Patrick's Continuing Adventures in Germany

Twelve Months in Germany: A Review

2010-08-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

I've been back from Germany for over a month now, but I've known for a long time that I wanted to write a sort of final statement to provide some closure for this blog. I know I already wrote a post for my final days and my gradual return to the Midwest, but I think it would be a good idea to summarize some of my adventures and acquired knowledge.

There's honestly a lot that I could write about: things about the USA that I missed while abroad, things about Germany that I miss now, the weirdest German words I encountered, the longest German words I encountered, the most helpful websites I used while abroad, my tips for travelling, my favorite German foods, and so on. I could do each, but I don't feel like the large time investment on my behalf is really worth it. If you are curious anyway, let me know. But I do want to share a few final words.

I'll start with my travel experiences. I lived in three cities in Germany: Köln (Cologne), Hannover, and Frankfurt am Main. I took something like 80 trips, depending on how you count. I went to 31 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, bringing my personal total to 47. [Edit 2010.09.26: The canals of Amsterdam have been added to the list, meaning I visited 32 sites and my total is 48.] I went to eleven countries, bringing my personal total to 19. I don't even know how many castles and palaces I visited, and I have no idea how many pastries I ate or trains I rode.

And within all of that, a few of those places stand out particularly strongly to me. Large metropolitan centers (i.e. Berlin, Rome, Paris, Hamburg, etc.) are too obvious to mention; almost everyone can find something to like about those places. Instead, I'd like to mention ten places that are a bit smaller or lesser-known yet surprised me with how much I liked them. In no particular order, I strongly recommend the cities of Würzburg, Lübeck, Luxembourg, Goslar, Weimar, Trier, Leuven, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, and Aachen. Each has particular treasures to discover, and most of them include a World Heritage Site. I could describe them further, but I've already written blog posts to do that. But let it be known that I personally recommend those places, even if they are a bit off the beaten path.

And now that I'm home, what are the things I miss? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is the food and drink. As a vegetarian, Americans often ask what I eat in Germany - don't they just eat a lot of sausages and Schnitzl? The funny thing is, Germans always ask me what I eat in the USA - don't they just eat hamburgers and fried chicken? Honestly, the vegetarian experience in both countries is quite similar. German restaurants tend to be slightly more vegetarian-friendly than American ones, but American grocery stores offer a slightly greater variety of specialized vegetarian items. But really, it's not hard in either country if you just try.

And then there's German beer - nothing can compete with that, even if the much-hyped Rheinheitsgebot (the famous German beer purity law) was repealed years ago and ignored for centuries before that. American microbreweries might offer a wide selection of specialty beers, but in Germany, even the giant brews are incredible. And they aren't as uptight about the whole thing - you can drink on the streets and no one really cares. It's not like alcohol abuse and drunk driving don't exist there, but it would seem to be much less of an issue. And the widespread public transportation makes things so much easier.

Speaking of which, public transit is probably the thing I actually miss most. I haven't forgotten how to drive, but for the past year, I literally never got behind the wheel. Never had to. For a Midwesterner, that's unbelievable. And the trains - they go everywhere, and they even usually arrive on time! Second only to the incredible transit infrastructure is the social care system. It might not be perfect, but I feel like Germans actually care about their fellow citizens. I can't tell you how many times people asked me why the USA does not have universal health care. They were mystified that we didn't care about each other's general health. And third is the serious concern for the environment: Mülltrennung (trash separation and recycling) is an important part of daily life, just as is collecting glass bottles to return them for their Pfand (deposit), and conserving water and other resources as much as possible.

On the other hand, I don't miss the fact that everything is closed on Sundays and nothing stays open in the evening. 24/7 does not exist in Germany. I don't miss paying to use the restroom (even if you are paying for legitimately clean toilets), nor the absolute lack of public water fountains, nor the disdain for offering free tap water in restaurants. I'm happy to be able to eat real Mexican food again, to be served spicy food, and to have good peanut butter available.

And despite all the differences, I still think the USA and Germany have more in common than they think.

It's weird to be back. I'm still readjusting, and I refuse to give up saying "Doch!" ("on the contrary!"). I've been searching for an apartment where I can walk to local stores and easily access public transit. I use as little water as I can while showering and cleaning. I complain about how much "crap" (fake sugars, dyes, assorted chemicals, and so on) is in the food here. And part of me still yearns to pack a suitcase, grab my guitar, and fly back to where I can have affordable health care and reliable public transit. German language, culture, history, music, literature, art, food, and beer will never cease to fascinate me.

Thanks to the US Congress and the German Bundestag for sponsoring such a wonderful scholarship program. To all the wonderful people I met while living in Germany: I hope we met again, either here or there.

Last Days As a European Resident

2010-08-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

After our day in Marseille, we started off back towards Germany. I was heading to Köln and my friend just a bit farther to Düsseldorf. Our first train was a direct, high-speed, three hour TGV to Paris. That was a pretty smooth deal. Unfortunately, since we had to fight to get any sort of reservations on these trains, we ended up with a 4.5-hour layover in Paris before we could get on another train. Then again, think twice about that statement: we had four and a half hours to kill in Paris. That's not a bad deal at all!

First we had to get from the Gare de Lyon station in the south to the Gare du Nord in the north, and then we had to store our bags. After consulting a map, we realized that we were within walking distance of the Basilique du Sacré Cœur, which I had failed to visit during my last trip to Paris. Taking pictures inside is not allowed, but rest assured that it is beautiful. It's also on a hill overlooking the city, offering a good view of the vast urban expanses.

We still had plenty of time after that trek, so we headed south to just explore the city. We were hunting for pastries, particularly macarons, which we did eventually find (as pictured here). They are very expensive but incredibly delicious (and not to be confused with macaroons), so I ate just one (the pistachio one on the left) and saved the rest for a gift. We of course found plenty of other pastries. (What a civilized nation!)

We eventually had to head back to the train station, pictured here. We then caught a 2.5-hour Thalys train to Aachen, where we transferred to a German regional train to save a ton of money. Thalys is the highest-speed train in Europe and naturally rather expensive. It's a pretty darn nice ride.

I arrived in Köln that evening with just enough time to meet my former host family and watch Germany defeat Uruguay in the third-place game. I spent the short time I had in town hanging out with them - and of course, they were the recipients of my Parisian macarons. (This picture was taken back when I lived there, but I think it's once of the best I took while I lived there, and I didn't take any in my brief stay this time.)

The next day I finally went back to Frankfurt after a good long ten days of vacation. I actually just had one day to myself before another friend came and visited me during our very last few days in Germany. We walked all around town, met up with a few of my friends one last time, and I ate one last Falafel Surprise from my favorite Lebanese hole in the wall. And somehow in this time I packed and cleaned up my apartment. (This picture of Bankfurt is also one that I'd taken months before, but it's again one of the best and I hardly took any during my last days.)

This is the combined heat and power plant in my neighborhood. This is another picture from several months back, but I saw this very image quite often during my days in Frankfurt. This street is Bruchfeldstraße, and I lived just one block to the north.

And that was that. On July 14th, all of the participants of the program congegrated in the Frankfurt airport (just two S-Bahn stops away from my apartment) and we flew off. Getting through security was a challenge, as it always is, but I suppose I was asking for it by filling my backpack with 29 vinyl records, my laptop, and my external hard drive. I was just keeping a good eye on my best goods.

We all made it to New York successfully, and after our final seminar sessions, I met up with my sister and we somehow schlepped all my stuff to her apartment. We kept fairly active, but probably not as active as my previous time in the city, since I was a bit overwhelmed. This picture of the Statue of Liberty was taken from the Staten Island Ferry, which is free and awesome. We even made it up to Boston for a few days before I flew back to my home of Kansas City. I almost immediately was on the road up to Michigan to help move my other sister back to Kansas as well, and now I'm here again, preparing for the next phase of my life in St. Louis. It's a pretty crazy deal. Sometimes it's really hard to fathom that I just got back from living in Germany for a year. And I still often think in German.

Farther Along the Mediterranean Coast

2010-08-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

After spending a few days in Cinque Terre, me and my friend started our journey to southern France.

First we had to transfer trains in Genova. We had an hour or so to kill, so we walked around town, found some food, and explored this church, the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato. It's beautiful, but as you might be able to see here, it was damaged in the war, and the reconstruction leaves the contrast quite apparent.

Our second connection was supposed to be in Ventimiglia. The national Italian train company website indicated to me that there would be a direct train from there to our destination of Nice shortly after our previous train arrived. This was a lie. No such train exists at that time, nor at any time. Thankfully, I knew my geography well enough and we had Interrail passes, so we took a train to Monaco and from there caught one to Nice.

Once we finally checked into our hostel, we walked along some of the main drags, walked through some of the old city, and headed for Colline du Château, the site of castle ruins that overlook the city. This is a view of the city center and the beach. A bit farther along the beach is the Promenade des Anglais, the classy seaside promenade originally funded by wealthy English resorters.

One of the streets in the old city, which eventually leads up to the Colline du Château. The whole area is quite pretty; we explored the ruins and the old city and ended up eating incredible ratatouille crêpes and drinking French beer while watching Germany lose the quarter-final game against Spain. (I think we were the only ones in the audience cheering for Germany, except for maybe the bartender. I couldn't understand enough French to really say.)

The next day we set out early and went to the Marché aux Fleurs (Flower Market). Of course, flowers are actually pretty scarce there; it's mostly food. Let me tell you: when I think of France, I always want to think of piles and piles of delicious pastries.

