2006 Image Archive

View north along the river after sunset.

The cathedral, as seen from the graveyard.

Illuminated grave.

St.Peters Friedhof (graveyard), at the foot of Fort Hill.

The old market square.

View north along the Salzach river

View south along the Salzach river.

A wishing well near the cathedral. Water comes from the hills and rushes down the hole.

A very compact house squeezed in.

View toward the Untersberg.

View west along the northern wall.

Fortress courtyard.

Cargo funicular leading up from the road.

This is an ancient Romanesque (looks Roman, but they didn't build it) chapel. On the floor you can see pieces of fresco and decorations that were found in the archaeological dig.

This is the top of Fort Hill, laid bare.

The top of the hill has been used since way back in time. These are the remnants of an old oven (basically a through used for burning wood in), that was found by archaeologists on the peak of the mountain.

Shell.

Masonry heater from the officers' quarters.

View of Salzburg - with the old town being closest - from the fort. The church at the bottom right is the Salzburg Cathedral.

Interior of the Salzburg Cathedral[a]'s dome.

Interior of the Salzburg Cathedral[b].

Another small passageway.

Detail from the University Church.

The main streets (as main as the go) are connected by passages through the buildings, leading to interior courts such as this one.

This is what most of the old town of Salzburg looks like.

This is the Salzburg Fort. You can walk up to it. You can even follow the signs to the funicular, end up on the now-abandoned midway platform where the funicular doesn't stop, walk up the last bit, realize that you're one euro short of the admission fee and that they don't take any cards and walk down promising yourself that the fortress will be among the first buildings to go once nuclear weapons become ubiquitous, but once you hit ground level again you'll probably just gorge youself silly on pastries. Then you take the funicular up.

The only time the fortress was beseiged was in 1525 when a group of miners and townspeople tried to oust Prince Archbishop Cardinal Matthäus Lang. The fort was surrendered without a fight during the Napoleonic Wars, by which time it had ceased to have any military significance.

Small chapel near the bus station.

While I did my photography a small photo crew was finishing up their fashion shots just outside the top cable car station. Here they are, walking away (the model in high heels and walking sticks) toward the sun-lit, covered-in-ice, side of the peak. The designer's name was Lisa Salvador - and I haven't been able to find any pictures of her clothes, but then again she probably isn't designing them for people who buy clothes on the web.

Update 2013-11-22: Re-visiting this entry I decided to take another look at the web, and found that Lisa Salvador has been on the web since 2008 at lisasalvador.de[c].

View north along the east side of the mountain..

View of Bavaria, Germany.

View of Salzburg from the mountain.

A metal cross at the top. When blizzards hit it turns into a cross of snow and ice with the metal skeleton completely covered.

Memorial to alpine rescuer Josef Gassner who fell to his death here February 10, 1946 "while on duty".

The cable car up.

Houses at the foot of the mountain.

The cafeteria, with its Hundertwasser-like decoration.

Outside, back of house.

Stairwell.

An example of the undulating floor that Hundertwasser considered to be "a melody to the feet".

The stairwell.

This water-spiral is found in the lobby. The water is pumped upwards along the spiral to fall from it's peak at the center. Similarly, the stairwell is built so that the spiralling stairs are centered above the water-spiral (although the stairs twist in the opposite direction going up).

The entrance to the KunstHausWien. On top of the building flies the Koru Flag[d], an alternative flag for New Zealand designed by Hundertwasser. It includes the spiral, one of Hundertwasser's trademark shapes (if not the trademark shape):

The spiral is where lifeless matter is transformed into life.

View of the market from above the subway station entrance.

Geocode is slightly off - I'm supposed to be at Mahlerstrasse, which is about 100 meters south. GPS:s don't work that well in cities with big, sky-and-satellite-blocking buildings, though, so this is only to be expected.

Really bad geocode places me several kilometers off.

This one is also spot-on geocoded.

Spot on geocoding places me in Leopoldau, at the northernmost end of the U1 subway line.

Taken from the Donauinsel. Geocode agrees - sort of - Google maps places me in the water by the shore when using satellite imagery, but right when using the "Map" view.

Taken from the Donaupromenad across the Danube river. Geocode was ok.

