Running on Fumes

In late November, we got into our car and started to drive from Hungary towards England. We spent our first night in Melk, which is a very pretty town clustered around a splendid Cathedral.

The abbey was built in the early eighteenth century.

Our second night was spent in Reitenhaslach in Bavaria, where a once thriving Cistercian monastery has now become a part of Munich University. The Cistercian hhurch remains in use and has a wonderful baroque interior:

It was created in the early eighteenth century.

Our third night was spent in Switzerland in Stein am Rhein. It is a small town with an old centre packed with half-timbered buildings, most with heavily decorated facades:

The buildings all date from medieval times.

In one of the buildings is a museum of domestic life in the 19th century, told through the stories of those who lived in the house itself. I will post about it later.

All I want to say in this post that I am concerned that we no longer seem to find it necessary to create beauty, especially beautiful buildings. What is the thing we have lost: patience? Or simply control of decisions? Is that the problem - decisions affecting locals are no longer made by locals but by people in far-off places, whose main interest in spending as little as possible and making as much profit as they can?

Is it too late for Europe? Can we find a way back to being a culture that makes the world more beautiful or are we destined to be a huge Disneyland of former loveliness, while our own civilisation is running purely on fumes?