These photos were made in the city Cochem. This is a rather old city (dating back to 1051) with quite a lot of older buildings such as the monastery and the castle.
Besides that Cochem also has the most beautiful view on the river Moselle there is.
All this together makes Cochem a very nice city and a very good photo location.

We’ve been to several of the key points in Cochem such as the castle and the lookout point at which you have the best view of the Moselle.

– Castle of Cochem – Castle of Cochem	– Moselle, Cochem, Germany – Moselle, Cochem, Germany	– Ruins in Cochem – Ruins in Cochem
– Cochem, Germany – Cochem, Germany	– Cochem, Germany – Cochem, Germany	– Moselle, Cochem, Germany – Moselle, Cochem, Germany
– Moselle, Cochem, Germany – Moselle, Cochem, Germany	– Moselle, Cochem, Germany – Moselle, Cochem, Germany	– Cochem train station – Cochem train station
– Statue in Cochem – Statue in Cochem	– Castle of Cochem – Castle of Cochem	– Castle of Cochem – Castle of Cochem

As I told you in my previous post I went to Germany for the holidays. I went there with a bunch of friends.
We had loads of fun doing all kinds of things. We’ve ‘hiked’ through nature, we’ve done ‘safaris’ in wild-parks, we’ve visited towns and cities and we got lost in the woods in the middle of the night.
Now I’m not going to bore you with all of the stories (although that last one was rather funny) but I will show you some of the pictures I made during some of these trips.

The lodging we lived in during our vacation was located in the Vulkaneifel, a very beautiful, inactive volcano area in Germany.
Volcano soil is very fertile so everything grows well which results in a lot of vegetation. The dead volcano craters are usually filled with water. These volcano lakes are really beautiful as the water is very blue and there’s usually a lot of trees and other vegetation around them which makes for nice pictures.
Also, apart from the craters, there are quite a lot of mountains on which you have a brilliant view.

These pictures were all made around a group of 3 of these volcano lakes.

– Vulkaneifel, Germany – Vulkaneifel, Germany	– Vulkaneifel, Germany – Vulkaneifel, Germany	– Weinfelder Maar, Vulkaneifel, Germany – Weinfelder Maar, Vulkaneifel, Germany
– Weinfelder Maar, Vulkaneifel, Germany – Weinfelder Maar, Vulkaneifel, Germany	– Vulkaneifel, Germany – Vulkaneifel, Germany	– Vulkaneifel, Germany – Vulkaneifel, Germany
– Vulkaneifel, Germany – Vulkaneifel, Germany	– Gemündener Maar, Vulkaneifel, Germany – Gemündener Maar, Vulkaneifel, Germany	– Gemündener Maar, Vulkaneifel, Germany – Gemündener Maar, Vulkaneifel, Germany
– Vulkaneifel, Germany – Vulkaneifel, Germany	– Vulkaneifel, Germany – Vulkaneifel, Germany

This first post will contain just a few random photo’s of things we did or saw in Germany, the other posts will be a little more specific.

– Beehive – Beehive	– Kite flying – Kite flying	– Kite flying – Kite flying
– Kite flying – Kite flying	– Kite flying – Kite flying	– German flag – German flag
– Dog – Dog

Since our accommodation wasn’t too far from Heidelberg we decided to go there for a day to do some sightseeing.
Everyone that had been there and told me about it was quite enthusiastic and the others liked the idea too. We weren’t disappointed.
The first impression we got when driving into Heidelberg was simply that of a very busy city in which traffic is a mess. (Isn’t it always…)
It took us a while to find a good parking spot, but once we found one and we got out of the car the fun began.

Heidelberg is the home of quite a lot of churches of which we’ve seen several.
The styles in which these churches are built are very different from each other.

The Heiligegeistkirche, in which the Heidelberg catechism was signed, is a very old church. It’s quite dark inside (which is the reason I didn’t make a lot of photos) and the first impression is one of a thirteen-in-a-dozen old church.
Once you start looking around you’ll notice a few odd things which make this church really fun to walk through.
The most remarkable are the leaded glass windows of which most of them appear to have no connection whatsoever with the bible, which is something they usually do in these kind of churches.
I’ve added a photo of one which I found particularly interesting.
If you look at the window the first thing you really see is the text. Since I can’t read German I usually skip reading the text and just look at the rest of the window.
Now once you take a closer look at the window you can see something really odd. It says ‘E=mc²’ somewhere halfway the window. This is a formula that Einstein thought of with his theory of relativity (if I’m correct).
This made me wonder a whole lot why this was placed on the window.
The text didn’t really clear it up a lot, it says something like: Gods grace will never leave you in times of trouble. (This is a very simple translation, my German isn’t the best.)
The date at the bottom was quite clear though, this window remembers the second world war.
I still have no idea what Einsteins theory has to do with this exactly though, but it’s quite fun to see.

One of the other churches, a Jesuit church, is completely different from the Heiligegeistkirche.
The style in which it is build is very different, with much more expensive ornaments.
It is a very beautiful building, both from the outside and from the inside.
The inside of the church is very light, which made it a lot easier to make some photos.
As you can see on the photos this church contains a lot of gilded ornaments, as well as huge wall paintings with vivid colors which really stand out from the white walls.

Of course there’s a lot more then churches alone in Heidelberg.
For example the castle on top of the hill is really something to visit.
I don’t really have any good photo’s from the castle itself as from down below it was really hard to find a decent spot and the photos I made while we were in there just aren’t really good.
I’ve made some photos from the city from up there though and those turned out quite nice.

– Heidelberg – Jesuit church – Heidelberg – Jesuit church	– Heidelberg – Jesuit church – Heidelberg – Jesuit church	– Heidelberg – Jesuit church – Heidelberg – Jesuit church
– Heidelberg – Jesuit church – Heidelberg – Jesuit church	– Heidelberg – Heidelberg	– Heidelberg – Heiliggeistkirche – Heidelberg – Heiliggeistkirche
– Heidelberg – Neckar – Heidelberg – Neckar	– Heidelberg – Heiliggeistkirche – Heidelberg – Heiliggeistkirche	– Heidelberg – Heidelberg

E=mc²

In the summer of 2008 I went on holiday to Germany with a few friends of mine.
I can’t remember exactly the name of the town we where in but I know it was in the vicinity of Mannheim.
We’ve been there about 7 days in which we’ve done a lot of sightseeing though nature and some of the nearby cities.
I have to say that you can’t find that much nature here in Holland, it was very cool to walk through and of course, take photo’s of.

Because these photos were made quite some time ago my techniques were somewhat different from my techniques nowadays (you could say I really liked to point and click and I had a little less feeling for composition).
Nevertheless a lot of the photos are quite nice and easily fixed with a little cropping.

I am not going to post all of the photos in one bunch, I think it’s nicer to split them up in a few posts because some of them are made in a specific city. It’s better to keep those together.

– Germany – Germany	– Germany – Germany	– Germany – Germany
– Cricket – Cricket	– Cricket – Cricket	– Town by night – Town by night
– Little goat – Little goat	– Fight for leadership – Fight for leadership	– King of the trunk – King of the trunk
– Germany – Germany	– Germany – Germany	– Germany – Germany