Bringing it back

When you're close with a quadriplegic one of your assignments in life is to go outside and then bring back to them what you saw and did while you were out. Bring descriptions or pictures or both but bring back to them what they can't get out to see. This is for B and for Mikki.

Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk down to the Elbe. Since it's been below freezing for over a week now the Elbe has been piling up more and more with ice floes.



The view from my MIL's livingroom window. The scene changes once you get down to the river.



Now you can see there's a lot more ice on the river than it appears at a distance.



All this floating ice becomes round somehow - I assume they bump along each other and round off their corners. And it all makes a loud hissing sound as it flows down the river.



The ducks were amusing. They'd swim between the floes and then occasionally hop up on one and ride downriver for a while before hopping off again.

This part of the river has old churches lined up along its banks. Farther up the river is the cathedral of Magdeburg and the monastery and on the other side of the market square are these churches.



This is the Magdelena Kapelle - just a little chapel. I love it but I've never been inside it. I'm not even sure if you can go inside it. I just like that it's so small.



This is the Petri-Kirche - the church of St. Peter.



This is Wallonerkirche - the church of the Wallons. See that tall, thin tower in the middle? That's where the Regenmacher, the rainmaker, lives. B grew up about a block and a half from the Wallonerkirche and his father would tell him that the Regenmacher would come down and steal little boys that misbehaved and whisk them away to that tower so he'd better mind himself if he didn't wish to be stolen by the Regenmacher. Until he was about six years old he'd run at top speed every time he had to pass the Wallonerkirche to avoid the chance of being snatched up. Probably not the best idea to tell a little boy such a tale but I reckon it made B behave.



This is a view of the towers of the Johanneskirche - the church of St. John. The spire on the tower on the left is very new - it had been destroyed in the bombings during the war. The church in general had become heavily damaged during the war and afterwards the communist government left it that way. It wasn't until later that the church was restored. Anyway, when B was about 15 he and some friends went inside the church at night and climbed up that tower on the left - a completely stupid thing to do because it was very dangerous and it was very forbidden to be in there - and peed off the top of the tower. This is proof that the Regenmacher story is made up or he surely would have been snatched away for that.



The view from my kitchen window. Back home again.