Another Sourdough

Breakfast Bread

It has been very cold here.

So baking bread in a wood-fire-heated house seemed to fit. So yesterday I made some more sourdough things. I had too much starter, so I found a recipe for a Dutch Baby (also called a German pancake, something like a combination of omelette and pancake). As stipulated by the recipe, I used the prepared starter without any rising time. I didn’t get a picture, but it was lovely and tasty, with butter and maple syrup. By the end of the day, when the bread recipe I was using said to put the dough over night in the refrigerator for 12 hours, the dough had already risen so nicely in the warm room, that I decided to bake it. So we had a sourdough breakfast bread this morning. It has a touch of honey in it, a whiff of vanilla, a handful each of dried fruits and walnuts. (And not enough salt. Recipe needs to be adjusted for our taste.)

It is very tasty with butter, with or without honey. It has a nice subtle yeasty flavor. (And that after smelling very much like alcohol after I was away five days and the starter critters were starving. But when fed, they got happy again, and bubbled and grew.) 

Yup. We ate more. 

Still a lot to learn, but the experiments are edible. 

Wangen 4

Nooks and Crannies and This and That

A bit further along the city wall from Miss Maria Miller’s mill is this opening in the wall, going out to the river (which often floods, thus the posts for the water barrier). 

A few steps along, one can turn inward again…


…to a narrow lane in which is the Bath house. It is on the end, to the left. If one peeks into the lower windows….

…one sees the bath house interior. Note tubs and heaters. The water came from the overflow of the mill. 

Different times of day were allotted to the gents, and ladies, and children, each separately. 

Bathing attire was strictly regulated. Ladies wore dresses to cover the ankles (no modest female would expose them, after all). Ladies also carried with them “flea bottles” to catch the little critters that inhabited their hair (and who knows where else). If she was rich, hers was made of ivory. If she was very poor, hers might be two walnut halves. 

Gents wore a kind of diaper. We weren’t told what the children wore, but very small children were attached by a broad cloth to the tub, so they wouldn’t slip down in the water.

It’s old.


Gutters in another area.


No wasting of space


The “Sparrow Saddler Steps” I would like to see those tiny saddles on the sparrows.


And another narrow passage to somewhere.


Another gate tower. The picture above the arch is of Jesus and Pilate, signifying that area as being the seat of judgment, the court house. The window above the picture is the room for weddings. The slit window above that was the prison. That may have resulted in some interesting or disconcerting juxtapositions of sounds. 

The attached building to the left is the back of the city hall. 


The front of the city hall, in all its baroque splendor. Note the people is their Fasnacht costumes. 

The building on the far left was a merchant house for a very large international company, older than the USA, but they did do business with the Americans, when they came into existence. 

You can slightly discern a brick outline in the cobblestones. That was where the merchant’s house stood. We heard that his privy was by the city hall door (letting the locals know who was most important, I would guess).


Some old beauties adorned a men’s store.


Appropriately labeled trash cans


A very old fountain.


A door that wants its portrait painted. 


Here used to be another gate tower, but it got too decrepit, so was torn down.



And a fancy gate to a tiny nook. 


To be continued….

Intermezzo- Kunsthaus

Zürich 

Leaving the tour of Wangen for a bit, let’s stop briefly in Zürich. One son and I did a short visit to the new building of the art museum. The old part is being renovated. The new part is mostly filled with modern and contemporary art, with highlights of the historic collections. 

In Zürich 

…. with view obstructors…

Kunsthaus interior, with concrete walls and gorgeous stonework floors. 

Scented flowers! 

A well-know Swiss artist did this walk-through light installation, with changing colors, choreographed to music. It was very pleasing. I need a room like that. 

Some of the works, from donated collections, are what I call snooker-works: “You can’t be serious.” I know there are lots of words spilled over “pure emotion,” “my vision,” “color fields,” and “impressions of our times,” but they don’t justify the hype or the pretend, even if the name Picasso is appended, or if a New York art critic applauded it. 

But, there were color combinations, some pattern work, and composition ideas to be appreciated in some of the odd ones. Others could be readily ignored. 

