An Unusual Sculpture Outside Osnabruck Station
It’s rather unusual, as they turn.
Perhaps I should have made a video.
Philistines Like Islamic State Are Nothing New
We are all worried about what Islamic State will do to important world heritage, as is reported on the BBC in this article about Palmyra.
In Leipzig I came across a modern church that was not to my liking with a model of an old Gothic church in front.
So I got thinking, that perhaps the church was something like a cathedral or important church that had been destroyed in the Second World War.
But it isn’t!
The model church is the Paulinerkirche and it stood on the site. Wikipedia sums up what happened to the church as follows.
The church survived the war practically unscathed but was dynamited in 1968 during the communist regime of East Germany. After the reunification of Germany, it was decided to build a new university church on the site in the shape of the former church. A new building, the Paulinum (formally: “Aula und Universitätskirche St. Pauli”, i.e. “Assembly Hall and University Church St. Paul”), was built on the site beginning in 2007.
Enough said!
The Nikolaikirche
The Nikolaikirche in Leipzig is introduced in Wikipedia like this.
The St. Nicholas Church (in German: Nikolaikirche) has long been one of the most famous in Leipzig, and rose to national fame in 1989 with the Monday Demonstrations when it became the centre of peaceful revolt against communist rule.
As I was close I had to visit.
It seemed shut, so unfortunately, I had to pass on a visit to such an iconic place in the fall of another evil dictatorship. In Peaceful Demonstrations in the church’s Wikipedia entry this is said.
Cabaret artist Bernd-Lutz Lange said about the events which started in the St. Nicholas Church:
There was no head of the revolution. The head was the Nikolaikirche and the body the centre of the city. There was only one leadership: Monday, 5 pm, St. Nicholas Church
But then my father always said that St. Paul’s stood defiantly against the Nazis in the Blitz.
The Bombing Of Dresden
I could not leave Dresden without commenting on the Bombing of Dresden by the Allies in World War II.
Some feel it was a war crime and many say it was justified. This is the first paragraph in the Wikipedia section describing the background to the bombing.
Early in 1945, after the German offensive known as the Battle of the Bulge had been exhausted — including the disastrous attack by the Luftwaffe on New Year’s Day involving elements of eleven combat wings of the Luftwaffe’s day fighter force — and after the Red Army had launched their Silesian Offensives into pre-war German territory, theGerman army was retreating on all fronts, but still resisting strongly. On 8 February 1945, the Red Army crossed the Oder River, with positions just 70 km from Berlin. As theEastern and Western Fronts were getting closer, the Western Allies started to consider how they might aid the Soviets with the use of the strategic bomber force. They planned to bomb Berlin and several other eastern cities in conjunction with the Soviet advance—to cause confusion among German troops and refugees, and hamper German reinforcement from the west.
It is a sensible argument, but I feel that decisions earlier in the War meant that to cause the required confusion, they had no alternative.
Churchill and others were also worried about what the Russians would do with the territory they captured. And he was right, as their colonisation and subjugation of Eastern Europe happened and it was something of which no-one can be proud.
In some ways it’s a pity that the German leaders in 1944, didn’t know how close we were to perfecting the atom bomb. But if they had,would the likes of Hitler ever surrendered? I doubt it! When you’re dealing with the really mad, all logic goes out of the window.
So could there have been an alternative to the bombing of Dresden and Leipzig?
What my father had been involved with in the war, I know not! But he was a passionate believer in the abilities of the de Havilland Mosquito. My father was well-connected in some way to John Grimston, who later became the 6th Earl of Veralem. In the 1950s and 1960s, Grimston’s company, Enfield Rolling Mills, was my father’s biggest customer. I know he was well-connected because when I needed a vacation job, my father rang the Earl and called in a favour, which got me three months extremely useful work in the Electronics Laboratory. My father did move in some unusual circles before and during the war. At one time, he was even working at the League of Nations in Geneva.
I have just read the section in Wikipedia about the Inception of the Mosquito. To say it was a struggle to get de Havilland’s wooden design accepted and then built would be an understatement. My father and others have said that there was scepticism in the Air Ministry about sending out crews to bomb Germany in a bomber with no defensive armament, which was built out of ply and balsa wood and stuck together with glue.
