2025-07-08

Completed 4th - 6th July 2025 (26th Megamarathon)

Oh yes, it was Megamarathon again. The 26th edition with approx. 71 participants and more than 266k pieces assembled all together. These were mine :-)

 (Infos will be added asap)










and this one!


 

 

 

2025-07-07

With a smile and greetings to Canada

 

My anthurium gives her best to make you smile

 https://lindasrelaxinglair.blogspot.com/

 

2025-06-12

Strawberry moon in June 2025

 

The full moon rose above the horizon at around 10.30 pm and was then visible in all its splendour at around 11 pm 


The so-called strawberry moon shone brightly in the cloudless sky.
I last photographed and documented it here the moon in 2019 

2025-06-09

The Huguenots in Franconia

 Huguenots were french Protestants, mainly followers of Calvinism, who were persecuted in France in the 16th and 17th centuries because of their faith. In 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of mob violence directed against the Huguenots.

  Louis XIV instituted the dragonnades to forcibly convert Protestants, and revoked all Protestant rights in his Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685. In 1686, the Protestant population sat from 10% down to 1% of the french population.

Many fled from France, mainly to Germany, where they were accepted in various territories.

source

 

 The Huguenot Fountain, created in 1706 by the Bayreuth court sculptor Elias Räntz, depicts a cone-shaped rocky mountain in an oval fountain basin (29 × 19.5 metres), which is divided into three levels. Noble Huguenot families are depicted on the lowest level, ancient deities above and Margrave Christian Ernst at the very top. The cartouches pointing in the four cardinal directions contain texts praising the margrave that have since disappeared. 

 


 The Neustädter Kirche (new town church) is one of three large downtown churches of the Baroque old town of Erlangen. Germany. The church is Lutheran. It dominates the town, together with the Reformed Hugenottenkirche (church of the Huguenots) and the Lutheran Altstädter Kirche (old town church). During World War II the church was severely damaged by bombs and rebuilt in 1955. 

Inside it's striking by baroque architecture which is quite uncommon for lutheran churches

The ceiling with a view to the organ. The present organ was created in 2004 and 2005 by the organ builder Goll (Lucerne / Switzerland), re-using existing historical structures from the 18th c.

The baptismal font and altar with huge paintings of Martin Luther (1483-1546) on the left and Philipp Melanchton (1497-1560) on the right wall.

 

side entrance with copies of Albrecht Dürers "Apostles" (Original:1526, on display at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München)

 


 

 

 

2025-06-08

I visited a botanical garden in Erlangen - and had fun with frogs

Erlangen is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. Together with Nuremberg, Fürth, and Schwabach, Erlangen forms one of the three metropolises in Bavaria. With the surrounding area, these cities form the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg, one of 11 metropolitan areas in Germany.


 An element of the city that goes back a long way in history, but is still noticeable, is the settlement of Huguenots after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Please feel free and visit my 2nd post about the Huguenots in Franconia. 

Today, many aspects of daily life in the city are dominated by the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Siemens technology group.  

 The University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität) was founded in 1742 by Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, in the city of Bayreuth, but was relocated to Erlangen the next year. Today, it features five faculties; some departments (Economics and Education) are located in Nuremberg. About 39,000 students study at this university, of which about 20,000 are located in Erlangen. The students allow Erlangen to be a young and cute city. 


 So let's enter the garden:

The history of the Erlangen Botanical Garden goes back to 1626 in the broadest sense, when a medical-academic garden was established in Altdorf for the newly founded University of Nuremberg. This ‘Hortus Medicus’ in Altdorf was the seventh such university garden in Germany. After its dissolution, some plants from there were transferred to Erlangen.

Just a few years after the establishment of today's Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen (1743), a botanical garden was created here in 1747 in front of the Nuremberg Gate in the southern part of the old town, which no longer exists today.

 

Mushroom on dead wood 

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  • Pelophylax kl. esculentus - a small green frog with an impressive sound

    Sarracenia purpurea
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    Digitalis purpurea 'Alba'
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    Limonium perezii
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    Basalt pillars (like the Giant Causeway, Ireland)
  • An outdoor florarium
  • Greenovia dodrentalis
     
    A Nymphea
  • A Koi



  • Hibiscus rosa-sinensis
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    Dendrobium macrophyllum
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    Caryota urens
  • Thunbergia mysorensis 
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    Don't be afraid :-)
  • Bromelia balansae (Argentina, Paraguay)
  • Giant Oxalis tetraphylla
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    The lotus effect of water  
  •  
    make some noiiiiise


  • a giant Fuchsia (maybe "Nancy Lou")
  • Oh my :-)))
  • A stork cleans up its nest