Miniature Mountain Magic: A Tilt-Shift Journey through Four Seasons in the Alps

 

The Alps: at any time of the year an incredible place to visit.  And if one is to capture its intrinsic beauty, then it will take time and patience.  In this case, it too film-maker Joerg Daiber a year to capture a specific part of the Alps through all four seasons.

Schloss Elmau is a five-star hotel and national monument, nestled between Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Mittenwald in the serene Bavarian Alps, Germany. Located at the foot of the Wetterstein mountains, it is the only venue to have hosted the G7 Summit twice.

Daiber was fortunate to be invited to capture footage of the various activities in the area surrounding the hotel across different seasons.  The result is quite phenomenal.

Krampus – Santa Claus’ Secret Weapon

Image Credit Flickr User Tanya.Guettersberger

The song lyrics have never been truer.  Oh You better watch out,  You better not cry,  You better not pout, I'm telling you why.  Yet it isn’t Santa Claus that you have to watch out for – it is his sinister sidekick – Krampus. He has a whip – and he is going to use it.

Image Credit Flickr User gholzer

What on earth has this creature of the night – more orc than elf – to do with Christmas?  If you have children you may well be aware of the mantra – if you don’t behave then Father Christmas won’t bring you anything.  The idea behind Krampus is similar – only the threat is not that Santa won’t bring them anything but that Krampus will whip them in to the New Year.

Bastei: Amazing Bridged Bastion of Saxony

Bastei in German translates as bastion and you can easily see why this name was chosen for this towering rock formation, situated on the River Elbe near Dresden in the German Free State of Saxony.  Towering almost 200 meters over the river below, Bastei was formed by water erosion over a million years ago. In recent times it has become such an object of fascination that a bridge linking a number of the rocks was constructed, and is itself something of a marvel of Victorian age engineering.

Image Credit Flickr User Hawk Eyes

Although the bridge is a destination in its own right, when you are on it you realize just how high it soars above the Elbe.

Krampus: Santa's Sadistic Sidekick

The song lyrics have never been truer.  Oh You better watch out,  You better not cry,  You better not pout, I'm telling you why.  Yet it isn’t Santa Claus that you have to watch out for – it is his sinister and somewhat sadistic sidekick – Krampus. He has a whip – and he is going to use it.

Image Credit Flickr User Traveller_40

Image Credit Flickr User Gholzer

What on earth has this creature of the night – more orc than elf – to do with Christmas?  If you have children you may well be aware of the mantra – if you don’t behave then Father Christmas won’t bring you anything.  The idea behind Krampus is similar – only the threat is not that Santa won’t bring them anything but that Krampus will whip them in to the New Year.

The Happy Rizzi House

You can only imagine the coughs and splutters from certain more traditional quarters when the idea for the Happy Rizzi House was first mooted to the council of a historical German city.

Image Credit Flickr User txmx2

Image Credit Flickr User txmx2

SpongeBob SquarePants might be happy taking up residence inside its day-glo walls but some of the elders of the ancient German city of Brunswick (Braunschweig in German) were most certainly not amused. Worse still, the planners wanted it to be placed in the city’s most historic area, the Magni quarter. Many were agog that this outrageous idea could even be proposed, let alone accepted.

Flak Towers – Legacy of the Luftwaffe

The Flak Towers that protected the Third Reich were considered invulnerable. Some of these massive buildings still remain. But what should be done with them?

In 1940 Adolf Hitler was a very angry man. The RAF had launched a successful raid on the German capitol of Berlin and something had to be done to protect the city. He ordered the building of three enormous flak towers – and they were to be constructed in just six months. Other cities in the Reich soon followed this example and today these massive concrete and steel leviathans still dominate the skylines in some places.

Apathy

This serves as something of a reminder to me that I must need a holiday as I did have a deal of empathy with the protagonist of Apathy, dragging chains along and paying little or no attention to his surroundings.  Yet when he does grasp the moment, seize the day, the world and its variance to him is opened up.

This is a rather beautiful and enigmatic animated short by Christian Neie who created it as his graduation project from the DFI-Design Factory International College of Communication Arts and Interactive Media in Hamburg.

Breakdance in Lederhosen

Some things simply make the eyebrows rise in an almost Vulcanesque involuntariness.  Mr Spock would possibly have a few ironic words to say here but for simple joie de vivre there isn’t much that could beat this.  German dance group DDD (Dancefloor Destruction Crew) go baths to their roots (at least costume wise) and perform a spectacular routine which may have your jaw on the floor as often as these young men have their legs in the air.

Hitler’s Hospital: The Eerie Remains of Beelitz Sanatorium

In the last years of the nineteenth century the population of Berlin was expanding rapidly. The attendant issues of housing large numbers of people in cramped conditions were not far behind.  By 1898 the German National Insurance Institute had a sanatorium built for the victims of tuberculosis.  Beelitz-Heilstätten (or the Beelitz Sanitorium) steadily grew and functioned for many decades, playing host to a number of infamous patients, including Adolf Hitler. Yet most of it is now abandoned.

Image Credit Flickr User mr172

Image Credit Flickr User Harm Rhebergen

Although just a short distance from the German capital, the Beelitzer forest was considered suitable for a sanatorium as the area enjoyed fresh air and countryside.  However when the First World War broke out in 1914 it was not long before it was requisitioned and converted to care for the massive casualties inflicted at the front.  In the later months of 1916 a young soldier called Adolf Hitler was sent there to recuperate from a thigh injury acquired during the Battle of the Somme.

Externsteine: The Star Stones of Lippe

A few kilometers from the north-western German city of Dermold in the Lippe region of the country, there is a highly unusual rock formation. In an area otherwise devoid of large rocks, the soaring, slender columns of Externsteine stand out as they rise sharply and with no little majesty from the surrounding landscape. Little wonder that the site has been attracting curious visitors for thousands of years.

Image Credit Flickr User Synaxonog

The five standing sandstone pillars have been ornamented over the millennia by human hand.  Although the name usually translates as stones of the ridge, many see these huge columns more romantically as star stones, a place resonant with ancient mysticism and ritual.  Yet the true origins of the star stones can be discovered through geology.

Remember Lidice

On 2 July 1942, most of the children of Lidice, a small village in what was then Czechoslovakia, were handed over to the Łódź Gestapo office. Those 82 children were then transported to the extermination camp at Chełmno 70 kilometers away. There they were gassed to death. This remarkable sculpture by by Marie Uchytilová commemorates them. Yet what had they (and their families) done to warrant such an end?

The events leading to their death were complex but the pivotal moment had been the assassination of the Acting Reichsprotektor of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich. Czechoslovakia had been occupied by Nazi Germany since the April of 1939 and Heydrich was a greatly detested figure of oppressive authority. He was attacked by a British trained team of Czech and Slovak soldiers. From the moment of his death a week later on June 4, 1942, from septicemia caused by his injuries, the whole country knew there would be reprisals. Nothing, however, could prepare them for the horror that was to come.

Surfing in the City: Munich’s Eisbach

If you live in a large town or city and it isn’t situated anywhere near an ocean then probably one of the last things you might expect to see is the sight of someone in full wetsuit sporting a surfboard walking nonchalantly down the street.  For the residents of Munich in Germany, which is about 500km from the sea, it’s nothing strange. Thanks to the Eisbach (or ice brook in English) you can go surfing in the city with https://www.globosurfer.com/best-dive-watches/.

Image Credit Flickr User FSBerg

The Monument to the Battle of Nations: The Biggest Monument in Europe

The shadow of a new war was already casting a long shadow in 1913. Yet it was the year when the people of the city of Leipzig in the German state of Saxony saw the completion of their monument to a battle which had taken place exactly a century before.

The Monument to the Battle of Nations commemorated the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig. However, for almost a century after its inauguration, this remembrance of a battle of the past would be used by one group or another for their own ideological purposes.

Image Credit Flickr User Christian

In 1813, the coalition armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden had fought against the French army which also contained Polish and Italian troops not to mention Germans from the Confederation of the Rhine. Little wonder it also became known as the Battle of the Nations: involving over 600,000 soldiers, the battle was the largest in Europe preceding World War II. The monument certainly reflects the immensity of the conflict.

