Scattershot Germany post

I've not been feeling particularly focused of late, but when do I ever? And while there's some obvious low-lying fruit I should be able to compose a post around--say, the Vermeers that were the reason we chose Dresden as our vacation destination--I'd like to have a little more brain capacity for such a thing. (Oh! The laughter at the suggestion that thought goes into these rambling posts of mine.)

For whatever reason, I'm not highlighting Vermeer today. Instead, I'm making some random observations about travel and leaning heavily on a handful of photos that I've taken the time to save and name:

Observation #1: Poppies really are a thing in European fields.
We rented bikes on a Saturday, not realizing that it was the day of the MammutMarsch in Dresden and that many of the participants would be walking on the paths along the Elba that we wanted to bike. Happily, the crowds thinned after a bit and soon we had the path mostly to ourselves. I was quite amazed by the fields packed with peas--how do they harvest them???--but it was the maybe-fallow fields of poppies and bachelor buttons that caused me to stop and take some photos. 

 

Observation #2: Sometimes art is particularly relevant.
 I'm glad, truly I am, that we spent as much time as we did in museums, admiring the work of old masters. As above, I wanted to go to Dresden (and Braunschweig) to see Vermeers I'd never seen before and I'm so glad I did. But sometimes, looking up at works of art, walking quietly along marble floors, and just being on your feet for hours at a time gets a little, well, tiring. And sometimes my brain goes a little wonky under such conditions so when I saw "Christ at the column," a sculpture Balthasar Permoser completed in 1723, I didn't so much see our tortured Lord and Savior as I saw another museum goer desperately in need of a break for coffee and pastry in the nearest cafe.

Observation #2, Exhibit A

But Christ wasn't the only bit of artwork that shared my pain. At the risk of spoiling the eventual Vermeer post, I'll mention that the second Vermeer at Dresden's Museum of Old Masters was something of a disappointment. Okay, I downright disliked it. It's not so much--or not entirely--that the subject matter (it's called "The Procuress") is distasteful as that I just didn't care for the painting. There's no window, for one thing, so the light thing isn't going on. I don't know; the people are all just unpleasant. I didn't like it. I was shocked not to like it. It made me a little cranky. But the very same room contains Hendrik de Keyser's "Head of a Crying Boy" who seemed likewise a bit cranky and disappointed.

Observation #2, Exhibit B

 Observation #3: Our Dresden rental really was the best.
I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but I really just loved the place we stayed in Dresden. (Have I mentioned that it was hella-cheap too?) Maybe I was inclined to see things as art because we spent so much time in art museums, but, well, I couldn't stop taking photographs of our wee kitchen. Okay, I've tried as hard as I can to make this photo fit the "observation" theme, but it's just not coming. Just join me in sighing wistfully over that teapot and the colors and even the light.

(Hmmm; I neglected to straighten this one)

Observation #4: Museums frequently have accessible restrooms.
I first noticed this several years ago at the Albertina in Vienna, but I was most appreciative of it on our Gemany trip when the bakery we were passing time in while our laundry tumbled turned out to have no bathroom and the public convenience in the square was inconveniently unavailable. We stopped by the Erich Kästner Museum gift shop and discovered that that's where the museum keeps its public restrooms. (Naturally, more tea and coffee was purchased, along with some books; there's really no such thing as a truly free restroom.) A few days later I found that the bathrooms at the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum can be reached without necessarily having a ticket to the exhibits. Of course, we had tickets because why would we be in Braunschweig if not to see their Vermeer? (The greater question of why Braunschweig even has a Vermeer remains unanswered.)

Truth to tell, I don't know which toilet featured this helpful pictogram; it could have been at KEF.

I hate to end this post with a toilet-related photo so I'll add a teaser for a future post:
Observation #5: Dresden is pretty darned photogenic.
It's a sad fact that the Allies bombed the hell out of Dresden during World War II for much the same reason that the Ed Norton character in Fight Club pummels another character to pieces: "I just wanted to destroy something pretty," is my recollection of what he says. But Dresden gamely decided to resurrect / rebuild a lot of what was destroyed and they did an amazing job of it.  I couldn't figure out which bits of buildings, etc. were truly hundreds of years old and which had been standing for less than a century. As Scott pointed out, the world has been burning a lot of coal until fairly recently so the blackened look came naturally.