Railroad car. I don't think you'd even be allowed to let condemned men ride in a car like this anymore.

Government poster. "Even without him, show discipline!"

Government poster. "The anti-social has no consideration in street traffic." Fun fact: The word "anti-social" is the same word used by the Nazis to denote "enemies of the people"[e].

A "transformer chain". The chain is charged by turning the crank at the far left, and then proceeds to pump water to the top tank, which drives a generator, which powers the two spotlights on the little car, which illuminates the solar cell, which drives the car up the slope...

The advertisement for the exhibition.

This pretty much sums up the first couple of decades with cars. As always, it took quite some time to work out the kinks in the system. For example:

• How do you mark pedestrian crossings? (First attempt to do so was in 1926, when cars had been in Vienna for at least twenty years. In 1910 Vienna had about 4000 cars.)

• How many traffic signs should there be? (Drivers thought sixteen were far too many.)

• ...and so on...

The main square in the old town.

Side street.

Buildings being renovated just outside the old town.

Modern buildings at the foot of the hill where Bratislava Castle stands.

The citadel.

Rain clouds approaching from Vienna.

Picture taken down the well of the castle.

The storm drain of the courtyard, picture taken from below.

The narrow passage leading to the catle's well.

Inside the renovated Bratislava Castle.

Residential blocks on the west shore of the Danube.

View of the Danube and the western part of Bratislava from Bratislava Castle.

Wind turbines on the west side of the Danube.

St. Martin's Concathedral[f], seen from Bratislava Castle.

View of the old part of Bratislava from Bratislava Castle.

In honor of MTV's Beyonce weekend, we present this statuelicious work of art.

Residential building just outside of the old town.

High street in the old town.

One of the many statues in the old town.

The "New Bridge" (Novy Most) across the Danube.

Not the most upbeat cafe, one has to assume.

In Bratislava, just coming out of the central garage.

Wind turbines on the way to Bratislava. Apparently, the area between Vienna and Bratislava is one of the windiest places in Europe.

Strange quad-furcated tree.

View of the Ötscher from the Gemeindealpe.

View north from a bit up on the Gemeindealpe (the massive immediately south of the Ötschergräben).

Following a small brook upstreams. Shortly after the picture was taken we turned ninety degrees right and went up the side. Harder than expected with slippery trainers.

Fodder hut.

Memorial found a bit into the Ötschergräben. It commemorates the 450th anniversary of Martin Luther's posting of his 95 theses[g] and with that, the start of the Protestant Reformation.

Cliffs near the starting point. These in particular are on the other side of a dam that bottles up the Eralaufstausee and keeps it from pouring out northward. (The picture was taken from the west end of the dam - on the map[h] this would be where the Ötscherstrasse crosses the northward pointing stream.)

The west end of the Eralaufstausee, and the start of our hike.

View south from Annaberg showing the Ötscher (mountain).

View north toward St Pölten from Annaberg[i].

Main building of Kista Gård, the farm that the current suburb took its name from.

Northern corner of Husby, a suburb of Stockholm, as seen from a nearby hill.

Kista Galleria, a little bit farther away.

View of Kista Science Tower behind Kista Galleria (a shopping mall).

Filmstaden cinema at the Haymarket Square.

View northeast from Observatoriekullen in central Stockholm.

Some kind of movie production taking place on the 3rd Street Promenade.

War Memorial. The pillars commemorate war dead from the Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard.

Beachfront property.

Washed away sidewalk along Ocean Blvd. / PCH.

This is where I had dinner. Good to know that I pick top restaurants.

The Madonna Inn restaurant.

The entrance to the hotel. You can also get to the restaurant from here.

Back of the gallery.

Front of the gallery.

About two hundred miles from Los Angeles is Morro Bay, where this huge granite block marks the entry to the bay.

Everything is covered in either trees or dense, arid-hardened brush.

This is the end result of that process - steep hills diving into the water, and sharp ridges where the water didn't erode the rock.

Well, you know what to expect. The coastline has been formed by erosion of the hills when rainwater flowing down into the sea carved out a myriad v-shaped canyons.

The hillsides are covered in various shrubs.

