"The Melodies"

Didn't I tell you that I played in a Jazz band, called 

"The Melodies" ?

well, here we are, about 1949 / 50

I'll give you 7 guesses which one I am.

First Leg of our MiniVac

I've told you that Christin and I went on a 10 day trip to Geneva, Switzerland. Our first stop was In my Old Home Town, Braunau am Inn ( on the river Inn).
About this town and about this part of my life I could write a book. I lived there from the age of 5 (1937) until I started to work and live in the Park Hotel in Linz (1953), but still kept coming back "home" until 1955 when I left Austria for my new home Canada in May of 1955.
Braunau is an absolutely beautiful town which has kept its charm from 'long ago', but is not averse to new trends and ideas. 
The river, Inn, invited us from early days to becoming good paddlers in kayaks and proficient swimmers,
and the river forest ( the Au ) growing for miles along the river shores, bacame an El Dorado for all of us.

From the age of 9 until almost 13 I marched, first with a fanfare and then with a big drum, up and down the main square as a member of the music group, called "Fanfarengruppe der Hitlerjugend, Braunau am Inn".
With me marched my good friends Karli (later Charly) Reicheneder and Fredi Aigner along with about 25 other enthusiastic musicians. Charley became an absolutely first class Clarinet and Tenor Sax player, making musik his life's work and Freddy Aigner became one of Austria's foremost drummers, ending up as the percussionist of the Symphonie Orchestra of Innsbruck. As you can see, I was in fine company.
Years later, in 1948 Charly invited me to join his Jazz band, "the Melodies" as their bassist and I was proud to become a member of this wonderful organisation.

All of this and much more was "Braunau" for me. The place where I grew from a child to a boy, to a teen-ager and finally to a young man.

So, let me show you a few pictures which I took during my last one day visit:

Stadtplatz 22, the house of my youth

and behind, the 100 meter high steeple of 

the Catholic church.

The Hotel Post, owned and operated by an old friend: 

Hans Lettner. 

this is now our home when we visit G.O.B.

The Main Square .. Der Stadtplatz during Market Day.

Back again Jiggedy-Jog

After a 10 day trip to Geneva we are back again in Bleiburg, Austria.
I will soon post a few pictures taken along this trip.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

...or so the old saying goes.
I have no idea if this is true, but, in any event, I shall be absent until the third day of April, 2014.

I shall be in Braunau, Innsbruck, Zurich and Geneva and back.  Driving a total of over 2000 km during a total of 9 days...  A Mini Vacation ... and I am looking forward to it. Let's hope that the weatherman does play along with some clear skies and sunshine.
In Geneva I will visit my grand daughter who is there on a student exchange
So... be patient... I'll be talking to you again soon..

so promises (or threatens)
Bertstravels.

What am I ???

I think I must straighten out some misunderstandings : There are some of my faithful viewers who think that, just because I write about Religion, sometimes, or show religious images, such as the recent Fasting Cloths, I must be a religious man. Maybe even a Catholic ! Or, at the very least, that I must be "searching"....

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let me state it right off the bat:

I am an Agnostic. 

I have probably always been an Agnostic, but did not know it, could not put a name to it.
I am not a Theist, nor a Deist, nor an Atheist. I am an Agnostic.

Does anybody care ? Probably not !
As a Theist I would believe in a "caring God"
As a Deist I would believe in a Creator, who does not care.
As an Atheist I would believe that there is No God.

But believing that there is a God, or believing that there is no God requires the same amount of Faith.
And Faith means to accept someone's statement in the complete absence of any credible evidence.
I have no Evidence that there is a God. I also have no Evidence that there is No God.
Therefore I can be neither, a Theist or an Atheist.

Therefore, the only handle that fits me is that of the Agnostic.

Please do not confuse being a Theist with being a Christian or  even a Catholic. One just has to study Christianity and its subsidiary, Catholicism, to recognize the untold number of contradictions, in both the Old and the New Testament. These books, along with the Koran and all the other religious works, were written by men, and therefore open to unbelievable bias and stunning contradictions.

So, when you see certain religious edifices or read some religious sounding remarks in this Blog, please  do not come to hasty and erroneous conclusions.

Bertstravels.

VIEW THEM IN THE LARGE FORMAT

If you are at all interested in the artwork of the "Fastentücher" shown below, may I recommend that you view them in the largest format possible. Simply place the curser onto the picture and click...
you will then see the image almost frame filling and in far greater detail.

Some more "Fastentücher"

Having shown you two of the larger "Fasting" or " Hunger cloths", I would like to show you some smaller installations in some smaller churches. 
There is, besides the explanation of the "punishments" of the sinners, another explanation for the picture-decorated "Fasting Cloths".. That of education: It is said that since most of the congregation attending these churches, large or small, were illiterate, could therefore not read the Bible, for them it was these pictures which would tell the stories of the Old and New Testament.
I find this explanation somewhat far fetched and unlikely to correspond with the truth. Since, even in the time of my youth, (which was not all that long ago) Christian Lay Persons were, if not outright forbidden, certainly discouraged from reading the Bible. Only priests would understand and could interpret the meaning of "The Good Book".
In fact, the Clergy was afraid that halfway intelligent people would wonder about the blatant contradictions and outright nonsense contained in this work.
But enough of that. Let me show you some "Fastentücher" in the small church of Theissenegg in Carinthia:

above:

Taken from the organ loft,

this image shows all three cloths used to hide the Altar (centre)

and the pictures on both sides.

The Centre Cloth depicts the famous "Sermon of the Mount of Olives"

With the desciples half asleep

and Jesus preaching, with an Engel in the right upper corner.

  

As is usual in the Catholic Church,

Brutality is in the forefront of their stories and pictures.

The Cross surely was one of the most hideous

instruments of torture and executions.

Whether you are an ardent Catholic, or not, the visit to the churches displaying the "Fastentücher" (Cloths of Fasting) is of considerable interest on many levels.