Saarbrücken

Saarbrücken is a pretty city, a lovely place to seek cool refuge from the sweltering sun and treelessness of denser and more tropical cities. It reminded me of Ithaca, featuring an expansive university nestled in hills and trees. The weather was pleasant. I took many photos.

Local church, directly out my window.

The streetcar's modernity nestled against the historical buildings.

This is art. Or a sundial? Or a postmodern playground.

The local language is Germany; proximity to France is completely ignored, and signs are not even bilingual (or, when they are, it is German/English). This combined with a forbidding, darkly gothic architecture, to make me think that I happened upon a vampire nest.

Gothic frontage, part 1.

Gothic frontage, part 2.

I visited an art exhibit in an abandoned chemical factory. It was very cool. The ambiance of abandoned rooms and stark pipes, walls, and windows, reminded me of post-apocalyptic video game settings. Some of the art blended with the setting, so that it was hard to distinguish art installations from decaying building.

I'm pretty sure this was just an empty room with abandoned freestanding plumbing features.

The paint flakes, mirrored windows to the next laboratories, and floor tiles was very cool. Unintentional art re: decay and order.

If this were a 1st-person video game, I would momentarily receive a parcour training session across these glassed roofs.

The weather was great, the university was nice, my talk went well, the research was interesting, the scenery was nice, and my ear was delighted to try to decipher German.


This post's theme word is esthesia, "the capacity for sensation." Travel titillates my esthesia.

Germany

I've been in Germany all week, living the exciting research life. The weather has been lovely, cool, clear, sunny, pleasant. Like a perfect autumn day. I gave a talk, I read some papers, I experienced the shock of immersion in a place where I speak zero of the local language; it made me miss my relative fluency in France. But of course everyone in the university setting speaks English, too, so it's a hollow complaint.

The church outside my window. Architectural features, a park, foot traffic, and in evenings there is often a live guitarist playing in the restaurant right downstairs. Relaxing and sophisticated. Contrast with the live music festival going on one block away, which was boisterous and loud.

Water reflected on the underside of a bridge. Great texture.

Placid ducks in the city center. I, too, hid in the shade here.

 The broad, bright sky expands over a charming square. Everything feels quaint and adorable to me, I think perhaps my brain is now permanently stuck in a "tourist" gear where every... single... thing... is unbearably whimsical. My fancy is perpetually tickled.

I'm pretty sure that vampires inhabit this building.

I ended up with no pictures of the river Saar, even though I ran along it several times for quite some distance. It was nice, too: water held, by gravity, to the bottom of a curving channel, occasionally buckled to the Earth by bridges. One side is the autobahn and the other is a park with pedestrian paths, shady trees, jungle gyms, beer gardens, and other sedate and pretty city-dressings. I liked it.


This post's theme word is calliopean, "piercingly loud." The Nauwieserviertelfest festivities spread their calliopean joy over several crowded blocks.