We went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts (Museum of Fine Arts) and then headed here, to the Cathédrale Orthodoxe Russe Saint Nicolas, which I think most of you should be able to figure out from the French. We couldn't get in, but it has a cool enough exterior.

We then headed back over to Monaco, this time to be tourists there. Originally, we had talked about spending a night there, but Monaco is the type of place that doesn't even have hostels. It's a seriously insane place. We saw a company whose windows ads listed airplanes going for up to $11 million. What kind of place puts an ad like that in the window!? Anyway, this here is the old town and castle built on a big rock.

Most of Monaco is just a strip of land along the coast. It's one of three remaining principalities in the world, it only has 30,000 inhabitants, it's one of the wealthiest nations per capita in the world, and most people know it for two reasons: its status as a tax haven (there are no property or inheritance taxes) and its casino.

The famous Monte Carlo casino. You know, the one from James Bond films and all that. I hate gambling, but I was interested in seeing the insanity, so I chanced entry. I got into the entrance hall, but any further costed 10€ and required a suit. Not interested. There actually were two other casinos nearby, but one was just a standard-issue boring American-style place. The other, though, the Hôtel de Paris, was apparently a bit classier. So classy, in fact, that when I tried to push the revolving door to get in, the porter held the door shut and shook his head. Clearly, no riff-raff in patched-up pants and a t-shirt was going to be allowed to waste any of their air conditioning!

Église Sainte-Dévote. Monaco doesn't have much room for churches.

The yacht harbor. This country is insane. 84% of the residents are non-native. An entire quarter of the country/city was built on land reclaimed from the sea, and the prince was planning to expand even farther into the sea until the recession hit. I will say that the old town is pleasant, but this is really a crazy place. When it comes to microstates and other small oddball countries, I still prefer Luxembourg.

We returned to Nice that night but headed to Marseille the next day. We were only able to swing things in such a way to be able to spend one day and night there, which is a shame, since it is a large city with plenty to offer. Our first course of action was to head here, to the Notre-Dame de la Garde, a large cathedral built on a hill overlooking the city. It was quite a hike to get up there, and again it was extremely hot, but it was pretty cool. That statue of Mary and Jesus is seriously massive - 11.2m (27 ft) tall.

This is the interior of the cathedral. As you might be able to see, lots of models of boats (and a few airplanes) hang from the ceiling. Not sure what that's about. The view from the outside is also great: you can see the the entire city as well as the Château d'If, made famous as the setting of The Count of Monte Cristo.

We walked around the city a bit, visited the Musée Cantini (a modern art museum), and headed over to the Abbaye Saint-Victor (pictured here), originally built around 415. After a few centuries, it was destroyed, and after a few more, it was rebuilt, but after losing its importance in the last few centuries, all that remains is now this church building.

The Panier is the old town center of Marseille. It was pretty quiet while we were there, but it is pretty.

This cathedral, La Cathédrale Notre-Dame de la Major, sits on the edge of the Panier, quite close to the sea.

This is the Vieux-Port, the old port. Off in the distance is the Notre-Dame de la Garde, and on the far right, just above the port, is the Abbaye Saint-Victor.

If I can compare, I think Monaco is on one extreme and Marseille the other. Monaco is small, rich, and essentially just full of big condos and resorts. I could never imagine living there, and I see no reason for me to ever go back. Nice is much more pleasant, but also full of lots of tourists and resorters. The local culture and charm make it several degrees more appealing. Marseille is dirtier and has a reputation for being rougher, but it's also bigger and so much more livable. It seems like the kind of place that you could keep exploring and finding new corners and little treasures. There were of course tourists there, but it wasn't overwhelming like in everywhere else I'd been in Italy and France. I wish I'd had more time there.

All Roads Lead to Rome

2010-08-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, let's face it: this blog is supposed to be about Germany, not Italy, and I've been back in the USA for about three weeks now. But - I did go to Italy as a part of my year living in Germany, and since Italy is a popular travel destination for Germans anyway, I suppose it only makes sense to at least briefly describe my time there.

My internship at Deutsche Bank essentially ended at the end of June, but my flight back to the USA wasn't until July 14th, so me and a friend decided to head south for about ten days. The internship, for the record, finished up quite well; I composed the German texts for my Kleptography plugin in JCrypTool, I gave a final presentation of the plugin to my department, I gave a lecture on obscure but important English grammar, and I got to hang out with my coworkers several times before departing. I even baked vegan brownies for them all, which got eaten up quite quickly.

And on the next day, I rode a high-speed ICE train to München and trasferred to the City Night Line to Rome. I met my friend in the train station, we checked into our hostel, and we headed straight for the typical tourist destination: the Colosseum. Even if there isn't much going on there, it is without a doubt very cool to walk around.

The Spanish Steps, another major tourist hotspot. There's some good pizza to be had around here.

The Fountain of Trevi. It's ridiculous and drinkable. Italy scores big for me in terms of having fountains with quality drinking water all over the place. (When will Germany learn?)

The Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of a united Italy. It contains a museum of Italian Reunification.

Trajan's Column, commemorating the Roman emperor Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars. This lies at the end of the Trajan Forum and near to several other expansive ruins of Roman fora. The whole area between the Capitoline Hill and the Colosseum is filled with Roman ruins. After spending a year in Germany hunting down the minimal remains of ancient Roman settlements (i.e. in Köln, Trier, Aachen, Mainz, and Bad Homburg), it blows the mind the come here and be surrounded by it.

The Palazzo Senatorio (Senatorial Palace), used as the city hall of Rome since 1870. The stairs were designed by Michelangelo.

On the left side is the Theater of Marcellus, another ruined Roman theater. (Another!) Past the theater, straight ahead, lies the Jewish Quarter, home to incredible food. (Fried artichoke is but one wonderful local speciality.) And as for the elevated carriage in the foreground, I have no clue.

Santa Maria (or the Basilica of Our Lady's) in Tastevere, one of the oldest Christian churches in Rome, let alone the world. It was first built around 220 and redone in this general form in about 340. The entire neighborhood around this church is known as being a center of dining and nightlife. This was the best place to get great food at vaguely reasonable prices.

The entrance (today used as the exit) to the Vatican Museums. The Vatican City has some serious walls to protect it from all those... Italians? Anyway, this is one of two ways that the average person can enter the Vatican City, the smallest sovereign state in the world and one of the strangest in nearly every capacity.

The Cortile della Pigna, which I think translates to "Court of the Pine Cone". Is that not a pine cone atop that fountain!? Anyway, this is one of the inside courts of the Vatican Museums. It may be expensive to get in, there may be a long, long line in the hot, burning sun, cutting might be extremely prevalent, it might be busy and crowded, and parts of it might be arbitrarily closed off, but let me tell you: it's worth it. This place is one of the largest and greatest museums of the world.

In the Vatican Museums. They have everything here from Egyptian to Roman to Renaissance to modern art. Oh, and they have the Sistine Chapel. That's pretty cool.

The stairway now used as a one-way path from the gift shop to the exit of the museums.

The other main draw to the Vatican City: St. Peter's Basilica, featuring the largest interior of a Christian church anywhere in the world.

Found off to the side of St. Peter's Basilica.

The bridge is the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II and the building on the left is the Castel Sant'Angelo, a former Roman mausoleum, later used as a fortress and castle, now a museum.

Piazza del Popolo. And that's already plenty of Rome. I was there for about three days, most of which I spent simply walking around and marvelling. The only other museums I entered were the National Gallery of Modern Art and the Catacombs of Domitilla. The Catacombs can only be entered via a short and expensive tour, but it was worth it: that's an incredibly cool part of history.

After Rome, me and my friend took the train up to Cinque Terre, literally meaning "five lands", a beautiful World Heritage Site comprising five villages built along the Ligurian coast. We stayed in Monterosso al Mare, the northernmost of the villages. This picture was taken from outside the Church of Capuchin Father San Francesco, which overlooks the village and offers a view of the other four. If you look very closely, you should be able to see, from left to right, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.

The "old town" of Monterosso, as opposed to the "new town" on the other side of this bulge to the left. The new part features a large beach, but the old part is prettier. The only connection is a single tunnel.

Aurora Tower, standing over and between the two parts of Monterosso.

We opted to follow the traditional trail from Monterosso to the next village, Vernazza (pictured here). This trail connects all five villages and was once the only way to travel between them on land. There is now a train that runs between them as well as roads, but the trail sounded appealing. This stretch happens to be the longest and roughest, but despite the incredible heat, it was fun.

We cheated by taking the train from Vernazza to Manarola (pictured here), skipping Corniglia.

The trail from Manarola to Riomaggiore is much different than the other ones; it is smooth and constructed. It is known as Via dell'Amore, "Street of Love". Much like the Hohenzollernbrücke in Köln, there is a traditional of couples attaching "love padlocks" to the railings and throwing the keys into the sea.

Making the Via dell'Amore easily traversable must have been something of an architectural challenge.

Riomaggiore, the southernmost of the five villages.

Beyond the incredible sights of Rome and Cinque Terre, the best part is the food. The streetside pizza is the best you'll ever taste, and the restaurants, albeit perhaps expensive, offer all sorts of fantastic creations. In Cinque Terre, we opted to picnic for most of our meals: the local pesto, focaccia, tomatoes, and wine are each and all probably the best I've ever eaten. (The grapes were good, too!) I couldn't get enough of the Italian food - this is the real deal and a vegetarian's paradise.

