The Beautiful Town Idstein – Part 7 – Doors and Windows

There was a wide variety of doors and windows to be seen, some looking more authentic than others, some being very evidently modern. And of those modern ones some made a better job at concealing this than others.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I think that maybe the two doors at the castle gate (Alte Kanzlei) were truly authentic, or at least very old. Wood and iron can survive centuries when kept dry  and these both were good hidden from immediate reach of the elements. The one on the left was on the back side of the  building, the red one on the right on the inside of the gate arc.

 

What I found interesting however is the aforementioned mixture of authentic looking and modern. I am not very well informed on this problematic, but to the best of my knowldedge in CZ if someone owns an authentic historic building that is listed as such and is protected by law, then all repairs must be performed with technology authentic to the time the house was built – at least on the outside, or on the specific part that is being protected. Once I have talked with an old lady whose house had authentic wooden shingles on the roof and she complained about how difficult – not to mention expensive – it is to find somene to do repairs that are confirming with law.

It seems that in Idstein not all houses have such strict protection , although some perhaps do. There was definitively a visible hint of plastic here and there.

 

 

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

U Is For Uranium and Urgeiriça.

Urgeiriça is a Portuguese village known for having been the center of the country’s biggest uranium mining complex. The first mine opened in 1913, the last closed in 2001, radioactive management throughout was always very poor to nonexistent. The environmental and human health impacts were huge and are still being dealt with, there are still people living in contaminated homes, former workers and their families waiting for compensations for occupational diseases (needless to say, that’s mostly cancer). Environmental rehabilitation is being done, slowly. Here is shown a phytoremediation plant at the mine of Cunha Baixa, in which buoyant plant mats are being used to clear contaminated waters. In the second photo you can see a close up of those heavy-metal-loving plants, they take up the heavy metals (including uranium) from the water and accumulate them in the leaves, clearing the water.

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© Nightjar, all rights reserved.

Jack’s Walk

It’s a sunny, warm day here and Jack felt like stopping to take a rest. He really isn’t fond of warm weather and right now he’s still wearing most of his winter coat so he heats up quickly. I think with weather like this, though, the annual shed is about to begin. It’s a laborious undertaking for both of us with hair that comes out in handfuls and more handfuls. You can brush him until your arms ache and still more hair comes.  It’s a tsunami of hair and there is just no way to stay on top of it. Let the vacuuming begin…

©voyager, all rights reserved

T Is For Tranquility and Taralhão.

Tranquility. Taralhão.

Taralhão is one of the many Portuguese common names given to two flycatcher species that visit us every year, from late August to November: the spotted flycatcher Muscicapa striata and the pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca. In this photo, a pied flycatcher calmly sits on a tree collard at the end of the day, possibly contemplating all the flies it has eaten or if it is already time to leave the European continent for the year. Pied flycatchers breed in most of Northern and Eastern Europe and there are some breeding populations in Spain, but here they are only migratory, staying for only a few months before going to winter in Africa. They are one of my favourite birds, despite their winter plumage being a bit on the dull side. But they are so lively and funny that I can spend hours just watching them hunt insects.

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© Nightjar, all rights reserved.