You have to remember that together the RAF and the USAAF lost hundreds of thousands of crew bombing Germany with four-engine heavy bombers. So was it the right policy?
One of my late friends, was a Mosquito pilot, who flew the aircraft in the RAF in the late 1940s. Several times we discussed the bombing of Germany in the 1970s. He had flown many types of aircraft, but in his view nothing compared with the amazing Mossie. The only flying problem, was an engine failure on take-off, which as a pilot with several hundred hours on a Cessna 340A, I know is a serious problem on any piston-engined twin. Luckily it never happened to either of us!
It is useful to compare the performance of a Mosquito to a B-17 Flying Fortress.
The following words are taken from the Bomber section in Wikipedia for the Mosquito.
In April 1943 it was decided to convert a B Mk IV to carry a 4,000 lb (1,812 kg), thin-cased high explosive bomb (nicknamed “Cookie”). The conversion, including modified bomb bay suspension arrangements, bulged bomb bay doors and fairings, was relatively straightforward, and 54 B.IVs were subsequently modified and distributed to squadrons of RAF Bomber Command’s Light Night Striking Force. 27 B Mk IVs were later converted for special operations with the Highball anti-shipping weapon, and were used by 618 Squadron, formed in April 1943 specifically to use this weapon. A B Mk IV, DK290 was initially used as a trials aircraft for the bomb, followed byDZ471,530 and 533.[108] The B Mk IV had a maximum speed of 380 mph (610 km/h), a cruising speed of 265 mph (426 km/h), ceiling of 34,000 ft (10,000 m), a range of 2,040 nmi (3,780 km), and a climb rate of 2,500 ft per minute (762 m)
And the Flying Fortress had a maximum speed of 287 mph, a cruise speed of 182 mph and a range of 1,738 miles with a 6,000 bomb load. In addition it needed a crew of ten, as against the Mosquito’s crew of just two.
I have seen statistics that Mosquito bombers could sometimes do two trips to Germany in one night with different crews and that they had the highest safe return rate of any Allied bombers.
So why did we not use Mosquitos to bomb Germany?
The statistics and according to my friend, the crews, were in favour, it’s just that those that made the decisions weren’t!
If we had been using a substantial number of Mosquitos, then a totally different strategy would have evolved, as the Allied Air Forces wouldn’t have lost so many experienced crew and the number of bombing raids would have increased and would have been of a much higher accuracy.
A serious mathematical analysis may or may not have been done since the war, but if it has been, it could have given surprising results.
This strategy could have meant that the destruction of Dresden and Leipzig might not have happened. If nothing else Mosquitos could almost have reached the German lines on the Eastern Front to support the Russians, from bases in South Eastern England.
As an aside here, after having visited Dresden, I have seen how the historic centre is all along the River Elbe, with the railway, which surely was an important target to disrupt traffic and cause confusion behind German lines, slightly further away from the river. As any pilot, who has flown at night by the light of the moon as I have, will tell you, rivers stand out like nothing else and it would have been very easy to find the historic centre of the city to drop bombs.
So I feel strongly, that the crude, misplaced philosophy of four-engined heavy bombers contributed to the destruction of Dresden. There were raids for which these bombers were ideal, like the destruction of dams, U-boat pens and V-missile sites, but carpet-bombing cities was not one of them!
To sum up, I have also heard arguments from former Mosquito pilots like my friend, and others, that properly used Mosquitos could have shortened the war by several months.
An Inscription In The Pavement
I came across this inscription in the pavement dated to the 8th October 1989 by the Dresden Hauptbahnhof.
An Inscription In The Pavement
I can’t find anything about it directly on the web, but it is probably connected to this section in Wikipedia’s entry for the Monday Demonstrations In East Germany, which says this.
