Twin City Photos

The John A. Roebling suspension bridge across the Ohio River was completed in 1866. At the time it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Still impressive.

View of downtown Cincinnati from the river road.

During my recent visit to Cincinnati, I had a couple of hours to explore the riverfront area. On the way back to my parked rental car, I came across the Taft Museum. As I was thirsty and they advertised a Cafe, I went in looking for a pop. Turns out the Cafe was closed, but while there I took a quick walk through the place. Museum isn’t really that big, but the art work is impressive. The painting on the near left ‘is a Rembrandt’, as proudly noted by one of the museum guides.

On a trip out east this week, I managed to get some time in downtown Cincinnati on the way to the hotel. Actually quite a picturesque. Reminds me of Minneapolis. This is the Proctor and Gamble building.

The Dachau visitor’s center is about a block long, spanning the camp from one side to the other. Loosely divided into sections, each section has storyboards narrating some aspect of the camp’s history, ranging from the daily routine to the medical care (or lack of it) the internees received.

Don’t know what this women was reading, but the look on her face and posture speaks volumes.

You may notice the technical quality of these photos isn’t that good. Now of course supposedly it’s not the camera that matters, and in a sense that’s true. But with a prosumer camera like a Canon Xti with it’s cropped sensor, you’re ISO limited compared to full frame sensors. In indoor situations like this you find yourself shooting at 1/15 sec or somewhere in that range, even with my Xti at it’s highest ISO setting of 1600. So you end up with shaky, grainy, low depth of field photos.

Miserable weather seemed befitting during our visit to Dachau. Wet snow all day long, we were soaked walking around outside. This monument is to all that died at this concentration camp, under inhumane and many in macabre ways. The original administration building is now an expansive exhibit, with displays and storyboards throughout. There was tour after tour after tour of german high school students passing through the facility. I assume to make sure the past isn’t forgotten.

My colleagues seemed a bit shocked reading their way through the history. I wasn’t. I know it. Hitler didn’t suddenly rise out of nowhere. Nazism is something that developed over a couple of decades. Something to keep in mind. It’s insidious. It starts with vilifying sections of the population. Next you know they’re being rounded up.

I know it couldn’t happen again nowadays, not here anyway. A true democracy prevents that. But there has been so much horror in other parts of the planet in recent history it’s hard to fathom how the rest of the world could just do next to nothing. Sierra Leone comes to mind.

One of the dozen or so nooks lining the entrance into the main section of the Ratskeller. Many of them occupied with small groups ranging from a couple friends to families, having dinner. Quite cozy, or as they say in Germany, gemütlich.

Another place we visited several times during our stay in Munich, the Ratskeller. ‘Rats’ (pronounced like rah-ts as in ‘rah-rah-) stands for advice, and ‘Keller’ for cellar. It used to be a place were citizens gather to discuss political and local affairs, i.e. a townhall, though now it primarily is a restaurant and tourist attraction. Located at the Marienplatz, essentially underneath the Glockenspiel church, it has quite a layout. After you walk down the stairs (not the ones in this photo), you pass through a hallway like section which has booths on either side with dining tables for parties of 6 or less. Then it forks into several sections, each having a different setting. This photo shows a more formal dining area, and another entrance.