Last Weekend Trip in Germany

2010-07-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

I'm actually back in the USA now, all the way back in Kansas City. My last couple weeks in Germany were very busy (and actually hardly spent in Germany!) and in the last two weeks I've been in a few different places in the USA, and I'm not slowing down... yet.

I'll be honest: I'm losing energy to write up these posts, especially since these things happened weeks ago and I'm kind of ready to move on and reintegrate. But, in the spirit of leaving a complete document, I'll at least right up some summaries.

For my last weekend as an intern in Frankfurt, I went with another intern and two of his friends to Stuttgart and Ulm. A friend of mine was doing the IBIE in the area, which I also did two summers ago, so I met up with her as well. While I was doing the IBIE, I actually went to Stuttgart twice - once for the Mercedes-Benz Museum and once right at the end to catch my plane back to the States. In both cases, I didn't actually get to spend much time in the city, and hence I was open to returning to see a bit more. And Ulm, well... I'd regretted not going to Ulm before, and so I really wanted to take the opportunity before it was too late.

This time, I decided to go to the Porsche Museum. It's a pretty good museum, documenting the history of their development and of course displaying plenty of their coolest cars, although there's no doubt that it comes in second after the Mercedes-Benz Museum. That place is another whole category of museum.

An old Porsche firetruck.

It turns out that I didn't end walking around Stuttgart all that much this time, either, but I did get to see a fair amount; more than I had previously, at any rate. This is the Neues Schloss (New Palace), the royal residence of the ducal family of Württemberg. In the area are several other museums; I ended up going to the Kunstmuseum (Art Museum), featuring one of the largest Otto Dix collections in the world.

The Hauptbahnhof (central train station) allows you to climb to the top of the clocktower for free to get a view of the city. Naturallly, I took advantage of the opportunity. The main street you can see here is Königsstraße.

The view from our hostel.

The next day we went to Ulm, home of Albert Einstein. There are two little momuments in his honor; this is one of them. Little else documents his life here. His life is better documented in his more famous homes of Bern and Princeton, NJ.

The Ulmer Münster (cathedral), the tallest in the world. This would be the second reason I wanted to visit the city. It is an incredibly impressive cathedral, right on par with the ones in Köln and Aachen.

The inside of the cathedral.

The view to the back. The organ is grand, but then check out the creepy and massive statue of St. Michael hiding in the shadows underneath.

Of course I had to climb up the steeple. This is not a task for the faint of heart. I've climbed up my fair share of steeples, and this one incurred acrophobia more so than any other I've climbed. (It is, after all, the tallest...)

The view from the top. On the bottom left is the Rathaus (city hall). The pyramid structure is the central library of the city. The river is the Donau (Danube), which I seem to spend my life tracing.

More of the Rathaus.

This side of the Rathaus depicts all of the states with which Ulm had trade relations in the 16th century. Most are German, but there are several exceptions, such as Frankreich (France), Venedig (Venice), and Engelland (presumably an old spelling of England).

After walking along the river and through the old Fischerviertel (Fisher's Quarter), we sat down to watch the big Germany-England game. Germany, of course, won 4-0, so it was pretty exciting. You can see some of the crowds in my picture above of the cathedral.

On the Way Out

2010-07-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting recently for a good reason - I promise! In the last two weeks, I finished my internship and travelled all over, and now I'm packing and cleaning and preparing for my imminent departure for the United States. Yes, the program is just about over, my visa will expire soon, and I must return to my homeland. All things must pass.

I still have several things I'd like to write about - the least of which would be three or four posts about my travels and adventures in the past month. I'd also like to post a few lists and summaries and thoughts on this year abroad. Then it will probably be time for me to reintegrate into American life and to settle into a new job and everything else. Right now, I have a lot to take care of in my last few days, and my first ten days back in the USA will also be filled with travels and adventures, so it will still be a couple weeks before I'll really have the time to write my last posts. But before too long, I will, and then I will move on to new projects.

German Birthday #3

2010-06-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was one of those funny days where I don't think anyone got anything done at work. I mean, I know I did, but the office was half-empty, and most everyone who was there disappeared after lunch to watch the World Cup game. Crazy.

It also happened to be my birthday. I went to Mainz, met up with a bunch of my fellow program participants, ate some food, and did a bit of partying across the town. Of course, the fact that the last S-Bahn back to Frankfurt is right around midnight even on weekends prevented me from doing anything too extreme.

The next day, though, I decided to head over to Saarbrücken, the capital of Saarland. This small state has an interesting history not unlike that of Alsace, in which it's been in French and German hands at many different points in history. Even for a while after WWII and the foundation of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland in 1949, France controlled Saarland until the people voted against it and the region changed hands in 1957. Anyway, this means that I have now been to every Bundesland of Germany, all sixteen of them. (For the record, I've only been to five of the nine Austrian Bundesländer, three of the Swiss cantons, and twenty of the states in my own homeland, plus DC.)

The first thing I did upon getting into Saarbrücken was to board a train to Völklingen. The ride was all over about ten minutes. Völklingen isn't particularly big, but the city's history and skyline is dominated by the former ironworks, a huge facility that operated from 1873 to 1986 and remains the only intact structure of its kind in Europe or North America. As you may have guessed, it is a World Heritage Site.

This was in the first building on the tour. I think this was an art installation of some sort: when you walked near it, these metallic pecking bird things kept swinging down against the conveyor belt.

The river Saar, which also goes through Saarbrücken and into France, is just beyond the buildings here. ("Saarbrücken" literally means "Bridge on the Saar", although apparently the name has roots in the word for "rock" instead of "bridge". Weird.) Also note all the green taking over this part of the ironworks. The tour referred to this part as "paradise" and really played up the idea of nature conquering human construction. To be fair, it was cool to walk around that part. And as you can tell from this picture and the first one, you can climb up pretty high in the facility.

Whatever these are, they seem to be the dominant image of every metalworks in Germany.

The blast furnaces.

The Ironworks actually included a bunch of various exhibits and galleries, some of which were sort of halfway open-air. These including prints of modern art, selections from the treasury of the federal government, a scientific exploration area of the elements involved in ironwork, and an exhibit on the brain, which included a Moog theremin, pictured here. It was fully functional. I was excited.

After spending several hours in the Ironworks, I finally caught a train back to Saarbrücken to walk around town a bit and meet up with a few friends. After said walking (this here is the Rathaus (city hall)), we went to a fairly traditional local place for dinner, where I had Hoorische, a type of Klöße (dumpling). Delicious. After being told of a Belgian bar in town, we also had to make a stop there. I didn't think it was possible to make beer better than the Germans, but the Belgians have figured it out.

The next morning I decided to see some more of town before catching a train back to Frankfurt. This here is the Schloss (palace). A palace has stood here in some form for over a thousand years, serving as the local royal residence, most notably for the counts of the family of Nassau. It's used mostly as office space these days, in particular for the various political factions of the area.

You can see this if you look on the left in the previous photo, but I liked this a lot and figured it deserved its own picture. I assume this statue was pulled out of the rubble of one of the churches in town after the war, but why it was put here I don't know. Kind of eerie, though, since the statue is missing a lot of important bodily features.

"Invisible Monument Square". Found on the side of the Schloss as pictured above. Initially, this idea came from a group of art students that began pulling out blocks of the Schloss, inscribing the names of former Jewish cemeteries on the back, and sticking the stone back in. At some point, the city picked up on this and apparently ground up the names of 2146 such former cemetaries and buried this into the ground of the Schlossplatz (Palace Square).

I know, this is probably old hat by now, but yet again, I stumbled upon some sort of little festival with a live rock'n'roll band. I couldn't get a good picture of them, but I did get a decent shot of these jazz musician figures in the tree. The building on the left is the side of the Schloss.

Not far away is the Ludwigskirche, one of the prettiest churches in town. You see the plaque in the ground just in front of where I was standing when I took this photo? Guess what it is. I'll tell you: it's a quote from one of Goethe's books in which he mentions visiting Saarbrücken and this very church. Like I said, if Goethe touched it, installing a plaque in commemoration is more important than feeding your children.

I also went to the Schlosskirche (palace church), which is a decent, free museum with a couple really cool tombs. Beyond that... well... Saarbrücken is a relatively small city, in the order of 175,000 inhabitants. I certainly liked it, but it wasn't a non-stop-action kind of place. It was, however, still plenty lively, and I heard more French than I have anywhere else in the country. (That's the default second language of the area; English was a distant third, and plenty of things only offered a French translation.)

Thanks to Lucas and Andrew.

Heading East, Part Three: Berlin at Last

2010-06-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, after two days and two nights in Poznań, I headed back to Berlin just in time for my program's end of the year seminar. The first day was pretty relaxed, but the second was a full day of review and summarization of our past year, including a bit of planning for the future (as in, how to talk to people about this experience). It was a bit long and intense, but at the same time it was kind of fun, and it was in particular interesting to see how other participants had dealt with the various challenges that I had also faced, like the long, cold German winter, the university phase, moving, making friends, and the whole lot. We filled up a giant extended bulletin board with little notes from everyone about their milestones of the year, which made for quite a collage. On the whole it seems like I got pretty lucky with living situations and my internship.

Once we got out, me and several of my friends ran down to Bejte Ethiopia, the awesome restaurant I'd been to once before at the recommendation of a classmate in Hannover. Awesome place - and the fruit beers are incredible.

