Kunstmuseum - Bonn

It rained today; perhaps not such a major issue but there was an earnestness about today's rain. It seemed to understand that today was excursion day and that, for the first time since the beyond-freezing-cold of late February, the weather was going to ensure that nothing would be done outside without being terribly and irrevocably inconvenienced.

So I surrendered to those dark clouds and caught the underground to Heussallee and the Kunstmuseum.  This was my first visit to the Bonn's Modern Art Gallery and I have to be honest, I did approach this visit with some trepidation.

In my sad and somewhat Philistine mind set, Modern Art would appear to fall into one of two categories. First, it seems to have been a mistake. I can imagine an artist racing home to tell his partner, 'remember that massive party we had last week and how we spilled paint on a canvas that had fallen on the floor, then we walked and crawled thought the paint? I've been offered a gazillion dollars for it and multiple gazillions if I can produce another twelve. Call everyone back for this weekend and order plenty of bourbon and vodka.'

The second one seems to be an actual confidence trick. As in 'Oh my god! My agent will be here in twenty minutes and I haven't got anything. I know, I'll dribble two blobs of yellow here and then run a six inch wide brush with some black paint on it to give a wide stripe of streaky black between the two yellow blobs.'

Like I said, when it comes to art, I am a Philistine. But at the same time, I have had occasions where art has spoken to me. Like most people, I know what I like. The problem for me today was that I didn't like too much. Perhaps I need help; I did notice several couples sitting and being transported by the setting and the art. They spoke animatedly about form and shape and they gesticulated long and hard as they sat admiring.

I did try but, like Rap music, the art today eluded me.

To top things off, there was a photographic retrospective of Lewis Baltz. Let's not even have the discussion of whether photography is art or not! I did check out his corner of the gallery and was somewhat amazed, to be honest. There were black and white pictures of tract houses and factories, car parks and loading bays from the mid-70's. Having been through a multitude of factories and warehouses in my time, the images could have been eminently forgettable. But Baltz has an ability to frame and capture these mundane scenes beautifully. The black and white images are crisp and clean; almost documentary evidence of an age gone by. The regular shapes of his images become geometrical wonders rather than repetitious images of factory windows and the like.

For good or I'll, it made me look more closely at the streets around my apartment in Bonn. Curiously, I looked and looked again at some of the apartment buildings less than a kilometre from my home in Bonn.

Check out these images (crude by Mr. Baltz standards I know) and see what I saw for the first time in three months.

For example, this looks like just another street in Bonn, right?

But then look more closely at the balconies; Where did these carvings and moldings come from?

These are startlingly beautiful and seem to have just arrived into my state of conscious awareness only this weekend. What sort of mental haze have I been walking around in??

Were they installed in the last couple of weeks? Surely I could not have been walking around so blind as not to see these wondrous items every single day?I walk past many of these buildings every day to catch my tram to the office.



This one exists over a doorway not 500m from my apartment

 

This one has a cheeky face (almost Punch and Judy-esque) on either side of the door

 

 

This magnificent eagle is one of three or four that sit above a small Asian restaurant now

 

After visiting the Baltz exhibit, it was as if a mask had been removed from my eyes. I may not get Modern Art but a visit to the Kunstmuseum has certainly opened my eyes to the beauty around me. Sometimes all you have to do is open your eyes and ears to the opportunity around and life might just astonish you.

Have a great week!

Burg Nideggen

Today is really a leap in to the unknown. I'm heading to Burg Nideggen on the advice of folks in the office. For me this means three trains and almost two hours and I'm not sure of what the castle will actually look like. The third train is an adventure in its own! A single carriage on a single track where the trees are brushing against the sides of the train. A stream flows by amongst the houses and villages we pas thru. As the train line reduces in clearance and the train loses more and more speed, so the weather closes in. Grey skies with steady rain make a mockery of summer. The one saving grace is that it is not cold but, peering out the window of the train, it does look gloomy.

As we progress toward Nideggen Brucke the stream flows into quite a large lake which looks marvelous! Small boats are moored to local piers near houses; restaurants and pubs are on the shore of the lake. There is no wind so the lake is flat and calm with swans and ducks the only movement on the water. The hills and trees are now moving in again and the lake is gone and the stream has returned. No matter what else today, the scenery promises to be lovely.

For those of us unencumbered by cars, the train is a little circuitous; Bonn to Cologne to Duren to Nigedden Brucke. From there GoogleMaps assure me it's only twenty minute walk to the castle.

As I get off the train, I look up and see the castle at the top of the nearest cliff top.

O boy; it might be 20 minutes but it looks mainly 'up'! The road begins innocuously enough and there's a bridge to cross that stream or should I say 'stream' as the sign on the bridge tells me this is the River Ruhr. There is a fair amount of water here but hardly what I would correlate with the Ruhr; I'm assuming we're well upstream. After crossing the river, the road resolves itself into a series of switchbacks that gently assist the cars to the top. The footpath, however, runs straight up the hill! It crosses the road three or four times but is virtually straight up and pretty hard going.

Once cresting the summit, the work is well worth the effort. The original town seems to dominate the entire top plateau at the top of the cliff. Not far below the surface seems to be a solid layer of rock; ideal for solid foundations for massive fortifications like these.

There must once have been a massive town wall with the standard four gates or tors at each point of the compass. However as we move closer to the inner part of town we find the original gatehouse to the central fortifications.

This is a massive affair where once there would have been two sets of huge doors at each end of the gatehouse. A perfect place to lock in potential n'er do wells while deciding their fate.

From the gatehouse, there must be another 600m of road that was walled on both sides before arriving at two more gates prior to accessing the main buildings themselves. Now, the walls are down and there are lovely views of the surrounding country side and the church. But let's walk on to the main buildings because this is where the real action is.

The original keep has been restored and is now set up as a museum. For three Euro entry, it's well worth the look. Unfortunately there were no English books available today (they're on order apparently but the French, Dutch and German books weren't a lot of use to me) and the museum signs are all in German. But no translations are necessary to check out the armour, weapons, pottery and other display items. Plus the views from the windows are superb.

The museum is not open Mondays but is open for the ret of the week from 10:00-17:00 except for Christmas and some public holidays.

The museum also has a model of the castle with a German commentary but again, the images and background music make it clear that this was a place of structure and delight until destroyed in a siege. The timing of the siege is unclear but cannon were used so it must have been late in the castle's development. Prior to cannon, sieges could be withstood inside the cattle (if all preparation and care was taken) but cannon virtually ended the strategic benefit of castles like Nideggen.

Looking back along the drive to the castle to the double-doored gatehouse

There is a plaque celebrating the castle's 800th birthday 1177-1977; so buildings in this location can claim a long and illustrious lineage.

The castle and its fortifications are made of rosy red stone. It is interesting that a lot of the houses and buildings in and around the town also boast foundations and indeed whole walls of the same red stone. I'm guessing that as the castle and surrounding walls we destroyed, sensible builders were grabbing these beautifully formed and regular shaped stones for their own building projects. A worthy recycling program if ever there was one.

It's only after visiting the museum and then reviewing what remains of the castle do you being to understand what was once here. Those vacant windows were once incorporated into a massive hall that dominated the skyline for miles. So much money and so much power must have been wielded from this location. Time has not been able to erode the feeling of grandeur, the understanding of how complex the design and construction must have been.

The view back to the railway line and Ruhr River merely demonstrate just how immense the site must have been in its hey day.

My recommendation? If you love castles, then pack a book, your iPod and a snack and catch the three trains. The views, the remaining castle/church/fortifications/the museum and the overall immensity of the site are well worth it!