Much wall space taken up

A school class was sitting around this, drawing - not sure what. 

The light and shadows were lovely. Note the toes.

Another famous Swiss artist: Alberto Giacometti. 

AND, the Monet room, probably the biggest drawing card to Zurich’s Kunsthaus. 

Much wall space taken up for a good cause.

A small section close-up to see the brush work and color choices

Another perennial favorite - Renoir 

The Impressionists collection is extensive and and appealing. 

I like the Dutch baroque. 

And future visits are required to absorb more. 

Wangen 3

Sculptures

Some time ago, a certain mayor of the city took upon himself the beautification and preservation of the city’s heritage and stories. Now you can see art works - fountains and sculptures and plaques - commemorating nuggets of the city’s heritage. 

This work is about being “pressed.” The people of this region are considered to be somber, serious, not given to frivolity,  and slow to engage in new things. So the inscription on the plinth says that the top figure is as pressed as the bottom ones. 

Each figure represents a vocation: priest, financial officer with the mask, watchman, etc. 

This one is Maria, the millers daughter. She was the last of her family, but never married or had children. She wore a wool-stuffed hood to protect her head from drying out. An odd soul. Toward the end of her life in the late ‘50’s, cars were becoming quite popular, and people wanted more roads. So the city wanted to buy the old mill, Maria’s family home, and tear it down to build a road. She didn’t like the idea and resisted. The mayor went to visit her, and her many cats to a liking to him, so he was induced to work out an agreement with Maria. This stipulated that the city could buy her mill house, on the condition that she would live in it until she died, which she did shortly thereafter, and that the city NOT tear down her house. They didn’t, and are glad for that. It is now the city museum, and a great attraction, and an historic piece is preserved, including that section of the city wall. 

This sculpture is related to the former old folks home and workhouse (the earlier version of welfare, in which one worked hard for his bare sustenance) that used to be in this part of town. The dove on the top represents the Holy Spirit and the Christian piety of charity to the poor and downtrodden. The birds on the fountain edge are the well-to-do folk who could pay for their elder care. 

Then…

….at the base of the fountain are the little sparrows pecking at the “horse apples” - representing the poor folk who get the crumbs of charity. 

Outside the city wall, along the River, is this fountain (they don’t run in the winter). If the fountain were running, it would have water pouring from the woman’s pitcher over the  man’s head. “Washing his head” is a saying meaning something like “chewing him out” or telling him what’s what or berating him. It is a story from the city archives: a wife went to the city council (they adjudicated civil matters) saying she just couldn’t live with her husband, and when he was called in, he said the same of her. So, in its wisdom, the council said the pair would be put in a room with one plate, one fork, one of each thing, to work out their disagreements and come to terms. No historical record records the outcome. 

In one of the through-ways of a tower is this sculpture in the cobblestones. It says “Wangen leaves one hanging.” 

It refers to a number of things, including the cobblestones that catch ladies’ shoe heels, making good business for shoemakers. There were other references to the hangman and about the gates: one can come in the taller gate but get hung up exiting through the smaller gate.

The next sculpture is quite intricate. I don’t have a full image, but visualize a pedestal with four niches, each containing a revolving scene. The whole makes up a fable from Aesop. A farmer and his son and their donkey are going to market. The busy-bodies ask why they are idiots to walk when they have a donkey to ride, so the young son rides the donkey. Then other busybodies ask why the healthy young son has no respect for his old father and is riding while the poor old father walks. So they switch. Then more busybodies ask why the poor boy isn’t riding, so they both ride. Then they get criticized for overloading the poor donkey, so they carry it. Then after all that hassle, they sell the donkey at the market, and carry their things on their backs. And the moral of that story is…… you know. 

Then on to the Sau Markt, where we visited a farmers’ market, a fine butcher shop, and this sculpture of St. Antonius with the pigs. 

Rolling in the mud. When it rains, there is a puddle. 



One is going away.

And this little one was found all the way across the square. 

And nearby, St. Martin, sharing his cloak. 

Then, by the Rathaus (government building), my favorite…

We can relate.

To be continued….. about nooks and crannies and this and that.