The next day was pretty much just pure fun. We spent the first part of the day on a boat tour on the Spree, one of the two major rivers that flows through Berlin. The incredible heat and brightness of the sun was uncomfortable, but the sightseeing itself was fun. We first went south past the Berliner Dom and other things I've photographed plenty before, but then we got to Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and then Treptow-Köpenick, all of which were East German except Kreuzberg, and that was new for me. The shore is covered in beach bars, modern business and residential complexes, and old, run-down buildings with anti-capitalist/gentrification graffiti and murals, like the work shown here. Apparently some of the older inhabitants don't like being squeezed out for the intruding businesses.

The Oberbaumbrücke, a beautiful bridge linking Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. When the former was West German and the latter East, trains like the one you can see here were not allowed to cross this bridge. It was around this time that our time guide started ranting about Turks, perhaps because Kreuzberg has a signficant Turkish population. She started by expressing concern about integration and education issues, which I found worthwhile, but instead of discussing the issue, she just kept ranting and ended up hitting some rather racist, nationalist, exclusionist territory. I don't think she won too many fans in a boatload of Americans that are living abroad.

This is exactly what the above-mentioned community was talking about. Look at what is going on here: you are looking at the famous East Side Gallery from the back side. The other side is full of murals painted in 1990 after the majority of the Berlin Wall was torn down. But then you may notice that a large chunk of it is missing, or more specifically, was moved over so that O2 World could have a giant ugly building whose front tendrils reach all the way past the Wall to the river. But instead of just opening a small passageway, they made it huge enough to fit a massive, bright, gaudy display board. Ugh.

This is the Bundeskanzleramt (Federal Chancellery), where the Chancellor's offices are. It's a bit intense, but I really liked it. I thought the open, modern design contrasted nicely with the Neo-Renaissance Reichstagsgebäude (the seat of Parliament).

After the boat tour, I went with a few friends through the city a bit, and we ended up at an Indian restaurant in the neighborhood of one of my friends. Cute place with great tea, falafel, and food in general. Afterwards I decided to walk to Kreuzberg, since it's supposed to be cool and I'd never been there.

On the way I went through the Nikolaiviertel, the oldest part of Berlin and home of the Nikolaikirche, the oldest church in the city, dating from the early 13th century. It turns out that I underestimated the distance, and by the time I got to Kreuzberg I had to leave already to meet the group for a group excursion to a cabaret/theater show. That turned out to be pretty fun, too.

The next morning we left our hostel at 6:30am to go to the Reichstagsgebäude to hang out with the Bundestag. (It's not called the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for nothing!) It's a shame that it was so early, since the day ended up being quite interesting and we were all really tired. For the first time, we met the participants in the high school version of our program, which brought our numbers to something like 300. Once we finally got through security, we went up the gallery to watch a parliamentary session. It was actually really cool, since they were debating the issue of reducing the Bundeswehr/Zivildienst (obligatory military or civil service) down to six months. The conservative parties spoke about how much it would help the economy, and the liberal parties were up in arms about how this would destroy the civil services that depend on their young assistants. The spokesperson for the Green Party was a 25-year-old student with tattoos and a lipring. I'd like to see that happen in the USA!

After that, we went into the faction hall and met with a subset of the parliamentarians, presumably those that are particularly involved in our exchange program. They gave some speeches, the high school participants posed some questions they'd prepared, and they answered them. (Highlight: the Bavarian CSU member calling out America's bad habit of buying on credit and claiming that although we might be better than Greece, we're worse than Spain and the Euro will rise again.) I wish we had had more time for questions, because by that time I'd thought of a bunch of interesting things, but we had to move on: we took a brief break and then the US Ambassador to Germany came in. He ran around quickly to many different people; he even shook my hand and those of several of my friends, but after he'd asked us where we were from and said "Fantastic!" to each answer, he'd moved on before I could ask him anything interesting. Once we were all seated again, he gave a fairly generic speech. Then one of my peers and several high school students started giving speeches and presentations, but the last several ones got cut off for time.

Then came lunch: several of the parliamentarians comingled with us, and I managed to find my Patin, that is, the woman representing the district I was placed in in Hannover. Edelgard Bulmahn is the name; she is the former Minister of Education and Research, so we had a great talk about education in Germany and the USA.

Next, we left the building, walked along the river, and went through another intense security check to get into the American Embassy. The building is fairly new but located right on Pariser Platz, practically next door to the Brandenburger Tor, clearly stating the role that our country wants to play in this one's. It was pretty funny being in there, since most the security guards didn't appear to speak German, and they greeted us with Dr. Pepper and ice cubes. Seeing the place was cool, but the actual events in there were disappointing: first the Ambassador gave a content-free pep-rally-esque speech, then a bunch of members of the Foreign Service kept telling us how cool their jobs were despite them sounding rather mundane, and then the high schoolers who were cut off before gave their presentations. There were several problems with this. Now, the ambassador may be a good person, but his speech was awful, and he attributed his appointment to his position to luck instead of admitting that he is a rich businessman and former general director of Goldman Sachs, who may or may not have donated a lot of money to a certain president's election campaign. (Honestly, I speak better German than he does. Come on.) The Foreign Service employees were working against themselves: I was more interested in the job before I heard them talk. And I just felt bad for the high school presenters, because they were supposed to be presenting to members of parliament, not themselves. The one good thing I got out of the afternoon was meeting a few of the high schoolers and sharing experiences and stories with them.

We had the evening free, so I went with a few friends to Prenzlauer Berg, another hip district, before going to Kunsthaus Tacheles (pictured above but also here and here). All the music and art and the whole feel of the place is just great. Pity that Nike had to smack a giant fake mural on the wall behind the place (seen here to the back on the right).

The next morning was the end of the seminar: we reviewed the week and the year once more, and that was it. But of course, like many participants, I opted to stay another night. I started my afternoon off by finally getting to Kreuzberg and walking from there all the way through Neukölln.

Kreuzberg is indeed really cool; it's full of young people and immigrants. I ran into one multicultural festival and then this Turkish festival on Hermannplatz, complete with solid Turkish band. (Note the dual German and Turkish flags on either site of the stage.)

Neukölln is not unlike Kreuzberg, which means it's also pretty cool. Personally, I've known about it for years via the misspelled David Bowie song "Neuköln" on the fantastic Low album, the second of his famous Berlin trilogy. Then there's also the fact that Neukölln is a sister city/district of Köln, which doesn't really make sense and was probably just done for novelty.

Since running into two street festivals wasn't enough, I decided to go to the Lesbisch-schwules Stadtfest (Lesbian and Gay City Fair), the largest of its kind in Europe. It was indeed big. There was lots of food (I ate another African dish) and beer and music, and a jolly time was had.

After eating dinner at yet another Indian restaurant, me and a friend decided to head to the East Side Gallery to see it from the painted side. Well, we got there as the sun was setting, so I got this decent photo of the Eastern skyline, but my photos of the murals themselves aren't very good.

This is not my photo, but it is the most famous image from the Gallery, and I do hope this isn't the first time you've seen it. ("My God, help me survive this deadly love!")

Ever since I took this photograph almost exactly six years ago, I've always liked the mural in the middle with the chained dove. This isn't a great photo, but it's better than the one I took this time I around, so here it is. This time, though, I noticed that it was apparently sponsored by Amnesty International.

The next morning I caught a ride to Frankfurt and that was that. I really like Berlin. I've been there five times now, four during this program, and there's still so much I haven't seen and done. Sometime in the future I'll have to just spend a month hanging around. One day.

Thanks to Kurt, Elke, and Candice.

Heading East, Part Two: Beyond Berlin

2010-06-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

I tricked you after the last post: after one night in Berlin, I went right back to the Hauptbahnhof and caught another train heading still farther eastward, this time to Poznań, Poland. I've wanted to go to Poland for a long time - cities like Szczecin/Stettin, Kraków/Krakau, Gdańsk/Danzig, Warszawa/Warsaw/Warschau, and Wrocław/Breslau have all been names that I've heard for years. Poznań (Posen in German) is also on that list, but perhaps less prominent than some of the others I just listed. Realizing that I had the opportunity, and the train was cheap, I took the recommendation of a Polish friend and headed there for the two days I had before my seminar in Berlin actually started. I was accompanied by one of my fellow participants.

The first thing I did was get some money from a local ATM. Poland is not yet on the Euro - they are still using the złoty, which has the luxurious exchange rate of about 1USD to 3.3PLN. If numbers mean nothing to you, then let's just say it was very cheap. Anyway, the second thing to do was walk to our hostel. The third was to walk to the main town square, which you can see here. The dominant building is the beautiful city hall.

The Stary Rynek (central square) features tons of beautiful buildings other than just the city hall.

As luck would have it, I stumbled into a giant city fair. This Polish brass-based band was ripping it up: they were great. As for the upside bicyclist cut-out, I have no explanation. I can, however, confirm that the festival featured several pastries, tasty beer, lots of pastries, and some sort of pastry-lookalike that was actually some sort of very solid cheese. Not bad, but what actually was that? The woman selling it was unable to offer me too great of an explanation, but I'm thankful that she was able to offer anything at all in English. I always feel bad travelling to places where no one in my party speaks the language, but what can you do? I tried to be very patient and kind with everyone I communicated with, and I got by without a problem. (I was told by several people not to try my German for obvious historical reasons, and even when I did bring it out, it didn't appear to preferred over English. I am told, however, that in cities that have spent more of their history in German hands, i.e. Szczecin/Stettin, Gdańsk/Danzig, and Wrocław/Breslau, German is somewhat more viable.)

