Between the Kaiserbrücke and Theodor-Heuss-Brücke

Just look at this subversive mob of reprobates, gathered around a den of iniquity (aka a Trinkhalle, this one in the Lessingstrasse in Mainz) and planning whoknowswhat.. Trinkhalle. In the mid 19th…

I’m a bit schizophrenic about this one … Born in the UK, but emigrated against my will at 4 years old. Grew up in New Zealand Lived in Germany for most of life . So. Top picture is what…

Let this be a warning to you if you’re considering installing underfloor heating. St Johannis is the 2nd oldest cathedral in Germany, having been consecrated in 910, but likely having been bu…

The Sad Girl is a constant in Mainz – there are supposedly at least 70, some by the original artist, some knockoffs, This is a “for real” in the entrance to the courtyard of one o…

Or Golden October, being the Teutonic equivalent of Indian Summer. No-one knows the origin of the North American terminology and it wouldn’t work here anyway, given the lack of aforementioned…

Over in the courtyard of the State Museum, they’ve got a stockpile of ready-made construction stoppers. I frequently warned that digging a hole in Mainz will hit mostly something of historica…

A month and nine days too early Kristallnacht - Crystal Night, a euphemism for the shards of broken glass that littered the streets - was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938.

Kuehn Kunz Rosen is one of 3 local micro-breweries in Mainz worthy of the name, the other two being Eulchen and Schwarze Rose (which has definitely become my favourite). There are, in fact, a mere 5 in total. In a city of 200,000 with 2 universities.... Go figure. But this one caught my eye - a portmanteau of sorts of Riwaka and Kākāpō, both from my neck of the woods.

.....And after summer evermore succeedsBarren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold;So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.—Gloucester, Henry IV, Part 2, Act II, scene 4 Not quite winter, Will, but the autumnal equinox displaced summer at 20:19 CET yesterday evening. Last sunset of the season

..before the Fairy Godmother turns them into golden carriages to take Cinderella to the ball. Otherwise you'll have to provide your own mice to turn into horses, rat for a coachman and lizards for footmen....

1599. Original windows. I think Gonsenheim, a flash (more-of-a-small-city-than-a) suburb of Mainz, has a bit of history. Early Stone Age - 4500 years ago - ceremonial jade axes Late Bronze Age - 3000 years - remnants of a settlement Roman - 2000 years Franks - 1250 years ago, with a noble by the name of Gunzo settling here and naming the place Gunsenheim.

Yhe biological version has a large facility here. They take these basic forms, weld on the head, number them and sell them for entry into one of the many rubber duck races that they have around here

And it came to pass in the hamlet of Algoma in the County of the Door in the state they call Wisconsin on the banks of the body of water named Michigan that on the 11th day of September 1935 a child was born under a Corn Moon to Edward and Josephine Mura, a couple of Belgian and French ancestry who did live on Steele Street with their 5 children Jerome, David, Louise, Clara and Dolores and where Edward did toil at the Vencer factory.

"94 today" says the display on the commuter highway close to Bingen. Don't why it thinks that - birthday was in July and I'm not *quite* that chronologically gifted. Yet... Oh. It's counting the number of cyclists using the route. Got it. Now, this was just after 10am so it's first picked up the commuters and school kids (between 7 and 8:30) and then we fitness fanatics on road or gravel bikes.

"Times are changed; we also are changed with them" Not Silke Wolf, though - it appears that Stadecken-Elsheim's water supply must be somehow linked to the Fountain of Youth, because she's hardly changed a bit in the mumble mumble years that we've known each other. Here she is, back in 2015, and we thought we should celebrate the anniversary with an update…

Fine band. Maggie Bell, who sang backing vocals on Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells A Story. For which she should get a knighthood Or sainthood Or both. Not actually crows lurking above Hechtsheim, but rooks. (The locals call them "Saatkrähen" - seed crows) And when they're not looking for seed to devour, they'll be descending in their thousands on cherry trees, there to decimate the crop and leave the trees looking as if a plague of locusts had been through.

Parked in front of Kaffeekommune Paul's front door - their apartment on the Rhine is in one of the very few 1890's houses that survived WW2 - and we had a vaguely philosophical conversation as to its stage in the life cycle, coming to the conclusion that it was on its way to a boatyard to be fitted out as a container ship for people (aka river cruise vessels and not destined for the scrapheap in the sky A modern day version of the Janie Seddon...

..swanny river, the river being the Rhine at ..yep...Mainz. Evidently the collective noun for a group of Cygnus olor is a herd, a bevy or flock. A bit boring - I would have gone for "glide"...

A bit NQM, but anyway... Zipped down to a plant market in Maikammer, around 90km south to help my mate Frank the Potter to pack up his kit and visited this outfit. You get some idea of what they've got on offer from the top image, but when you turn the left, there's that much again! €3.50 for (IIRC) 12 seeds and he must have over 200 varieties of beef/coeur de boeuf/cuore de bui/Ochsenherz tomatoes alone...

Scratching my head about this one.... 3 apartments above each other in a block at the bottom of the Gaugass. AFD is pretty obvious - Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), a hard right (sez The Economist) far-right, ethno-nationalist (sez Wikipedia) political party , currently a mere 2 percentage points behind the CDU (senior partner in the federal coalition) and 8pp ahead of the SPD (junior partner in aforementioned coalition and up until the elections last year senior partner in the previous tripartite coalition.

The Ali Baba Kebap Haus, just up the steps from the Gaugass, is arguably one of the best (if not the best) döner places in town*. And if only for the fact that they cater for the local geriatric population who think that they're looking for something, have forgotten what it was they were looking for and WTF am I doing in this room in the first place.

.. I am not lonely" Reader at the flash-as-a-rat-with-a-gold-tooth residential development at the Zollhafen The line comes from this scene in "Heat", the 1995 Michael Mann film, in which 2 characters bond over their mutual isolation from society, one involuntary, one voluntarily. "Heat" is regarded as one of the most influential films of its genre, its use of eye contact between protagonists as a entrance to the soul of the character masterful…

...said Friederike Lauteren (1818–1884) the other week during a garden tour of the Mathildengarten in Nierstein. No, not a voice from the grave, but that of Barbara Reif who effortlessly slipped into the persona of Friederike, the wife of the original owner of the property, for the tour. "Of course, I died before my husband, so I have NO IDEA what sort of shenanigans he got up to later on..."

Bunch of sticks in the mud. No sense of humour. No plays on words. No. Wait Here's a poster for a Haydn (benefit for a good cause, make a donation)concert in Ingelheim and phonetically it *really* says: "Heaps of fun" from the German "Heidenspass". Nothing to do with heathens (although I'm convinced that we have more fun that the holy rollers..)