Sunday Amusements

Nearly every business in Germany is closed on Sundays and this week is the beginning of fall break, meaning that the city was all but deserted this morning. I got to play tourist after church and run around snapping pictures because I didn't have to worry about avoiding the usual crowds of people downtown. A few highlights:

The fog this morning outside my window was lovely. And this was 9 in the morning!

My current apartment is right on the river, which means that fog is more common than in the middle of the city. Unfortunately being right on the river means that sometimes the river is right on the building - they have a flood every couple of years and the bottom floor apartment gets soaked. Plus, a regular river bath isn't great for the building foundations. Therefore, the city is constructing a wall to hold back the river, much like the levees in New Orleans (though we hope these ones actually work...) to keep the waterfront property un-flooded. Instead of having the river right at eye-level outside my window, I have a lovely view of the construction crew.

I also dodge backhoes on my way home from the store.

But this isn't just about me! Let me introduce you to a corner of Germany.

This fountain commemorates 150 years of a particular industry in the city.

First Forever 18, and now T.K.Maxx. I wonder if German copyright laws aren't very strict...

And of course this would not be Europe without a number of lovely old churches. I know of at least three, but unfortunately my pictures of two of them had terrible sun glare and don't look like much of anything. Digital cameras: I should learn how to use them.

The front of Liebfrauenkirche - the Church of the Blessed Virgin.

The back of Liebfrauenkirche

Two statues with a poem in between.

The little plaque between these two is a poem written in older German, that goes something along the lines of "The market woman said to the policeman 'it is so silly/colorful to me, he has peed on my husband, that nuisance your dog!'" I think. I couldn't find any translations online either into modern German or English, so there's my attempt at being a Renaissance Germanic scholar.

Up next: I discovered mineral water at the store with two different labels denoting how bubbly they are, and I want to see which is bubblier! That experiment will probably happen sometime this evening.