Just down the street from the Stary Rynek is the Jesuits' College and the Church of St. Stanislaus and Our Lady. This is the view of the church from the back.

Let's just say this place was pretty Baroque. Even by 17th century standards, this place is very Baroque. Look at this organ! Sadly, I didn't get too many great pictures since mass was beginning right as I took this photo. Awkward. I didn't want to disturb the peace any longer.

Out on the streets, this is the first piece of random public artwork that I was able to photograph. I have no idea what is going on here, but I think I like it. I suspect that the two goats butting heads is something of a symbol of Poznań, since I saw the motif in several places.

The Archcathedral Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul. Over 1000 years old, it's one of Poland's earliest churches. It stands on an island (Cathedral Island) next to where today's city center lies. Apparently, this is where the city was originally founded, but it has since stretched to both sides of the Warta river. (I still think that's a funny name for a river. It almost sounds like a Bostoner saying "water"!) The river was actually a bit flooded at the time. This wasn't a big problem in Poznań while we were there, but apparently some of the northern cities were somewhat more severely flooded. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't go to Szczecin!

The Golden Chapel of the cathedral. The cathedral also had all sorts of great tombs and stained glass, and there were a few other cool-looking old churches on the island. We went over to the eastern banks to explore the Śródka neighborhood, but it was... not very cool. Apparently there is another really old and cool church over there (Church of St. John of Jerusalem Outside the Walls), but we missed it. Oh well.

Back in the old town, we headed in the direction of the Imperial Castle. This was built in 1910, making a fairly young castle - in fact, the youngest in Europe. (I have no idea what the conditions were in that statement.) It was actually built by Wilhelm II, the last Emperor of Germany; the Kingdom of Prussia and later the German Empire controlled Greater Poland (the region of which Poznań is the capital) from 1793 until the end of the First World War (and again during the Second).

Spotted behind the Imperial Castle.

The Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, one of Poland's biggest universities. We walked around inside and also inside the School of Medicine. The latter especially had a cool interior. The staircases each had stained glass portraits of famous figures from the school's history, several of whom were Nobel Prize laureates.

The Teatr Wielki, that is, the Opera. Me and my traveling companion decided to sit down on the beautiful lawn here for a bit, just like plenty of other young people. The sky gradually got darker and darker and suddenly it was extremely windy and raining hard. We hid under a tree and waited it out - it only took 15 minutes before it was clear and beautiful again. Well, after another 15 minutes, it was dark and rainy again and we had to hide in the university, but after another 15 minutes it was beautiful again, and this time it stayed that way.

We decided to head up north, based on the knowledge that a couple cemeteries and parks were up that way. On the way we found this huge monument. The best name I can find for it online is Pomnik Armii Poznań, which appears to have something to do with the army. I think this is a monument to the fallen soldiers of the city in World War Two.

We kept going north, and after stocking up on chocolate at a convenience store, we ended up at Winiary Fort, also known simply as the Citadel. These fortifications were built by the Germans in the 19th century, and after WWII they turned it into a park with several museums and cemeteries. This is the Museum of Armaments.

Some of the ruins of the Citadel. We most certainly climbed around here and entered the little doorway on the right. We didn't go far, since it was dark, but some stairs led into an underground passage that was flooded at the time. This park was pretty cool: it's a huge space with lots of different areas.

In the background here you can see the Stary Browar, a former brewery turned into a big shopping mall. In the foreground is... what? I can't figure this out. Via Google and Wikipedia I learned that the inscription, "Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice", means "Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you", and this is the inscription on Christopher Wren's tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, which he built. What that has to do with this monument (located just off of the Ogrodowa street), I have no idea.

My knowledge of Polish and Poland is too weak to solve some of these riddles and accurately tell all the history here: hence, if any of you have additional knowledge to share about these things, I would be very appreciative.

Poznań is not the number one tourist destination in Poland, but even without entering any museums, I had a great time there. It's quite pretty and lively, and now I can't wait to get another opportunity to go to Poland.

Heading East, Part One: On the Road to Berlin

2010-06-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

Like I mentioned in the addendum to my last post, I had a good time at the Wilhelmstraßenfest in Wiesbaden, but I forgot to mention that this is just plain festival season, and there have been plenty of others going on. The day after Pentecost was Wäldchestag, a Frankfurt-only semi-holiday, where traditionally everyone worked a half-day and then went into the Stadtwald (city forest) to hang out. Well, I didn't get the day off, but I stopped by after work, since the festival grounds were just on the other side of the quarter I live in! I wasn't actually all that impressed; it was a lot like the Hannover Oktoberfest. Both would probably have been a lot more fun if I had had a bunch of friends and a lot of beer.

This is also the Weltmeisterschaft (World Cup) season - it's crazy out here. This summer is feeling a bit like my summer in Baden-Württemberg from two years ago, where street festivals and Europameisterschaft games were literally unavoidable. I mean, seriously, I was at at least one street festival pretty much every week. That's just how Germany rolls.

Anyway, it's been a while since I've written because I've been travelling all around. This past week was my program's final seminar in Berlin. (As of yesterday, I have one month left in Germany.) However, on my way to Berlin, I couldn't resist stopping in a few places along the way. I'll get to talking about Berlin soon enough - for now, I'll stick to getting there.

First, I went to Leipzig, a large city in Sachsen (Saxony). I've actually been there twice before, since it wasn't far from where I was living six years ago, Glauchau. (You can read about my second visit there from my blog from three years ago here.)

I was actually only planning on spending the night in Leipzig, but since it'd been a while since I'd been there, I figured it didn't hurt to walk around town and see the sights again. This is the Altes Rathaus (old city hall); the Neues (new) Rathaus is shown on my old blog.

Auerbachs Keller, a bar famous as being the location of a scene in Goethe's Faust. What did I say - if Goethe so much as whispered the name of something, it is now recognized as worth eight times its weight in gold.

The Thomaskirche, famous for being where Bach was a cantor and where his remains lie today. I got there too late to get in, which makes for three unsuccessful attempts over six years to enter this building.

Disappointed from not being able to get in the Thomaskirche, I started wandering towards the Neues Rathaus when I heard a familiar guitar riff: none other than Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"! A four-piece rock band, pictured above, and named something like The Four Roses, was performing a solid rendition as part of a huge city-wide festival. (What did I say about German street fests in the summer?)

After listening to the band play a mean version of "The Letter" and a few other songs before they left the stage, I went over to the Augustusplatz to see the Neues Gewandhaus, the redesigned building where Felix Mendelssohn was once bandmaster. This fountain, the Mendebrunnen, is quite pretty, but the strange building in the background deserves explanation. Apparently there used to be a church there (the Pauluskirche), which was actually used by the neighboring university since 1546 as a home for the school of medicine (where it became known as the Paulinum). However, in post-war DDR times, a communist leader decided that he wanted at least one square in Leipzig without a church, so he ordered the place blown up, despite the fact that it wasn't terribly damaged, and it wasn't even a church anymore. Typical for modern times after the Wende (the "change", meaning German reunification), authorities decided to rebuild the place, and that's what you see here. It is again a university building, not religious, but it does look somewhat like a church. I learned this story from a man who decided to sit down next to me while I took this photo. It probably would have been weird except that he kept telling me interesting things about living in East Germany.

Enough about Leipzig. I was only there for the evening and night. In the morning I caught an early train to Dessau, and after a brief jaunt through the Georgium Palace Gardens, I caught bus to Wörlitz, a small town mostly famous for its palace and huge garden grounds. (Both of these garden estates, and several others in the area, comprise a World Heritage Site.) These places exist thanks to Prince Leopold III Friedrich Franz, who wanted a more natural realm instead of the then-standard Baroque style. Today, these gardens are free to enter and incredibly beautiful. Here on the right is the Schloss Wörlitz, which I did not enter, and St. Peter's Church, which I did.

The Gotisches Haus ("Gothic House"). Behind this building was a peacock, feathers spread as large as possible, trying his absolute damnedest to attract a female, who kept just turning away. The peacock would then try to get back in her line of sight, and in the process the huge array of feathers made such a rustling sound that you would have thought it was a pile of leaves in the autumn wind.

The Golden Urn. No idea what the significance is, but this was one of many little buildings and sculptures in the garden that were left unexplained but were nonetheless far from displeasing to look at. In the background, beyond the river and the bridge, lies a synagogue.

The Nymphaeum, as seen from the Bibelturm (Bible Tower) of St. Peter's Church. Good view from up there! (And it didn't cost much at all to climb.)

It was such a beautiful day, and there are something like nine of these gardens in the area, but time was limited, so I went back to Dessau to seek out my next target.

When I think of Germany, this is literally probably one of the first ten images that comes to my mind. I think I've wanted to come here ever since I was a high school freshman listening to the records by the English band who stole this school's name for their own purposes. Dessau was home to the Bauhaus for seven years between 1925 and 1932, longer than either other location (Weimar and Berlin).

Apart from the museum in the school premises, you can also tour the Meisterhäuser (masters' houses), although I for some reason chose not to. Of the four originals, only two and a half survived the war. Apparently the insides are really cool, so if I ever do go back, I know what to do.

After geeking out on Bauhaus, I walked into the city center to see some pretty old buildings. Indeed, the Hauptpost (central post office) is quite impressive, right on par with the city hall and the remains of the former residential palace.

