a couple hundred protesters in Munich, we walked past the Weiße Rose Memorial at Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, and thought about the difference between showing up for protests every once in a while vs. risking everything to fight Fascism.

June 15: annual hike to Andechs. S biked, and we met up for Brez'n, Obazda, and Sprudel.

June 16: Strava says I went to the grocery store again. I was trying to figure out if I had allergies or a cold, and didn't take a single photo.

June 17: Hallbergmoos to Nordfriedhof.

June 18: Hallbergmoos to Freising. Afterward, I took trains to Seeshaupt, then walked to Bernried to meet up with S and friends from his college days in Hamburg. Afterward, S and I walked to Tutzing.

June 19-20: No photos. It was a cold, not allergies. 

June 21: Dinner at Sepperlwirt, followed by a walk "the long way home" to visit Favorite Lone Tree on a Hill, which is nowhere near Sepperlwirt.

June 22: Landshut to Moosburg

June 23: A doozy of a cold. I think I spent most of the day in bed.

June 24: Moosburg to Freising

June 25-27: What? No photos? I walked around the Wörthsee, and to Herrsching in the rain, and S and I walked to Eching before catching a bus to Puppi's for Kaffee und Kuchen and homegrown Johannesbeeren and Stachelbeeren.

June 28-July 12: Rorschach to Guendlischwand 

July 13: We had just walked 170 miles across Switzerland, so we took it easy. We bought groceries, and walked to Gasthaus Dietrich for dinner. We used to eat there regularly with Helen, but management changed after her death, and no one's really felt like it could compete with their memories of it. But it was pretty much how I remembered it, and we were rewarded with a rainbow over the house next door. 

July 14: We walked 5 miles to Stegen to meet family for dinner. Before the deluge, and before discovering the restaurant was closed, there were wild raspberries on the trail through the woods to Inning.

July 15: H, S, and V visited us from Berlin. More rain, but also a walk to the lake and sailing the model boat until the wind became too strong.

July 16: Dachau

July 17: Our German Romanticism summer ended with a two-day connect-the-dots walk from Lindau-Insel to Rorschach. The Rules of Walking permit virtual and real ferry connections, but we figured we'd make a land connection too. Our destination for the first night was Bregenz, where we enjoyed a modernized rendition of Der Freischütz: Carl Maria von Weber meets Gilbert and Sullivan meets Monty Python meets the Beaver Queen Pageant. I might have been the only audience member laughing out loud at the giant sprinklers during the lesbian dream sequence with diving mermaids. Check out the preview to appreciate how crazy the interpretation was (see also this behind-the-scenes video on stunts and staging).

Clap clap bravo clap brava clap clap clap bravo clap clap

July 18: From Bregenz, we continued on to Rorschach--a much more varied walk than the previous day's.

Uh, sure, that's a potato...

July 19: We walked to Puppi's for Kaffee und Kuchen with G, M, and M'. M' is heading to the U.S. this fall for a year abroad.

July 20: S biked and I walked to Herrsching, and we met up for gelato.

July 21: I made latkes for R and R'. On their way out, R' found a feather and told me I should save feathers for her (for what purpose, I don't know). It occurred to me that in ~550 miles of walking and hiking this summer, I hadn't noticed any feathers. S and I went for a walk afterward, and voilà...

July 22: We had some gummint business to take care of in Starnberg. Afterward, I walked to Tutzing. I've now walked the entire length of the western shore of the Starnbergersee. Tutzing has a promenade named after Johannes Brahms, who lived there for four months in the summer of 1873 while he was avoiding visiting Clara Schumann, with whom he was having a spat.

July 23: One more visit with Puppi that involved some contortions with train and bus schedules, followed by a lovely evening walk as far as Inning and then a bus home.

And that was that...

Rorschach to Lauterbrunnen - Day 15 - Kleine Scheidegg to Gündlischwand

Saturday July 12, Kleine Scheidegg to Lauterbrunnen to Gündlischwand

We went to bed on Friday knowing that while our sunset view had been somewhat obscured by clouds, the sky at sunrise was forecast to be completely cloudless.

