Being a tourist

enfilade_mittelalter
Originally uploaded by udge.

I decided yesterday to spend this three-day weekend (since I had Friday off) being a tourist in my hometown, and very pleasant it was, too.
 
I started by walking around the Feuersee, only recently clear of ice after a long winter, where I had previously seen a pair of turtles swimming. I wondered whether they had survived the winter, and found the answer: they not only survived, but have bred. I counted over a dozen warming themselves in the weak sunlight.
 
I continued on downtown, and dropped in to the Staatsgalerie for a look around (being a member, I can just wander in whenever I like without paying admission - or rather, having paid a year's admission in advance). This time I had the camera along, so was able to photograph Max Beckmann's "Auferstehung" in its new, hopefully not temporary, position. This painting previously hung on a side wall of the corridor-ish room that connects the Neue and Alte parts of the Staatsgalerie, where it was very poorly positioned. The room was hardly broader than the painting is tall, so you couldn't really stand back to take it in; and it hung at right angles to the flow of traffic where stopping to enjoy it would cause a tailback. In summary: very poor. It now hangs in the place of a Picasso sculptural group which is off on tour (like the garden gnome in Amelie). The new position is much better: in a very large room, at the end of an enfilade so you can see it from a great distance. It's marvellous, as though it were a new painting; every visitor stops to admire it.