It was still only mid-afternoon, so I decided to catch the train and spend a couple hours in Wittemberg, where I had to change trains anyway to get to Berlin. Wittemberg is known for primarily one reason: this is where Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses. He spent much of his life here, and because of that, the official name of the city is actually Lutherstadt Wittemberg (without the italics, of course). "Stadt" means "city", by the way.

Anyway, I was a bit tired, so I was nodding off on the train when I suddenly heard (in German), "next stop: Lutherstadt Wittemberg". I grabbed my stuff, jumped up, ran to the door, got out, and realized I was in the middle of nowhere just as the train drove onwards. Turns out that there are four or five stops in Wittemberg on the regional train line, and I got off at an industrial complex 10km outside of the city center. Oops. Thankfully, a train watchman was there and told me what was up. He let me wait with him in his little watchhouse until the next train to the main station came an hour later. So instead of seeing a World Heritage Site, I sat in the heat, listened to the radio, and talked to an old train worker about the hard economic times of post-reunification East Germany. (Common theme yet?)

In the end, I made the rest of my connections without a problem and met up with a good friend in Berlin to eat at Dada Falafel. This was a very specific goal of mine ever since I saw it in December. It was worth it: Lebanese falafel never disappoints.

I Think It Might Finally Be Summer

2010-06-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

So, I don't have anything too exciting to report this time around. The last two weeks have gone by pretty fast. Another program participant came and visited last weekend, which meant we were all over Frankfurt and Wiesbaden. It was a lot of fun, and the weather has finally gotten good. Like, really good, almost out of nowhere. Or that's how it feels.

On Saturday morning we went to the Bauernmarkt (farmer's market) on Konstablerwache, which is particularly awesome in this season. This woman was taking elderberry blossoms, dipping them in batter, and deep-frying them. Yes. That was awesome. Plus they had elderberry juice and Maibowle (May wine); I'm not sure what that is, but it tasted like the most delicious combination of elderberry juice and Apfelwein that you can imagine. And the strawberries you can get at the market are incredible. I've also been enjoying all the Spargel (white asparagus, the default kind here) and the Grüne Soße (green sauce), which consists of seven herbs and some sort of cream. I've been experimenting with making vegan varieties at home. This stuff is good.

This is in the Frankfurter Dom. Not sure what the story is.

The Russian Orthodox Church on the Neroberg in Wiesbaden. A beautiful structure built by the Grand Duke for his Russian wife, overlooking the city in the valley.

This is an informational poster for JCrypTool, one of the projects that I've been working on at the Bank. If you look under the "Crypto Algorithms" heading, you'll see "Kleptography", which is the plugin that I implemented myself. The whole project is open-source and free to download.

The Peterskirchhof (St. Peter's Cemetary), where several famous Frankfurters are buried, including Goethe's parents. This is a very old graveyard and a lot of the graves are completely unreadable, but others are really fancy.

The front of the Peterskirchhof. I couldn't get in the actual church, despite it being a reasonable hour and no events going on. Who knows.

I'm actually publishing this from Leipzig. I've got some big plans for the next week, so it'll probably be a while before I get another chance to write.

[Edit 2010.06.05: I forgot to mention the Wilhelmstraßenfest in Wiesbaden - this past Thursday was Fronleichnam (Corpus Christi), a holiday in the southern half of Germany, and to celebrate, Wiesbaden hosts the largest street fest in the country. It was great. Me and some friends just enjoyed the great weather and the accompanying food and drink. I've missed these things!]

Thüringen, Home of Every Famous German

2010-05-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

Spring is a great season in any part of the northern hemisphere, I imagine, but there's something special about it in Germany after you've just lived through six or seven months of winter. Beyond just the sudden improvement of the weather, May and early June are littered with national holidays. This past Monday was Pfingsten (Pentecost); having a three-day weekend right after Sarah's departure meant for me that there was no way I wasn't go to go take a little vacation somewhere. I decided to go to Thüringen, in part to visit an old friend and in part to visit a bunch of really famous places.

First I went to Eisenach, a rather small town where Johann Sebastian Bach was born and Luther once lived. Both of their residences stand today and are now museums: this is Bach's. Both figures also have large, prominent statues in the city.

Eisenach is probably most famous for being home to the smallest inhabited Fachwerkhaus in Germany. Look at this thing! Isn't it cute?

Just kidding - Eisenach is probably most famous for the Wartburg Castle, a World Heritage Site. This is one of the most famous castles in Germany; it dates from 1067, it was home to Saint Elisabeth of Hungary, Luther hid here incognito and translated the New Testament into the roots of what we now call Hochdeutsch (Standard German), and of course, Goethe hung out here a lot. I mean, Goethe was here. Anything Goethe touched requires documentation, placards, statues, books, and a general recognition as Ur-German. Seriously, Goethe is the German, but I suppose if there is a second, it's Luther, so Wartburg kind of has it all.

The leftmost building in the previous picture is the Palas, the sort of main royal residence and hall. I toured the building it was awesome. Pictured here is the former women's room, which was outfitted with an awesome mosiac documenting the life of St. Elisabeth. No, it doesn't date from her lifetime; it was made in 1902-1906.

This is the Sängersaal (Minstrel's Hall), where once upon a time a famous contest of music and poetry was held in 1206. This forms part of the basis of Wagner's Tannhäuser opera. On the walls of this room are poems in old-style German (pictured here) and a big painting of the famous contest.

There were plenty of other cool rooms, plus a couple towers to climb around, a museum of the treasury, and a little section centered around the room where Luther hung out while doing his translation work. The castle is a really cool area to walk around and well worth the hike up from the city. (Even if my legs are still sore. Maybe marching up the whole way with hardly a pause for water wasn't a great idea after all.)

The city of Eisenach doesn't have a lot going on, but it is pretty and there are a bunch of museums and cool old buildings other than the castle. I didn't spend too much time in town, but I did have time to take this picture of the awesome stained glass in the train station. This one is dedicated to the automobile industry of the city; across the hall is another dedicated to the local watch-making industry. (If you look closely, you may notice that my train left literally less than one minute after I took this picture. I may or may not having gotten halfway-lost on my way down from the castle, but for some reason I decided not to run once I found my way; in the end I still had time to buy my ticket, take a couple pictures, and rush up the stairs to catch my train just as it opened its doors.)

My next stop was Erfurt, less than hour away on the train. Erfurt is a real city; it's the capital of the state of Thüringen and probably over 1300 years old. This is the Domberg (Cathedral Hill), where both the really-old Dom and the Severikirche stand. Before it lies the Domplatz (Cathedral Square), with that obelisk in memory of the first visit of the Bishop of Mainz. This city has so many medieval churches just in the Altstadt alone that it's easy to mix them up, especially when they're as close together as the two pictured here. (Seriously, was that really necessary?) It's also home to the oldest standing synagogue in Europe. (It escaped the Nazis because it had been used as a storehouse for many centuries.)

This is the Zitadelle Petersberg (Peter's Hill Citadel), a 17th century fortress just overlooking the Domberg and Domplatz. It's not unlike the Zitadelle I climbed around in Mainz.

Erfurt was not as heavily damaged in the War as much as many other German cities; plenty of beautiful old buildings can be found all over the place. This is the Haus zum Roten Ochsen (House of the Red Ox), now an art museum. And that's a random statue of a Roman in the foreground. This is on the Fischmarkt square, where the Rathaus (city hall) and several other pretty buildings can be found.

This is the Krämerbrücke (Shopkeeper's Bridge), which is jammed full of stores along the sides of this bridge over the Breitstrom, an arm of the Gera. I'd read about these kinds of bridges existing long ago in Paris, but here was one right in central Germany!

The Anger is another major square and street. Yes, it's called Anger, which apparently has nothing to do with the English homonym. I think it's a corollary to a village green. Anyway, this is a pretty building and a pretty fountain at the eastern end of the Anger.

On the Hirschgraben (literally, "deer ditch"), a square just east of the Anger, is this interesting reflective cylinder. You can even see me taking the picture. Behind me is the Staatskanzlei (State Chancellery), which has one of those plaques proudly proclaiming that Goethe often hung out there. This was far from the only building in Erfurt that had one of these plaques.

The Haus zum Sonneborn. I'm not really sure what that's about, but the building is awesome.

I didn't actually spend that much time in Erfurt; I had dinner while watching a band perform on the Wenigemarkt, spent the night in a hostel, and moved on to Weimar in the morning after eating some pastries.

Weimar, about 15 minutes by train east of Erfurt, is one of those places where the average fame per 1000 inhabitants is probably higher than any place in the entire USA. Seriously, what didn't happen in Weimar? I mean, Goethe lived here! Goethe! How much more German can you get than where Goethe lived!? Unlike Frankfurt, where Goethe was born, or even Italy, where Goethe liked to vacation, he actually spent most of his life in Weimar. He liked it that much that he convinced his buddy and fellow hyper-famous writer Schiller to come live here, too. This statue shows the two friends, conveniently the two most famous German writers, standing before the National Theater of Weimar.

Goethe didn't just live here, he even had a Gartenhaus ("garden house") in the Ilmpark!

Now, to be fair, Goethe didn't show up just because he felt like it; Goethe was invited by the 18-year-old Grand Duke of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, Karl August. Pictured here is the Stadtschloss (city palace), the royal residence of the duchy. It is now home to a nice art and history museum. This place is where the most famous picture of Luther is kept. Did I mention that Luther came here several times? How high are we on the Germanity scale yet? Did I mention that Franz Liszt lived here, and that his home and museum were really cool? Or that Wagner, Herder, Bach, Schopenhauer, Strauss, and Nietzsche all lived here?