A major turning point was the events in the West German Embassy of Prague, where thousands of East Germans had fled in September, living there in conditions reminiscent of the Third World. Hans-Dietrich Genscher had negotiated an agreement that allowed them to travel to the West, in trains that had to pass first through the GDR. Genscher’s speech from the balcony was interrupted by a very emotional reaction to his announcement. When the trains passed Dresden’s central station in early October, police forces had to stop people from trying to jump on the trains.
I should have taken more pictures.
Archaeology In Dresden
There is a lot of rebuilding going on in Dresden, and I came across this site that was being investigated for archaeological purposes.
In a couple of places across Germany, I’ve recently come across examples of developers doing the sort of PR you see in London, to passify those affected by large developments.
Perhaps, everybody is watching Crossrail, who have used archaeology virtually as a PR weapon to fight off protesters and bad press!
An Encounter With A Latex Lady
As I descended in the lift in the Ibis hotel in Dresden to brave the weather and explore the city, I was joined by a couple aged about forty, who as he was carrying a folded umbrella and she was wearing a short black, buckled and belted, expensive-looking mac, were obviously better prepared for the weather than I was.
She man was beside me and she stood opposite us on the other side of the lift directly facing us, pulling poses at her partner!
It was then that I noticed that the mac was exceedingly short and that I couldn’t see any skirt or trousers beneath. I did think to myself, that that was sensible given the foul weather and it was then that I noticed she was wearing shiny black latex tights . On her feet were a pair of absolutely flat lightweight black leather shoes. Nothing fetishistic at all!
Leaving the lift they walked straight out of the door to wherever they were going, whilst I walked downtown.
It all reminded me of an evening about twelve years ago, where C had handled the divorce for a lady, to whom fetish clothing was no stranger. Although, C did say, that their sexual habits and preferences had contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. After the case, the lady gave C a pair of latex tights, that she said C might like to try.
As in Dresden that evening was very wet and let’s say it was very enjoyable.
BBC Weather Gets It Right
The BBC weather forecast yesterday was saying today that Prague would have a wet and thundery afternoon.
So I booked myself out of Prague on the 14:30.
And guess what? It’s raining!
Is My New Handrail Transforming My Life?
That may seem a rather bizarre question to ask, but then I live on the first floor of my house and I do have to carry quite a few things up and down stairs. This picture shows the stairs from the bottom.
My Stairs
Note that there are rails on both sides, so when going up and down, if I can, I use a hand on each rail. Just as I was taught on my extensive Health and Safety course at ICI.
Take last night. I keep a spare roll by each toilet and as it needed changing, I put the spare on the holder reader for use. As I keep the bags of rolls downstairs, I usually forget to bring one up and the inevitable happens next time.
But last night, I immediately went down the stairs and collected a new one. I’d have never done that before the handrail was installed.
I also now change the rubbish bags when they get full and take them to the bins, rather than let them overflow and leave them to my cleaners.
I have a gammy left hand, due to a school bullying accident, and I neglect to use it. There’s probably nothing seriously wrong with it, that using it as much as possible wouldn’t cure!
But now coming up the stairs with shopping, I’ll put the bag in my stronger right hand and guide myself up with the left, pulling as required. In the last few days, I’ve found that instead of walking up and down stairs on the right at places like Underground stations, I now go with the flow, even if that is on the left.
And then yesterday, my personal trainer came and we used the stairs to do various aerobic exercises on the stairs. Who needs to buy expensive equipment that takes up space?
I would have never thought that such a small thing would change my behaviour so much!
You do wonder how many people have been seduced into buying an expensive stair-lift, when all they really needed was to fit a handrail, that was worthy of the name and strongly fixed to the wall, so they could hold it properly, as they walked up and down.
London Overground: A Day’s Walk Around the Ginger Line by Iain Sinclair
The Evening Standard has a review of this book on their web site.
It looks like the book could be a good read for anybody who loves London and like me is seduced by the charms of London’s superb remodelling of the old railways into the London Overground.
Looking at the title, it would have to be a very fast walk to go round the Overground in a day, but one of the developments recently has been the opening of quality budget hotels like the Premier Inn in Dalston, close to me and virtually next door to where my maternal grandmother Upcott was born.
The Anonymous Widower 