The Lone Cypress, the symbol of Pebble Beach, has been sitting on its rock for at least the past 250 years.

Looking south from the Restless Sea.

Sea birds are everywhere and this one seems to have staked its claim to a big rock.

But pretty soon you get to see the sanctuary. The "Restless Sea" as this place is called has rock formations stretching out in the shallow water, making the water foam far from the shore.

Unfortunately there is a bit of a mismatch between what the guidebook says and what really is there. After reading this sign, if you were to lift your eyes to the horizon, you'd see this[j].

This train goes right outside the boardwalk.

More boardwalk.

The boardwalk.

They sleep on the beams holding up the pier.

The other major inhabitant of the pier. Sea lions fill the air with their characteristic noises.

One of the inhabintants of the pier. These birds are completely unafraid of people. Yu can walk up to them and they won't even bother looking at you.

The Boardwalk.

Seen on the pier. I have no idea who Bonnie is.

Looking out at the pacific.

Sunset north of Point Sur.

On the way down I went past Santa Cruz and did the 17 mile drive at Pebble Beach, but then I went down toward Point Sur to enjoy the sunset. This is Andrew Molera State Park just south of Point Sur.

The weather was only so-so when I started out at SF. Understandable, since San Francisco had an almost central-northern European weather when I was there. No running around in shorts in late September here.

This particular stretch of road is known as Devil's Slide[k] due to the frequent land slides.

Exterior shot.

My two teas - the left one is "Monkey Picked Tieguanyin" and the right one is "Silver Needles". You start off by soaking the leaves in a splash of water and smelling them. Then you fill the cup with water and use the lid to push the leaves around, squeeze them against the side of the cup and push them into the water. (The people working there will give you a quick rundown on how to do this.)

This is what is served: One cup for each sort of tea that you have ordered, and a kettle of hot water. The tea leaves are already in the cups.

This is the interior. A plethora of tea cups, tea tasting sets and bags of tea fill the shelves.

The gate to Chinatown. The area known as Chinatown isn't walled in any way, but there is still a gate.

Judge Lillian Sing (...) made history when she was appointed as the first Chinese American woman judge in 1981. Serving as a judge for 22 years, Judge Sing held almost every type of assignment in both criminal and civil courts, and also pioneered Drug Court, where drug addicted persons receive treatment and counseling, before retiring from the bench last year.

- Asian American Bar Association

(You can read more about her using the Wayback Machine[l].) Apparently she didn't like retirement and campaigned to get back. How did she do? She won.[m]

The Transamerica Pyramid[n], one of the easiest recognizable landmarks of San Francisco. While it no longer houses the Transamerica insurance company, the company still has the pyramid in its logo, as you can see on their website[o].

View toward the west from Telgraph Hill.

View toward downtown from Telgraph Hill.

View of the tower with the statue of Christopher Columbus in front.

Stairs leading up to the Coit Tower.

The Coit Tower[p] on top of Telegraph Hill.

The Russian Hill. This picture gives you an impression of how hilly SF really is.

Basketball courts.

Pier 39 at Fisherman's Wharf.

The sealions at Fisherman's Wharf.

View of a SF alley.

A tram. The trams are driven by cables being pulled through the "middle rail" that you can see. The cables are continuously running and the car is driven by gripping the cable or by applying brakes. You can try driving a tram at Gripman's[q].

This is the bendiest street in all of the world. It is Lombard Street, on top of the Russian Hill.

Rough place, this.

This pictures shows the hilly nature of San Francisco. If you aren't either ascending or descending a steep hill, you have probably left SF altogether.

Typical SF architecture.

...and a lot of stores. In particular camera stores and camera accessories seemed to be the most common stores.

On the other side of the Golden Gate bridge and a little bit to the east is Fisherman's Wharf where you can find old ships...

On the top of the hill is this outpost.

At Point Spencer you can see what's left of Battery Spencer[r], part of Fort Baker. The circular slab is one of three used to mount the battery's 12 inch guns.

I drove from Modesto to Oakland and over the bay to San Rafael (in which the term "420[s]"[t] originated), driving over the rollercoaster-shaped Richmond-San Rafael Bridge[u]. From there I went south to Point Spencer.