A bit of Dresden "Zwinger"

Vögel von Deutschland

Even starlings seem exotic in a foreign land.

 Another distracted post about Germany: this time I intend to focus on birds. We'll see how that goes. The older I get (and I feel I'm getting older by the minute which, of course, is the case), the hazier my memory becomes. That's not so unusual, but it's particularly inconvenient when my camera stops working and I have to try to remember what birds I've seen actually looked like. Not having a proper guidebook with us wasn't so helpful either. We kept meaning to stop by a bookstore to get one (as we have done in France and The Netherlands), but that didn't so much happen this time around.

 But enough with the excuses! What of the birds?

 One of the highlights was assuredly the very obliging black woodpecker, a video of which (taken by Scott on his aged iPhone), I posted a few days ago.

The cinematographer in action

 The woodpecker was in Great Garden Park (or Großer Garten if you want to practice your German) which is--I think--sort of in the heart of Dresden, though I have to admit I never developed any sense of how the city was actually laid out. It's sort of small, maybe, is Dresden; I know we ended up outside the city limits in one direction while out on a walk and in another direction when we went for a bike ride. But this park is definitely quite large. And, for the most part, well manicured. It contains an old palace, too; Scott theorized it was where August the Strong housed visitors he didn't so much want to see, though googling suggests otherwise. We heard a great many birds in the park--with Merlin id'ing all sorts of them, but the woodpecker was, I think, the only one we saw clearly enough.

Merlin ID list for video, above

 We also saw several times, but failed to get any sort of photographic evidence for, a number of what Merlin declared to be great spotted woodpeckers. Having checked out (from SPL, after we were home again) a bird ID book for Europe, Birds of Europe, I now know that there is also a mid-sized spotted woodpecker and possibly a small one as well, and I certainly can't say for sure which we saw. But I'm trusting Merlin to have been able to distinguish between their calls so I'm claiming to have seen the GREAT one. (Though I do remember thinking one of them was distinctly smaller than the others . . . )

 The Eurasian blackbird was the most obliging of birds; we saw him (or her) quite clearly on several occasions, but failed to get any proper photos. Also seen more than once was the European robin, also a mighty-fine bird. Again with no photos. And ditto the great tit, which one imagines must be related to our chickadees.

 I was pretty excited when we read that a bird we'd seen on our bike ride along the Elba was a "goosander," but now I find that that's just the local name for what I originally thought it was, a common merganser. Still, it's one of the rare birds I photographed with my real camera before it gave up the ghost, so I'm still taken with it:

"Goosander" is a better name than "common" merganser anyway.

 Also seen on that bike ride when my camera had not yet died, a whole mess of greylag geese, some of them banded:

A sampling of greylags, enjoying a Saturday outing on the Elba

 One of my favorite bird experiences of the trip was all the house martins hanging out by the Augustus Bridge. We encountered these our first full day in Dresden and I found them absolutely mesmerizing.

Trust me when I say this does not at all capture the experience

It was in Frankfurt that we saw the Egyptian geese hanging out on a bit of public grass:

A little alarming, really

 A park in Berlin--the Tiergarten, maybe--turned out to be the best spot for birds--and of course I had neither binoculars (stowed in our luggage in a locker at the Berlin train station) nor camera (ditto stowage and not working anyway). We were just taking a shortcut through the park to get from the Brandenburg Gate to the art museum with the Vermeers, you see. But then we encountered a charming hooded crow family.

Crowlet behavior is a universal constant

 There was quite a bit of activity on the other side of the path too. My attention was first drawn to what we're thinking was a common chaffinch fledge, harassing its parent, and then a Eurasian nuthatch put in an appearance, followed by what we're saying was yet another (great) spotted woodpecker. And I even sort of got some photos (Note that I'm not saying any of them are good photos!):

Young common chaffinch who first drew my attention

Adult male common chaffinch pretending not to notice its offspring

Trust me, it's a Eurasian nuthatch

 Also seen hither and yon, a grey heron, many magpies, mallards, probably common chiffchaffs, and a pigeon of some sort that seemed so common I didn't even bother taking a photo, and now--predictably--I can't find anything that's a match. There were also a number of what I assumed were house sparrows and only now wonder if perhaps they were something marginally more exotic--Italian sparrows (a cross between house and Spanish). Alas, there's no way of knowing now. We also heard what I'm assuming was a cuckoo about a million times, but never got any sort of look at anything that might have been making the noise, sadly.

