Kees' photos with the keyword: Brixen

This scene is from the same cloister as the funny elephant posted previously. The text underneath reads: “O quid faciunt homines mox pulveres futuri” (Hey man, what do you think you’re doing, as you’ll soon be turned into dust), the pessimistic approach to human vanity so popular during a long period of Western civilization, but rarely taken to heart.

This lady looks like a figure head, and perhaps she is, but she doesn’t adorn the prow of a ship anymore. In fact, the most remarkable thing about her is the context in which we found her:

The first book of the apocryphal Maccabees (I Macc.6,43ff.) describes the fight of a certain Eleasar against an elephant of the enemy. He placed himself under the monster, and stabbed it in the chest. It broke down crushing the soldier underneath. The stuff heroes are made of. In Antiquity, elephants were formidable adversaries (Hannibal’s use of them is well-known). The soldiers riding them were protected by towerlike structures built on the animals’ backs, not quite like the one on this painting, however. The elephant, too, doesn’t seem to be quite true to life.

Saturday morning, we got in our car and reached our Italian destination a few hours later... Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, Bressanone/Brixen is utterly bilingual and, in many ways, feels more like Austria than Italy. On the other hand, we’re simple-minded, and can’t help thinking: Italy is Italy, and Italy is good. The B11 road leads past our front door directly to Bressanone: it changes its name a few times, and in and around Innsbruck you’re in serious danger of losing it, but if you keep a cool head you can’t miss it... There’s a big square in front of the cathedral, pretty crowded, people hanging around, children playing etc. (the picture suggests otherwise, but it was cropped for artistic reasons). This girl was riding her bike with such enthusiasm that I had to take a picture of her. She was darn fast, and I had to turn my autofocus off to catch her in full flight.