Permanent Tourist

As always, family have been very generous to me over Christmas. Amongst other things, the ever-popular gift of hard currency has gone into the pot, to allow me to save towards new camera equipment for 2011. (As I have been writing recently.) However, I don’t want to spend just on camera gear and so when I saw a few trestles outside a book store in Zurich a couple of weeks ago, a quick peruse lead me to the book Die Bergpostkarten (The Mountain Postcards) by German artist Emil Nolde.

I’d seen a couple of examples from the series before and had enjoyed the old-fashioned style, depicting famous mountains in cartoon fashion, designed for the names by which they are known. An obvious favourite, pictured here, is of the Jungfrau (Virgin), Mönch (Monk) and Eiger (Ogre), our famous local peaks. A sweet detail are three jolly climbers heading down from what I assume was a successful ascent of the Virgin in question. As it were.