Neuschönau: The Longest Tree Top Walk in the World

If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise – a very big surprise! Nestled in the Bavarian forest just outside the small town of Neuschönau, the longest tree top walk is an unexpected but spectacular sight. It is as if the fantasy of a young child with perhaps too much imagination has suddenly come to life.

The statistics certainly stagger the imagination. The walk way is over 1300 meters long, and at its greatest height takes the visitor to over 25 meters above the trees. Yet what really captures the eye is the oval shaped dome at walk way’s end. At 44 meters high it spirals around a massive pine tree, allowing for startling views of the canopy of this beautiful German forest and beyond to the Alps.

The Dinosaur Graveyard of East Berlin

They lie, dead, struck down where they stood by a global event they could neither forecast nor understand. Extinction came quickly: in a matter of years the dinosaurs were no more. Yet this is no reference to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event which led to the extinction of the majority of dinosaur groups at the end of the Mesozoic era.

Image Credit Flickr User Extranoise

Image Credit Flickr User Extranoise

These dinosaurs (as you may have suspected) are rather more modern – as was their downfall.

Birdstrike

Do you ever feel sorry for those birds, busy minding their own business when they get sucked in to the turbines of an airplane?  In Birdstrike the shoe is on the other foot, as it were, as the plane is suddenly smaller than the bird.

Johannes Schiehsl created this terrific animated short as part of his second year at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Germany.  Since graduating, Schiehsl now works as a director at Neuer Österreichischer Trickfilm in Vienna and Berlin.

Blue and Joy – The Superficial Essence of a Deep Appearance

You may remember in May that we featured the work of Blue and Joy – once seen not forgotten.  Their new exhibition is currently underway at the Artra Gallery in Milan, Italy. They have been kind enough to give us permission to share these pictures with you, just in case Milan is a little too far for a trip for you at short notice.

Altogether, the installation is made up of four million pills.  A million of them make up enormous mosaics on the wall and the other three million (or so, did they count them all?) make up the floor’s multi-colored carpet. Blue and Joy is the creation of a duo of Italian born Berlin based artists. Fabio La Fauci and Daniele Sigalot joined forces at the end of 2005 and since then have been making something of a name for their immense media project.

Jelly Jeff

Every now and again an animated character comes along that immediately imprints upon the unsuspecting public – and I think that may be the case with Jelly Jeff. He’s cute, he’s orange and he’s a jellyfish. He is also, poor fellow, completely hapless and is consistently overcome by a series of events most of which have been caused directly or indirectly by us. As such we not only get a chuckle but some important environmental messages too.

This series of vignettes featuring Jelly Jeff were created by Jacob Frey who created them for the International Trickfilm Festival Stuttgart as part of his degree work at Filmakademie in the same city, one of the most prestigious schools of film and media in Germany which also enjoys an excellent reputation internationally. Instead of doing a single sixty second trailer he opted to do a number of short twenty second slots. So sit back and enjoy the adventures of Jelly Jeff. This should really be made in to a TV show...!

The Guardians of Time Occupy Kassel

It sounds like a title of a old episode of Star Trek, but the town of Kassel in Germany has been invaded by a group of figures known as the Guardians of Time. Kassel holds an art exhibition every five years but despite an offer from the artist the Guardians of Time were not invited. Yet, these mysterious beings do not, it seems, need a summons from mortals. They chose to walk where they wish.

Goldfinger: Why James Bond was Banned in Israel

Look, Miss Eaton, will you please put your face on the pillow? You’re supposed to be dead! It turns out that Shirley Eaton, the actress who played the doomed Jill Masterson the third installment of the James Bond juggernaut, was thought by many to have died after being painted a certain bullion hue for Goldfinger.

This is one of many obscure but extremely interesting facts that Neatorama has about the movie including the very real proscription of the film in Israel. The ban centered around the actor who played Goldfinger, Gert No, Mr. Bond....I expect you to die Frobe. The truth being so often stranger than fiction, head over to Neatorama to find out what happened and what, indeed, was the reality.

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