Whence we came:  

Looking west at a setting just-past-full moon:

Wee clouds sprouting above the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. Given that the lenticular clouds over the Jungfrau always looked slightly behind the peak, we assumed the summit was actually out of view. The sunlit triangular peak top to the right is the Silberhorn.

Nebelmeerish over Grindelwald in the Lütschinenthal, more haze than cloud: 

Morning greetings from our shadows:

Zooming in on what we're pretty sure is the train station on the Jungfrau Joch (11,362 feet):

The Jungfrau Joch is a popular and heavily-advertised tourist destination  

Having been the only Friday night guests at Gletscherblick, we (and the black flies) were the only ones eating breakfast Saturday morning. I asked our host if we had somehow miscalculated the start of tourist season, and she said nah, the number of guests just fluctuates sometimes. Given the number of day hikers we had seen on Friday, we assume most of their business is through the Gasthaus restaurant.  

It was our last day of hiking, with ~4,900' to descend. The pass, Kleine Scheidegg, was a little below the Gasthaus. There's a hotel, and a bustling train station, with some cog trains heading between Grindelwald and Lauterbunnen, and others heading up to the Jungfrau Joch. We crossed the train tracks and started our descent. Once we were past the hubbub and buildings, Carly posed for a photo.

Our route more or less followed the cog-train route down to Lauterbrunnen.

Lenticular clouds were doing crazy things atop the Mönch. 

A slate roof made of naturally irregularly shaped tiles:

Felix Mendelssohn hiked here. The Mendelssohnweg takes hikers all the way down to Wengen, above Lauterbrunnen, but we followed the Lauberhornrennen route instead. Signage along the latter trail wrote of skiiers zipping down the mountain at speeds approaching 100km/hr. That sounds insane to me, but only one skiier, Gernot Reinstadler, has ever died on the route, during a qualifying run.

You can spend 1 hour and 20 minutes heading down to Wengen, or if you prefer to head away from Wengen, 1 hour and 50 minutes. 

At some point on the hike, it occurred to me that the only way The Little Engine That Could could have made it over the steep mountain was if it had been a cog train, something the book failed to depict.

1930 1st edition. No cogs. I feel misled.

After several miles, I thought I was getting a blister on one of my toes, despite my having stopped multiple times to tighten my shoelaces so my toes wouldn't slide forward as we hiked down. I finally sat down and took off my hiking boot, thinking I'd put on some moleskin. When I peeled off my sock, there was no blister, just a nice bloody cut caused by an adjacent toenail. This taught me (1) to be glad this happened on the last day instead of the first, and (2) to remember to trim nails, since 15 days is a long time. I put a band-aid over it and changed into sneakers, and my toes were happy for the rest of the hike.

iNaturalist couldn't identify these flowers.

Almost down: Wengen is situated about 1,500' above Lauterbrunnen.

Many of the chalets in Wengen have names. This one is named Ameise ("Ants"). 

At last, there it is, Lauterbrunnen. The famous waterfall to the right is the Staubbachfall, but if you look closely at the photo, you might see a few more; there are some 72 waterfalls in the Lauterbrunnental.

We had time to either explore Lauterbrunnen or to head further down the valley. Given the density of tourists, we decided to swing by a grocery store for snacks, then followed the Weisse Lütschine river for another three miles to Gündlischwand, the next stop on the train line. We knew we had arrived when a sign told us so. We hopped on a train--the first of five that day--to start our 7-hour trip home.

Here we are!

Ta da! 9.6 miles, 85' ascent, 4,956' descent.

Rorschach to Lauterbrunnen - Day 14 - Schwarzwaldalp to Kleine Scheidegg

Friday July 11, Schwarzwaldalp to Kleine Scheidegg

Our penultimate day, one to savor. The 15-day hike was our anniversary gift to ourselves: one day of hiking for every two years of marriage, both a blur with memorable highpoints marking the distance.

S was enthusiastic about the mountains and glaciers that awaited: the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau and their massive fields of ice and snow.

First pass: Grosse Scheidegg.

First we had to pass the Wetterhorn, with the brilliant Rosenlaui glacier in its saddle. 