This is the Rathaus (city hall). See, this is an incredible, beautiful building, but you know what? It just wasn't incredible or beautiful enough for UNESCO, because it isn't on the list of famous landmarks in their listing for the World Heritage Site of Classical Weimar, which includes Goethe's house, Schiller's house, the above palace, the above park with Goethe's other house, and several other famous buildings. But clearly the city hall just didn't reach the bar. I'm told the bells are quite nice but play the same tune as the city hall in Copenhagen. Except that it wasn't ringing when I was there.

It turns out that just being home to countless famous people wasn't enough. On the far left of this picture is the Herzogin Anne Amalia Bibliothek (Duchess Anne Amalaie Library), famous for being big, old, and led by Goethe once upon a time. Just kidding, the real reason I took this picture was because the main building here is part of the Franz Liszt Hochschule für Musik (University of Music), where my friend happens to study. Just kidding, the truly real reason I took this picture is because this is where the democratic constitution of Germany was written in 1919 to create what became known of the Weimar Republic.

Oh, and that's a statue of Karl August in front of the building.

As if housing the German, housing tons of other famous Germans, and being the foundation of a previous incarnation of the whole nation of Germany wasn't enough, Weimar is also where Bauhaus was founded. (No, not the British goth-rock band, the art/architecture/design school!) The first-ever Bauhaus-designed building is in Weimar, and this is where the school resided from 1919 until 1925, when they moved to Dessau after Nazis cut their funding. Even though I'd been to the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin, the school's final home before Nazis shut the whole thing down, I couldn't resist going to the museum here as well.

So I know I just went on about how much I love Art Nouveau in my last past, and now I'm all talking big on its polar opposite, but I don't care: I like both. This here is the main building of the Bauhaus while it existed in Weimar; afterwards it remained home to the local art school, which is still around today, but has since been renamed the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. And as it turns out, UNESCO also recognizes the locations of Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau as yet another World Heritage Site.

That's right, Weimar is home to two World Heritage Sites. (Only two other German cities can make that claim, Dessau and Berlin, both coincidentally (or not) the other two former homes of Bauhaus.) All of this and Weimar still is only home to about 60,000 people. Incredible.

Thanks to Michael.

Cathedrals, Waffles, and Beer (with a French Interpreter!)

2010-05-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

There are many reasons I love Sarah. Among them is the fact that she speaks very good French. You might think that could cause strife, what with my German affinity in terms of language and culture, but I prefer to view things from the angle that this disparity of knowledge only opens doors. Therefore, once it was settled that Sarah would visit me a second time, we quickly decided to take a long weekend to go to some places where she could lead the way with her French knowledge.

Our first destination was Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace in France. Strasbourg lies immediately on the German border and was in fact German for most of its history. Straßburg, and in fact all of Elsaß, were a German-speaking part of the Holy Roman Empire until Louis XIV annexed it to France in 1681. The famous university still remained German, and the Über-German Goethe even studied there. After the French revolution, the language was somewhat forcibly altered and the area became more Frenchified. However, Bismarck reconquered the region in 1871 and reunified it as a part of the massive German Empire. It remained German until after WWI, where the Treaty of Versailles restored it to France, but not for long, since the Nazis captured it in 1940, but after WWII it was again restored to France (after the region briefly attempted to become a fully autonomous state), where it remains today.

Considering that it once was home to Goethe, and one of the other most famous Germans, Gutenberg, who invented the printing press here in 1439, I wondered how German the city really still was. I did hear plenty of German on the streets, but I think most of it was from tourists. I think the local dialect is essentially German with a heavy French influence, somewhat akin to Lëtztebuergesch (Luxembourgian). However, these days the dominant language is clearly French, and German is relegated to a distinct second, just above English.

Anyway, Strasbourg is a beautiful city, and so much so that the entire central core island is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. The high point is probably the incredible cathedral, including this huge astronomical clock. After giving into the hype, buying a special ticket, and waiting for a good hour for the procession of the saints at half past noon, we learned that the coolest parts are actually broken right now. Thanks for telling us that in advance, guys. Whatever - it was still cool, and we made up for it by climbing up the belltower.

Here's part of the view from up high. The whole city is incredible. I mean, this place is one of the capitals of the EU, hosting in particular the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights. That tower in the back is part of the civil hospital, and those pretty houses more in the foreground lie on the banks of the Ill, which forms an island upon which the city was founded. Horray for moats!

More of the Ill and the pretty houses alongside it. Super-German, eh? Just kidding, only not. This area is known as Petite France... although apparently that name comes from the medieval Germans' designation for the "French" prostitutes that once inhabited this area.

There are plenty of other cool buildings in town, like the Kammerzellhaus, dating from 1427. This is right across from the Cathedral. Tourist central, as you might be able to imagine.

Also on the Grande Île (the "Grand Island") is the Église Saint-Thomas (Saint Thomas Church), the primary Protestant church of the city, and somewhat unique in its design. As can be seen prominently here, Mozart and Albert Schweitzer both played on this very organ once upon a time.

Cool painted house found while wandering on Rue de l’Outre.

We went to a two museums: the museum of contemporary art and the one pictured here, the Alsatian Museum. It mostly focused on rural life in Alsace, which was actually pretty cool. And I always like the creative way that multilingual cities handle museums: many, including this one, offer little booklets in various languages to take with you through the museum instead of having little placards everywhere. Anyway, I love the way the man in this picture is selecting his female prey. Quite... aggressive, shall we say.

I left out an important detail before. Actually, it wasn't important, but I'll mention it anyway. On the way to Strasbourg, we had a two-hour wait to catch our next train in Offenburg, a town in southern Germany near the French border. We walked around despite the rain and saw most of the coolest architecture. This is the "Stag Apothecary" on the Fischmarkt ("Fish Market", if you really needed a translation there). Not bad.

Anyway, after two days in Strasbourg we caught a train heading north to Brussels, known as Bruxelles in French, Brussel in Dutch, and Brüssel in German. Brussels is the capital of Belgium and generally considered "the" capital of the EU, being home to more associated institutions than any other city (even the other two so-called capitals, Luxembourg and Strasbourg). Brussels is also usually considered a French-speaking city, despite the fact that it and the whole nation are officially bilingual and traditionally the city was Dutch-speaking. Althoug the northern 60% of Belgium still speaks Flemish, which is really about 98% the same thing as Dutch, the capital region of Brussels gave way to the dominant cultural imperialism of France and today the majority chooses French as their first language. The city still claims bilinguality, and apparently there are some neighborhoods dominated by Dutch, but the parts we were in were very French, although Dutch was usually a second choice just after that. Oh, and by the way, this is the Cathedral. We didn't actually get much of a chance to see the interior, but apparently Victor Hugo dug the place.

This is the Hôtel de Ville/Stadhuis (city hall), lying on the Grand-Place/Grote Markt, an incredibly beautiful square whose entirety is a World Heritage Site. After the city was destroyed by Louis XIV in 1695, this square was rebuilt, but has been left largely untouched since then, a rarity for such a big city in this part of the world.

More of the Grand-Place. The central building was the home of the brewer's guild. I think this is a good time to mention two of the best parts about Belgium: waffles and beer. Just like last time I was in Belgium, I tried as many different types of beer as was reasonable, and it is unbelievable how many of them taste fantastic. I mean, I love German beer and I think the Belgian beers are even better. Crazy. And then there's the waffles! What a country.

And still more! To the right is a local history museum in the former Maison du Roi (King's House) / Broodhuis (Breadhouse). Although we again had multilingual booklets, Sarah and I had more fun trying to decipher the French and Dutch printed everywhere. See, Sarah speaks very good French, but not with perfect fluency, and I can read a modicum of Dutch due to its similarity to German. With our combined knowledge we were actually able to understand a good deal. At the huge art museum we played a game of seeing who could translate the names of the works first (although sometimes the names were somewhat or even vastly different).

Here on the Kolenmarkt you can see one of the many comic book murals on the sides of buildings across town. You will also note some large stacks of rainbow balloons: turns out we arrived in Brussels just in time for a massive Pride parade. That was cool. We kept running into the parade as it traversed the town.

Anyway, back to the raw tourism: here's a big clock next to the national library.

Behind the national library is this nice view of the hyper-Art Nouveau Old England building and the Place Royale/Koningsplein (Royal Square). The royal palace is just around the corner, and the Palace of Justice farther down the street to the right. There's a lot of palaces here. And churches. But hey, this is Europe, what else would you expect?

After failing to get into the Cathedral, we decided to go to the Église Notre Dame du Sablon (Church of Our Lady of Sablon), not too far away. Cool place.

Just outside the church is this little garden. I have no idea who these two men are.

And then we walked to the Palace of Justice, from whose steps I took this picture. I believe that that is the Notre Dame de la Chapelle on the far left, a monument for WWII in the foreground-left, and the spire of the city hall in the center-right. Just out of the picture on the left was a van selling waffles. Yes, they have waffle trucks, just like ice cream trucks in the States. And in the center of this picture, far in the distance in the horizon, hard to see but ever yet there, is the Atomium, a huge monument build for the Expo '58. It's something of a big deal and a symbol of the city.

We also headed a bit to the south of the city to a nice neighborhood known for its many Art Nouveau houses. The most famous were constructed by Victor Horta; four of his buildings are today World Heritage Sites. Three of them are very near to each other, so of course we had to check them out. His own former home and studio is now a museum, and although it was expensive and partially under construction (I am cursed), it was cool.

