Looking south along a connecting canal for the Wester river, towards the ridge of hills the river goes through at Porta Westfallica…a thing one learns traveling by train while looking at a map…
Certainly from a Dutch perspective, we can call that a mountain. All seen from the train between A’dam and Berlin when I returned in early July for a week of work. What I didn’t manage to photograph b/c it went by too fast and I wasn’t paying attention was a remarkable mountaintop memorial to Emperor Wilhlem in the interestingly-named Lower Saxony town of Porta Westfalica. I simply must get off the train there, some day…
In this post and the next, our last photos from Borkum, including each of us on the cute little mini-train that connects the ferry terminal with the town.
Who doesn’t love a lighthouse? As I might have mentioned in earlier posts from that lovely German East-Frisian island of Borkum, we spent our one night there with a view of this “new lighthouse” from the balcony. Quite lovely. Since we passed it much more frequently than the “old lighthouse” (the final image of which wraps up the end of this post, at the bottom), I have more photos of it in all the various light and cloud conditions we observed in our short stay. Since I now officially have a backlog of photos that might well last me into my next break from posting some time in 2024, I figure I’d better start clearing the trips from more than two months ago a bit more rapidly. Hope you enjoy the resultant gallery with every remaining photo from Borkum in which I saw any of the the three different lighthouses to be found there. (If the gallery doesn’t view well on your screen & you’d like to see all the pics, try either the “load full version” or shift to a desktop or laptop.)
Above, the entrance to Borkum’s Heimatmuseum (a local history museum with quite a lot on its 19th-century whaling history, including a large skeleton of a sperm whale hanging in the main hall quite dramatically); below, the interior staircase built into the old water tower, which now houses its own museum of water and wetlands, from which I took photos you’ve seen in past posts, but of whose tower from outside I apparently failed to take any photos. Sorry.
Being (back) on Star Island, with all its granite (check the links in the last post to see the difference, or wait for more to show up here), reminded me of Borkum, a very different kind of island than these granitic outcroppings here :-). Another of the photos I took when we climbed to the top of the old water tower.
Above, Borkum’s Old Lighthouse with, confusingly, a graveyard in front of it…and below, the New Lighthouse as seen through the plants and gravestones of that same Old Lighthouse graveyard.
So obviously this particular Borkum lighthouse is newer than the one we’ve shown you before which is labeled on maps as “New Lighthouse.” The distinction is that this one -unlike the other two we saw in our short stay on Borkum – seems still to actually function as lighthouse and is thus locked away behind gates and all. We still haven’t actually shown you the original “old lighthouse,” but bear with us and we will :-).
Borkum’s ferry port (shown above as our ferry pulled away en route back to Emden) is on the more protected south side of the island, while its main town is on west end. The shot below was taken a few minutes later, heading west along the south side before turning due south to reach the mouth of Ems, where Emden is located.
(so much world, so little time....) 