Whence we came. Grosse Scheidegg is popular among bicyclists, who bike up on the road with switchbacks, while the hikers cut across on trails.

These rocks had lots of color and millions of years of geological history in them...

Common bistort. Thanks, iNaturalist.

Just below Grosse Scheidegg, we overheard two bicyclists who had paused next to a pond. They were speaking English, and we struck up a conversation. One of them was disappointed to hear we were stopping in Lauterbrunnen. "Two more days! Keep going for two more days--that's when you'll see the really good views." When we told him we were trying to decide where to hike next year and that we might start in Lauterbrunnen, he recommended continuing through to Montreaux and Lausanne and hooking up with the Via Francigena, which could take us all the way to Rome. We added that to our to-ponder list. 

Shortly thereafter, we reached the pass at Grosse Scheidegg and had our first good view of what we're pretty sure were the Eiger and Jungfrau, with a mostly hidden Mönch.

We headed down toward the valley and Grindelwald.

Note the waterfall flowing down the side of the middle-
ground slope (I assume still part of the Wetterhörner massif) 

S biked through here in July 2018 and took a photograph of his backpack leaning against this water trough, so we decided to make it a habit: every time we walk or bike past this trough, we'll photograph our backpacks in front of it.

As we neared Grindelwald and the mountains came into closer view, I was fascinated by the lenticular clouds that formed at the summits. Air flows by and is pushed upward by the peak; this cools the air and, if the air has sufficient moisture content, causes water vapor to condense out. 

Dozens of paragliders were in the air, already condensed...

Cloud stripes! The interwebs suggest these are formed by eddy currents between condensation layers. (For the physics behind this, google Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.)

The paragliders were landing in a field above Grindelwald, and did spirals and loop-de-loops to lose altitude.

Walk walkity walk walk. For the first time, we encountered a steady stream of other tourists. Thinking back to the absence of other hikers at Alp Grat, we wondered if hiking season had finally begun, or if we had finally reached a more popular section of the Via Alpina. When we finally entered town, we found it overrun with tourists--to which, of course, we also contributed. We had a quick and tasty pizza for lunch, the envy of the zillions of black flies that we had come to expect anywhere that food and the outdoors met in Switzerland, then headed to the gondola lift for almost four miles and 4,200 feet elevation gain of additional immersion therapy--a real splurge to fold into "point-to-point" hiking, but I promise it was very disconcerting even if the non-acrophobe said it wasn't.

I opened my eyes long enough to take a quick photo of the Jungfrau.

We arrived at Männlichen Bergstation (7,300'), where instead of chewing cud, this slide-for-a-tongue cow chewed kids.

We paused to check out the view of the next valley, Lauterbrunnental, and saw the Jungfrau to the south. This was the best view we would have of it that day, as clouds had surrounded it by the time it was in our line of sight again.

Whence we came: looking back at Grindelwald.

We and dozens of other tourists hiked from Männlichen toward Kleine Scheidegg on a wide, tourist-friendly trail. Sure, if you wanted to plunge over the edge, you could, but you'd have to work at it. If the Via Alpina had taught us anything, it's that plunging is something you do in private, not in popular places where "children could be watching."

The views were stunning, as were the wildflowers too numerous to photograph. We saw more houseleeks, smaller than those growing on the Tannalp but just as difficult to photograph in focus. 

After thinking we had finally found a place where tourists would be, we discovered we once again were the only guests at our lodging for the night, the Berghaus Grindelwaldblick. 

Room with a view

In 2014, when S and I needed a new bathroom towel rack, we made one ourselves out of faucets and pipe fittings--pretty darn cute. Next time, we'll take inspiration from this one in our room at Grindelwaldblick.

After dinner--during which we read about the strong safety record of Seilbahnen and how when things go awry, they sometimes go catastrophically awry--we headed outside in search of Alpenglühen, and found it. 

Ta da! 11.6 miles, 1,950' ascent, 4,050' descent.

The long straight line is the gondola lift (as the crow flies--
the lift shifted southward a bit at a middle station)

Lift miles not included, but the elevation difference is impressive