Trying to get in or out?

One of the many artistic gravesites in Paris' Cimitiere du Pere Lachaise. If you browsed the CDPBs on October 1 theme day, you might have seen some of the more famous graves like Jim Morrison or Chopin. The combination of eeriness and pathos caught our eye on this grave.

In yesterday's comments, JoAnn asked what fascinates us about Halloween and all the scary imagery. For me, it's a couple of things. First, I think that making fun of scary things makes them a bit less scary. Some cultures even celebrate death (in the states, we learn a lot about the Dia De Los Muertos celebrations in Mexico). Second, there's a bit of a rush to being scared. Third, it's just plain fun when you're a kid and you get to dress up, go trick-or-treating, get loads of candy, and get sick eating said candy. Fourth, even adults celebrate ... we were woken up at 5:30AM this morning with a phone call from our friends at their annual Halloween bash (thanks alot, Bob, Lynn, Joan & Jim). Anyway, we do miss the Halloween celebrations.

BTW, here's a fuller, color shot of the gravesite. I don't know why, but I prefer b/w for many of these "grave" photos.

Shivering Timbers

In the Normandy town of Rouen, there's a courtyard tucked away behind some shops on a street. It's so inconspicuous that we missed it the first time we passed the entrance.

And if you walked through it without really looking, the courtyard of Aitre St-Maclou might look like any other courtyard; not much going on, a couple of nice trees, some half-timbered construction.

But if you look closely at the timbers, you'll see some pretty spooky imagery. The building was used as an ossuary during the time of the plague, and the timbers are all carved with macabre symbols of death.

So macabre, in fact, that it is said that these carvings inspired Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre.

Very Grave Grave

Detail from a gravestone in the Sint Jans-kathedraal in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch (luckily, normally referred to as "den Bosch").



The grave is dated 14 October 1380 and as you can see, it has a large vertical crack in it. Still, it's not in bad shape for being over 600 years old.



I like the bird (heron? stork? eagle?) in the coat of arms.



St Jans is a beautiful church; like many such churches, during gothic times it was transformed. This stone dates from the period when the major gothic construction began (1340).

Flat (and slightly punctured) Stanley

Continuing on our Halloween theme...last year we had a visit from Flat Stanley (click on the name if you're not familiar with his story).

He picked a great time to visit, as we toured The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, and London. One of our stops was the Bouillion castle in Belgium.

At the castle, Stanley found himself in a precarious position on one of the torture devices in the dungeon.

Even though Stanley survived the ordeal, in the end we decided that this pic should not be included in the report back to the elementary school students.

Brugge, Belgium: Where?Wednesday

Two themes in one today: our Wednesday travel feature and leading up to Halloween.

We're in Brugge/Bruges, the picturesque town in Belgium Flanders. This scary gargoyle doesn't spit water from the roof of a church or castle. Instead, he sits guard in one of Belgium's fantastic chocolate shops. In fact, he is carved not of stone but of chocolate. Warding off evil spirits with the threat of a heckuva stomach ache, perhaps?

Finally, we're getting around to the fact that over the last week or so we've been tagged by no less than four CDPBs: Inverness, Mainz, Hilo, and Rotterdam.
The "rules" of tagging:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List eight (8) random facts about yourself.
3. Tag eight people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blogs.

So here goes, 8 facts you probably didn't (and might not want to) know.

1. RandR refers to Rich and Rochelle. He doing most of the SLR photography and writing, she wielding a mean point & shoot and art directing. That's why I'm very sloppy with our personal pronouns in blog posts.
2. We met by bumping into each other during college marching band practice. No musical instruments were harmed in the incident.
3. We were married in Charleston, SC, in the home of the 2nd Supreme Court Chief Justice, Governor of SC and signer of the Constitution. In case you're wondering, all of that happened much earlier than our visit.
4. If we were super rich we would probably spend our time touring all of the world's wine regions.
5. We're living in The Netherlands because Rochelle works for an extremely large multinational consumer goods firm headquartered in Rotterdam.
6. What we miss living here: family & friends, good mexican food and fancy maki rolls. And buying good tequila here really breaks the bank ... doesn't anyone in europe want to grow blue agave?
7. What we like about living here: the ability to travel, the history, the inquisitive people, inexpensive wine and half naked TV commericals (not necessarily in that order).
8. Our first plane ride was on our way to tour Germany with our college musical group. That's probably where our love for travel (among other things) blossomed.

As part of the tag, we're supposed to tag 8 other blogs. I'm going to exclude those who've already written a tag or haven't responded to a previous tag request, so there are less than 8 listed here. I'll start with a challenge for our adopted home of Chicago: Inverness has already been tagged, so how about the other 3 blogs from the Windy City: Chicago Flair, Chicago Daily, and Nunda/Crystal Lake. And recent commenters North Bay, Brienne-La-Ville, Texel, and of course JoAnn. You're it.

Evidently, Death is fluent in Latin

Leading up to Halloween, over the next week we'll break with our usual format to show you some of the more macabre sights we've seen during our travels throughout Europe.

At right we see Death inscribing the name of Sophie Charlotte, Queen of Prussia, into the book of eternity.

This moment is immortalized (can I use that word when speaking of Death?) at the base of Sophie's monument by Andreas Schlüter in the Berliner Dom.

BTW, thanks to the multiple bloggers who've tagged us; we need a day to recuperate from our travels, so check back tomorrow.

UPDATE: To see this pic in color, click here. Although the gold-plated original is striking, I thought the b/w version is better for the season.

Münsterland Sphinx -- Where?Wednesday

A much different sculpture from yesterday's post. This is from the sculpture garden of the Schloss Nordkirchen, also known as the "Versailles of Westphalia."


We've jumped over the German border again, into the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen.


This sphinx is enjoying the fall colors, as we hope you do while we travel some more. See you back here next Tuesday.

Surreal Scheveningen

This beach sculpture probably isn't technically surreal art, but that's how I'd describe it.

I believe it's a permanent exhibit from the sculpture on the sea museum.

For some reason, it seems to show best on cloudy, moody days.

Local Gardens

In a country where space is at a premium, community garden plots make a lot of sense.

The styles vary: some specialize in one type of plant, some grow fruits and vegetables, and some tend full-blown leisure gardens. Many of those you'll find in Wassenaar are quite beautiful.

Pears - Peren - Birnen

I'm cheating a bit here ... I normally try to keep this blog confined to The Netherlands.

But, given the fall season and the fact that we'll be in Germany three times this month, I think it's OK to share this shot from the village of Steinfurt in the Münsterland region, just over the border.

These pears are all grown in the Kreislehrgarten, founded in 1914. Unfortunately, the store was closed when we visited, so we weren't able to bring any samples home.

From the European Garden Heritage website: This educational garden covering an area of 3 hectares provides valuable information on ornamental and kitchen gardens. Visitors are offered numerous ideas on how to design, maintain, and use their own green realms. During harvest time, visitors can buy the many fruits of the garden directly here. The central school garden aims especially at teaching children a careful approach towards nature. The beehives in the orchard and the herb garden are a valuable help in this regard.

Have a great weekend; see you on Monday.