 I hope to have more scintillating--or at least in-focus--photos for a future post. Stay tuned!

 

Video interlude: Black woodpecker in Dresden's Great Garden Park

Scott took a wee video of the most obliging bird we encountered while in Germany. The video should be live in about half an hour. In the meantime, a snap of what Merlin hears on the soundtrack

Deutschland für Alex (Round 1)

I've said that I'd post about the trip to Germany (Saxony, for the most part) that we took earlier this month so here I am, attempting a post. While we insisted that we had learned our lesson and were not going to try to do too much or spend all our time running from pillar to post, somehow we ended up spending a lot of time in transit and a lot of it felt like a blur, even at the time. My proper camera was temperamental for a bit before deciding to die outright so I ended up taking a lot of photos with my phone--and I'm here to tell you that an ancient Samsung is not a great instrument for bird photography. I've spent the last few hours pulling some photos off the phone, adjusting some in Photoshop and comparing others to the illustrated ebird list for Dresden. I'm here to tell you it's all a bit tedious which, I fear, this post will also be. 

A more-obliging-than-most-but-still-very-out-of-focus adult male common chaffinch

But since it's customary for me to take shots of the view out the window of wherever I'm staying--and I always do so with Alex in mind--I may start with those photos, unexciting as they might seem, starting with views out of two of the Dresden rental windows:

View out kitchen window (facing east, maybe)

View facing west (obvs) out main room window

The Dresden rental, as I call it, was absolutely fabulous. As you can see in the photo above, it was like being out in the country, but it was a short tram ride to bustling central Dresden (to be addressed in a later post, most likely, since any photos I have of that area are on the dead camera's memory card). I loved the rental so much that I interrupt this views-out-windows series for a view of the breakfast table, for what is the point of international travel if not obsessing on one's own mundane activities?

Last breakfast chez Frank

I could (and, in truth, may) do an entire post as an ode to my new most beloved baked good item, the humble Brötchen. The Seattle area offers two possible sources for a proper Brötchen (which is so inadequately defined as a bread roll or bun), but I'm also planning to try to bake some myself, probably using this recipe. But just look at that charming tea set! I never find such things in rentals and yet! Oh, I was in heaven. But back to the other rental view windows:

Night view from the Scandic Frankfurt Museumsufer

Because, it seems, I am incapable of traveling to Germany without assuming that one must start in Frankfurt, we started and ended our trip there. Which was fine, really. Scott found Frankfurt quite enchanting, and the hotel was reasonably priced and excellently located, aka within easy walking distance of both the Städel Museum (which houses a most excellent Vermeer) and the city's hauptbahnhof. It was just happenstance that it was so very convenient to the BioKaiser where my love affair with  Brötchen began:

The tea at BioKaiser was also oh-so-lovely

Our penultimate night in Germany--as well as our last full day--was spent in Berlin. We saw a few of the sights (perhaps the subject of yet another future post) and had some spectacularly bad cocktails (with very few exceptions, one should just stick to beer when in Germany), but for now, I offer just a view from that rental's window--or I would if Blogger weren't having a bit of an emotional crisis at the moment. While waiting to see if that resolves itself, I'll insert that I would not so much recommend this particular rental. It looked lovely, but it was pretty dysfunctional, with a shower with a very slow drain and a door that didn't shut sufficiently and a stovetop we couldn't convince to work. No tea kettle or tea sets, either. The location was decent, though the area might have seemed a wee bit sketchy.

It looks pretty urban but those trees were full of birdsong

Because sometimes it's just a drive-by photo post of flowers

Lily of the valley with a hint of sweet William

Peony, lilac, columbine, and spray of fennel frond

Iris, geranium, rose, columbine, forget-me-not, "Ballard flower," and "that weird spiky purple thing"

Seattle Independent Bookstore Day, 2026 edition

This year's planning strategy

It's Seattle Independent Bookstore Day Eve chez Aurora. We've been doing this for a decade or more now, and perhaps we've finally reached the Shipton and Tilman level, in which the planning fits tidily on the back of an envelope.

