Photos

On a beautiful day in the middle of July, I contemplated how two months of German food, beer and little exercise had done bad things to my middle regions. I planned a long cycle to the Schlossberg and then keep going in the wooded hills.

Didn't happen. Instead, I got as far as the river and noticed everyone stretched out on the grass reading, drinking beer, or in the river messing about. One of the latter was building artistic looking piles of stones in the river. Obviously I had my camera with me (yes, my bag was quite heavy), so I took some photos and asked him what the point was. The answer being; "just for fun". A good, if obvious answer. As it was not a specific work of art, I decided to stay and build some too. For the rest of the day.

There were about 20 of these piles. According to the nice German bloke that I completely forgot to swap names with, the previous year there were dozens of people making these piles, until the whole river was full of them. That must have been a sight. Even just with 20, it was quite impressive.

This photo I took late in the afternoon, about 5pm, when there is always amazing golden light in Freiburg, which happened to come straight down the river, making it glow. I decided that a slightly longer exposure would make the most of the eery effect of the stone piles, though without a tripod it's not as sharp as it might be after 0.6 of a second. That nearest pile is mine btw :)