May 24: Bamberg evening 1

The train arrived in Bamberg in the late afternoon with plenty of daylight to spare for a somewhat overheated run, dinner, and a postprandial meander.

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Upon arrival: insulators glinting in the sun above the platform.

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Out on the walk: golden hour sun through the curtains of a hallway window in my hotel, Die Alte Post.

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A lone sunbeam traverses some severely pruned sycamore trees just starting to leaf out, looking a bit like baby birds with their first feathers growing.

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Ruddy sun on ruddy brick.

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Spotlight sun through the site of the founding of the Fränkischer Sängerbund.

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A rather appropriately blackletter-angled sky silhouette, save for the vine.

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The town side of the rail station, in the soft 8:32 PM sun glow.

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I loved the sunlight's translucent glow on these railings, like Japanese paper screens.

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A selection of roof silhouettes.

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A variety of wall distances.

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Onion domes and a smörgåsbord of lights (traffic, street, sky-).

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These guys need a bigger logo on their storefront. I just can't quite make out what this one says.

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Steeple and swallow. This is the Erlöserkirche.

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Dann habe ich eine Taube beim Singen entdeckt! (You can actually see the dove in the previous photo too, at far left.)

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This cool quasi-sgraffito strongly recalled a place I'd last been in 2005 and would arrive at again in two days.

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More of the Erlöserkirche. I loved the mixture of brick and stone.

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At this point I couldn't tell whether the Kirche was modern or ancient. I should have known that it was from the 20th century by the playful masonry mixing, but maybe I thought the brick was replacing older stone in the sort of surgical renovation that Erik Bryggman did at Turun Linna.

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Mais oui, ce sont Deux Chevaux! Chouette!

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There's this neat labyrinth in front of the Kirche.

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The octagonal central volume and these portal columns really make the Erlöserkirche seem Romanesque, but, of course, tweaked. I still can't get enough of how lovely the thin bricks in the arches are, and those sort of keystones above the columns, and the simplicity of the column capitals. This is the kind of modern-day architecture that I connect with most deeply, where the building is deeply in touch with nature through the composition of its materials.

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I walked the labyrinth. In the middle: orange marigolds (?) glowing even in the twilight.

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These adorable white flowers were all through the grass; I think maybe I couldn't figure out what they were. They look almost like strawberry flowers or similar small rosaceous ones.

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Another angle on the pediment.