There are now thirty-three bookstores participating in what is laughingly called the Seattle Independent Bookstore Challenge. In reality, the Seattle Passport includes stores in Kirkland, Mercer Island, Edmonds, Burien, Poulsbo, Bremerton, Shoreline, Kingston, Redmond, and Bainbridge Island, and, goshdarnitall, that's just The Crazy. And we're just not going along with it, at least not on Saturday. As it is, we won't make it to every store in Seattle even. Not by bike. Not starting at our local that opens at 10:00 am. Not and end up at Oaxaca for a celebratory dinner which is, I tell you, a non-negotiable for both of us.

With age, I tell you, comes wisdom. We're going to the bookstores we like most and that we can reach without too much anguish. Oh, I'd like to visit Magnolia's Bookstore tomorrow on what I consider to truly be Independent Bookstore Day because I absolutely adore that bookstore. Both of us would prefer to hit Open Books tomorrow too. But Magnolia is fairly isolated and closes at 6:00 pm, while Open Books is located near the start of our run but doesn't open until noon. It's not inconceivable that we should somehow squeeze them in, but it's not exactly what you'd call likely. 

I'm crossing my fingers we manage to reach eleven stores tomorrow and find them open and stocked with books we are eager to buy. That seems a reasonable, rational approach to the day.

Follow-up post of the results sure(ish) to come. 

Seattle Public Libraries Passport Fun!

Cut-paper art done by a staff member at SPL's Southwest Branch

 If the Imaginary Reader knows the most basic essentials about my character, then they know that I can never resist a passport project that involves traveling around by bike getting stamps. I was, therefore, the ideal market for Seattle Public Libraries' passport and postcard promotion in which one could fill a library passport with stamps from each and every branch of SPL and get a postcard featuring that library* to boot. For free! Just for asking! 

Final passport**

Earlier this week I collected my final stamp--from the Broadview branch. There was no big fanfare though the librarian there asked me which branch I'd liked best. I told him that was an impossible question to answer, but that I could say which one had surprised me the most: the Southwest Branch. Southwest is not an attractive building from the outside and, very oddly, it is closed on Saturdays as Scott and I discovered when we biked there after a visit to Fresh Flours. But I gamely returned during the week and discovered the amazing artwork featured above and some of the friendliest librarians imaginable inside that ugly building. And the Birdhouse is less than a block away!

 It's been swell to have a reason to get out and explore some new neighborhoods over the last several months. Yes, months. I collected my first postcard at the Columbia City branch last fall sometime. At that time I didn't know about the passport stamp business so I had to stop by there again as part of my "by light rail" day on which I got a handful of bike miles and a lot of value out of my orca card. 

  I shouldn't have been surprised to find that almost every single librarian I interacted with was friendly and helpful--to an amazing degree. The person at the Southwest branch found a couple of stickers to use so that the ink wouldn't smear where I'd covered up an earlier (misplaced) stamp. The woman at the Magnolia branch was so troubled by the failure of her stamp to fully absorb the ink that she found a second, less-battered stamp to use and helped me affix that new, improved version in place. The "learned something new" person at the Northeast Branch told me about the forgotten room discovered at the University District branch during its renovations (currently closed so no stamp from them, though I got a U-district postcard from the NE woman), while the Lake City librarian enthused about their branch's George Tsutakawa gate--and told me about how his only other gate in the city had been stolen from the Arboretum during COVID. (His son then replaced that one, using his father's old plans.)

One of Lake City's gates (there's a much better image on their website)

I was also struck by the "beyond books and DVDs" nature of several of the branches. Oh, they all had computers for public use (and plenty of public making use of them), but a number of branches also offered basic essentials and Green Lake even has a visiting food pantry. (The Wallingford branch is tiny, but it's adjacent to a local food bank.)

I'm not sure if my definition of "great public art" is exactly what the designers of this program had in mind; I know that the Central Library downtown is supposed to be gobsmacking, but what I liked most was a bit more homey:

No longer accurate, but delightful nonetheless (Queen Anne branch)

New Holly branch pillar (Superman is dropping books on Seattle)

 And of course there has to be an obligatory bike shot:

The weirdest bike racks ever (but at least they had them!)

The postcard haul . . .

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And a final reason why I love living in Seattle and love its library system:

*The Madrona-Sally Goldmark Branch was out of postcards!

**Predictably, I replaced a few of the categories with my own.