The three bridges board - part one

Well,
as I'm still painting my miniatures, I needed something else to post. I got some nice old photos for you, and by making a post about it, board is now officially a project! As I've mentioned it, I was thinking about this board a while ago, during summer. And that is when I went around to collect all those great photos of the place as it looked like from around 1990-1935ish.  This is when Strange Aeons takes place so this is what I wanted.  What I was trying to do was build a board (I am all jelly seeing Clint work on his boards all the time!), that would support my currently favorite game, so Strange Aeons, wouldn't have to bee too modular and could be used at the limited number of shows we do. So, having something as iconic as the three bridges (or the triple bridge if you prefer to call it that way) would be ace. Then, what we'd need are some young slovenes and a bad guy. For a bad guy, I need to make a profile for a so-called Povodni mož -  the (under)Water man. Unfortunately I can't find an english translation of this poem, but France Prešeren (remember this guy, he will be mentioned in this post again) has wrote a poem about a beautiful slovene lady, that was admired by every man and equally despised by every woman in Ljubljana. Long story short, she wouldn't dance with anyone on a party, because nobody was good enough for her - except for this great man, whom she ended up dancing with. He was the Water man turned in a gentleman and he literally danced away with her into the river - never to be seen again. So...who wouldn't want to play a scenario where bunch of brave hearts are saving an arrogant missus, right?

Here is an awesome photo of the bridges by some guy. The photo was found here, to make sure everybody knows it is not mine.

Before Jože Plečnik, an architech that has designed most of what is worth admiring in Ljubljana (and Prague and Vienna) buil what we know as the three bridges, there was only one bridge at that spot. You can see it in the pictures (and photos) below. Tramway was operating since 1901 and bridge was rebuilt in 1930, so we can assume those photos fit in that time span. There is a small square with a church and monument to previously mentioned poet. Monument has him standing and there's a muse above him. He was desperately in love with a girl twice his age that never really liked him.  The monument has bunch of profiles built around it, but more on that once I'd set to build something like it.

Photo below says "Ljubljana, (virgin) Mary's square - Monument to Prešeren". You can see the river bank is not regulated, but that was changed at the time the brides were built. It's all concrete now and there's a dam regulating the flow further ahead. The square is now covered in cobbles.

 Below is a same bridge, right after an earthquake in 1895 - so no Tramway yet at that time. The side of the river that doesn't have the monument (to help you with visualisation) has an old city centre and is clumped around a little hill with a castle sitting on top of it.

 Another photo of the square, this time overlooking the monument and a church. This church is now pink for some reason.

The caption below says "Ljubljana - Mary's square with a franciscan bridge", named after the church. Bridge was known by other names as well. Postcards (yes, that is where the pictures are from mostly) with german text are certainly older than 1918, as Ljubljana was part of Austro-Hungarian empire at that time.

And below are the pictures showing the other side:

And some after the three bridges were built:

 Oh, here you can even see Ljubljana's first skyscraper, now cleverly known as a "skyscraper". There's a caffee on top but I honestly don't know if it's open or not - I think it was reopened few years back, but most of the time it was closed because of its...convenience to make the last jump. It was finished in 1933 and now I'm thinking about how cool it would be to make a board resembling that caffee - who wouldn't want to fight in a cafee, overlooking the city? :O

 And few shots of a tram...not counting my modeling skills, a tram would be a must!
 There are photos of new and old kind of tram. There were probably other versions, too. The last photo shows 1933 tram, so this is what I'll be after...but I honestly can't remember when the carriages were changed.

Caption says "old tramway carriage"

 And here it is in a museum. For some reason, I've read taking photos of this tram are forbidden. But that might as well be old information, we're in 2013, after all -.-

 I haven't done any measurements yet, but the idea is, a bit less than half of the board (by lenght) would be reserved for a square. It would have some facades, wide enough for miniatures to stand on (perhaps a scaffolding on one of them) and certainly a monument - because it looks cool. It would also need a tram carriage, but as long as it looks old and it's painted red, I wouldn't be bothered by realism too much.  The rest of the board would be occupied by bridges and smaller part by the other bank. Now, I am not sure what to do about the bridges. There certainly have to be 3 of them, because that's whole point of the board. The board has to scream familiarity. I was thinking about making two bridges - main bridge and one foot bridge, with third only being half built...to make it more interesting - any opinions on that? The river was dry (I thought I had some photos of that too) at the time the bridges were built, as its basing was being strengthened by concrete, so water would be great. Plus it looks nice. Perhaps a little boat or sometihng, too.

This is all just thoughts for now, I already have a hardwood board (2x3 feet), but I have to go buy an insulation foam that I will use as a core. Once that is done, I will be thinking further on, as I'll have better idea of the space left on the board. I might ditch the buildings all together, as even front facade would use up a lot of space.

Feel free to share the ideas or thoughts!



Completely unrelated, but if anyone is interested, here are some photos of World War 2 border in a village that is now part of Ljubljana. As Slovenia was divided between the occupying forces, this is how border between Italy and Germany looked like at that time. Conveniently, my mother's family lived near by!

Well, that was another post with whole lot of ideas but nothing actually done, but you can't say there isn't lot of nice pictures to admire!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo