Monday, September 19, 2022

Germany, contemporary art and history

 "The times, they are a changing." And so are we ourselves. We bought ourselves a big family-size tent, we travel in an electric vehicle, we ride e-bikes and we don't go on month-long trips any more. Most important reasons: age and awfully lovely grandchildren :-).

In Kassel, Germany, there was the Documenta again. It's a big art event that is held every five years. It's where new trends in contemporary modern art are presented to the world. This year the expositions were curated by Ruangrupa, an Indonesian art-collective. The results are very controversial.

Art is one of our hobbies, so we pitched our tent along the river Fulda south of Kassel and we cycled to the city to see some of the sites. In short: it didn't appeal to me. Not because of me, but in the mean time there was a lot of turmoil in the media about this Documenta, the board resigned and the whole event was cancelled before the planned end date. 

We spent some more days in this region and made some cycle tours and walks.

After Kassel we moved to a campsite near Weimar. Weimar and Erfurt have beautiful 'Altstadt"s and historic sites, among which Goethe's house. Not far from Weimar is Buchenwald, a former Nazi concentration camp, now a memorial site.

Then we moved to Pirna, some 20 kms south of Dresden along the banks of the Elbe river. Dresden, which was unnecessarily wiped from the earth by British bombs in April 1945 (a major war crime in my opinion), has by now been reconstructed and is an amazing and breath taking view when one enters it from the bridge over the Elbe as we did. 

We made some rides in the region and after that we returned home, where we had some tasks tom fulfill as grandparents.

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