Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Mountain views, take 1

The weather has been rainy on this visit, but we've also had some impressive views of the Alps. The mountains begin about 100km due south of Steinebach--not exactly in the back yard, but close enough to see clearly when conditions are right.

It took me two mornings to find a good location for photographing the mountains (zoom required). The first morning, I was foiled by a bridge closure...


...so I took the road past the goats instead...


...and, never coming to a clear view, eventually made the unwise decision to walk to Oberalting, in the hopes of scaling the hill above that town. But the clock was ticking, and I had to get back for family breakfast, so instead I turned left at the Oberalting church...


...headed back downhill past the bike shop (thinking fondly of S)...


...and past the lumber mill where S had in internship in 1986 (necessitating more thinking fondly of S).


Then I thought maybe it would be just as fast to go home via Meiling--which wasn't the case, but it did offer an opportunity to take a photo of the mural in front of the restaurant Sepperl Wirt (note the mountains in the mural background!). This made me think fondly of E, who had told us his German professor this past semester had asked the class if anyone knew what the word Wirtschaft meant, and E had said it meant a restaurant. His professor had thought that was very funny, because it only means that in Bavaria; the rest of Germany usually assumes Wirtschaft means economy. (Sepperl Wirt is the name of the Wirtschaft that's owned by the host [Wirt] named Joseph [Sepperl].)


By the time I got back for breakfast, my only mountain-photographing options were in the back yard. S decided the fir tree (photo below, on the left) was mucking up the view, so he and E sawed it down that afternoon...


...enabling unobstructed fuzzy high-zoom photos of Andechs...


...as well as the roiling clouds behind the Zugspitze...


...which reminded me of Caspar David Friedrich's Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer_above_the_Sea_of_Fog
I'll blog about mountain-view attempt #2 later.

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