Another of Horta's Heritage Site houses, the Hôtel Tassel. Like all of these beautiful buildings other than the museum, they are private property and not open for the public. (For the record, a third Brussels Heritage Site, the Stoclet Palace, built by Josef Hoffmann, was even farther out of the way and quite inaccessible to the public, so despite my obsession, I opted to pass on trekking to its door.) I can't help but find the giant ugly dumpster to be something of an insult. "Oh, was that one of the most famous and beautiful buildings in Belgium? Well, I'll just park my dumpster there for a while; it's not like anyone will notice."

Not a World Heritage Site, but it has a cooler façade than some of the ones that are: this is the Maison Ciamberlani, also not far away and designed by Albert Ciamberlani.

On Sunday, on our long way back to Frankfurt, we had to transfer in Köln. We had less than half an hour there, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make the most of it. Look closely at this picture. (Actually, you don't even need to look closely; I cropped this screenshot from wikimapia to make my point obvious.) See, Köln is one of those funny cities where the planners made the awkward decision of putting the Hauptbahnhof (central train station) literally next door to the city's oldest and most famous site, the Kölner Dom (cathedral). This is generally considered foolhardy (even the Nazis had planned to move the station to a more convenient location on the edge of the city center, as is the case in most European cities), but in this case it worked to my advantage. I met up with a friend who lives in town and we walked across the square and showed Sarah the quick tour of the Dom. Oh, Köln. Our last train followed the beautiful route along the Upper Middle Rhine Valley (yet another World Heritage Site, as if the Dom and Horta wasn't enough for one day), but sadly it was too dark to see most of the castles overlooking the river valley. I guess there's a limit to how much awesome you can have in one day, no matter how hard you try.

Thanks to Sarah.

Another Visitor, Another Castle

2010-05-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a few weeks since I've written. And there's a good reason, I assure you: my girlfriend, Sarah, once again flew over the ocean to come hang out with me. Although I only had a few days that I could take off for vacation, she came for over two weeks, giving us plenty of time to undertake some adventures. Our biggest plans brought us into French-speaking territory, which I will describe in the next post. For now, I'll talk about our activities within German borders.

Most days I still had to go into the office and keep working, which meant I left Sarah to explore on her own or to meet me after work. Together, we ended up seeing all of the big neighborhoods and plenty of sights. This here is the main building of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität. (This city will never cease being proud of Goethe, even if he left the city early and settled in his beloved Weimar.)

The Frauenfriedenskirche ("Our Lady's Peace Church") is a modern structure in a corner of Bockenheim. I like the rather creepy statue watching over the nearby tram station.

This was found in the Deutschordenskirche. The wall paintings are especially great for some of the scenes like the one in the middle here: a crucified man lies in bed... while still nailed to his cross.

For our first excursion, we decided to go to Heidelberg, a beautiful city beloved by tourists because of its giant, old, semi-ruined castle. It is also home to the oldest university in Germany, founded in 1386. The library is pictured here: it was the coolest building that we could find in the historic city center, but I know that several big-name facilities, like multiple Max-Planck-Institutes, can also be found around town.

The Haus zum Ritter ("House of the Knight"), an ornate hotel on the marketplace next to the Heiliggeistkirche ("Church of the Holy Spirit"), the biggest church in town. The whole city center is filled with these sorts of beautiful old buildings, but this is one of the best. Since Heidelberg was essentially untouched by WWII, these buildings aren't even reconstructions.

It didn't cost much to climb up the tower of Heiliggeistkirche. I'm not quite sure why we did, considering that we were planning on climbing up the castle, too, but the view was awesome. Find the castle in this picture!

The building in the foreground is the former Großherzogliche Palais ("Grand Ducal Palace"), now home to the Akademie der Wissenschaften ("Academy of Sciences"). I don't know what's up with this awesome fountain, but that's the castle again in the background.

Castle! Built in the early 13th century, destroyed in the late 17th century, and quickly (but only partially) rebuilt. This place is quite cool. It's tricky, though: you can walk around the gardens outside the castle for free, but to get inside, you have to pay. Inside is this courtyard, an old massive keg, and an apothecary museum (!?). To actually see the imperial apartments, you have to pay even more and get a tour. We passed on that. But honestly, it would make more sense to do all or nothing, since the gardens were great and the courtyard limited.

The highlight of the apothecary museum. (The low point was the huge swarms of people. This castle is one of the biggest tourist sites in Germany, and the weather was actually pretty good. Bad combination.)

This is the view from the castle down into the city. That's the Heiliggeistkirche on the left and the old and rather cool Alte Brücke (old bridge) over the Neckar river on the right. Apparently, there's a really nice path to walk around on the big hill over on the other side of the river, but we chose to go visit a local museum instead of hiking up another long route.

I don't have many other great new pictures of Frankfurt; I suppose I should consider retaking some of the ones I took when I arrived, when days were short and dark and snow stood on every street.

Anyway, we also went over to Wiesbaden one evening to hang out with one of my friends. We walked around the castle and park I mentioned last time, although I realized that I forgot one important fact about that park: for some reason, it is full of parrots. No joke: you can hear them and see their crazy green feathers flying around the trees. Apparently, the climate there next to the Rhine appeals to them.

After some confusion regarding Sarah's departing flight, she ended staying longer than expected, but all's well that ends well: in her extra days, the weather improved significantly and suddenly, and we had some great final meals and walks. I finally tried traditional Frankfurter grüne Soße (green herbal sauce) and it is good. As is the local apple juice.

After Sarah left this morning, I was lonely but the weather was incredible, so I went to the Palmengarten to make the most of the day. It was beautiful.

A Few More Palaces

2010-05-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

If you're getting tired of me blathering about World Heritage Sites, don't worry - the palaces and cities I visited this past weekend aren't on the list. (Of course, the list expands every year!)

Anyway, with my sister gone and my seminar in Würzburg over, I had a normal, quiet week here in Frankfurt. I caught up on some things and hung out with some of my co-interns. Turns out that Friday was the last day for one of my buddies in my department as well as one of my favorites from outside the department. All in all, there was plenty of pizza and cake, and now I'm the "oldest" intern in my department, which still continues to hire new interns just as fast as others leave. To be fair, two that finished their internships were immediately thereafter hired as external contract employees, but the other two that finished since I started are back in class at their respective universities. I really have to hand it to my boss for creating a unique work environment!

Anyway, one of the said interns that got hired back in the fold invited me over to his place in Wiesbaden for the day on Saturday. He happens to be a former German participant of my exchange program in one of those weird little coincidences that seem improbable but are probably statistically reasonable, like the likelihood that two people in a room of 20 people will share a birthday. Anyway, I'd only been in Wiesbaden briefly over these past nine months, but I had spent a day there three years ago. You can find a brief description along with pictures of gummy bears, the Marktkirche ("Market Church") and the Neues Rathaus on my old blog here.

My friend lives in the Biebrich nieghborhood, which is in the south of the city, right along the banks of the Rhine. Awesome area - this 18th century palace (Schloss Biebrich) is just a five-minute walk from his door, so of course, after I and another co-intern arrived in town, we headed here first.

The palace also features a rather large park, which includes the Mosburg, a ruined medieval castle rebuilt as an alternative hang-out for the ducal family back in the day. Wiesbaden was, after all, the capital of Nassau, just as it is today the capital of Hessen. (Frankfurt is not the capital of Hessen despite being three times as big and briefly the capital of the entire nation in the 19th century.) This park is also used for equestrian tournaments on Pentecost every year.

Wiesbaden was not severely damanged in the war and partially as a consequence has plenty of other beautiful buildings, like the other ducal residential palace (the Stadtschloss, today home to the parliament of Hessen). The whole city center that makes for a great walk. This here is the Bonifatiuskirche, the Waterloo-Obelisk, and the Denkmal mit springendem Pferd ("Monument with Jumping Horse").

And of course, like many good German cities in the Rhine-Main area, Wiesbaden also features some Roman ruins. All that remains is part of a gateway seen here on the bottom-right side of this bridge. The rest was built much later but also looks cool.

Anyway, the three of us wanted to make sushi, and although I had brought all of the ingredients that I needed, my friends wanted some fish for theirs. The problem was that it was May 1st, Tag der Arbeit, the German equivalent of Labor Day. Normally most things are open on Saturdays; they may close early, but they're open (unlike on Sundays). Being a holiday (however "useless" since I didn't get a day off work), no grocery store was open, but we did find a sushi restaurant where we could stock up and enjoy some great green tea in the meantime. After we made it all and had a great meal, we sat out on the Rhine and played guitar until we got too cold.

The next day I decided to go to Karlsruhe. For some reason, I've always wanted to go there. Maybe it was because of their famous university with plenty of scientific achievements on its record and that is still remembered for having the first internet connection in Germany. Maybe it's because the city is one of the few planned cities in Germany (if not Europe), in the sense that it is laid out like spokes on a wheel with a palace in the middle, much like Washington, DC (which was founded 80 years after Karlsruhe). Maybe it was because in Baden-Württemberg, where I spent a summer two years ago. Maybe it was because it was once the capital of the nation of Baden (which means "bathing", and I will never cease to find that strange). Maybe it was because it's home to the Bundesgerichtshof (the Federal Court of Justice, which despite being in the former Grand Ducal Palace, is now hidden by lots of trees, shrubbery, scary fences, and cameras) and the Bundesverfassungsgericht (the Federal Constitutional Court, which sits in a boring Modernist building and is apparently guarded by a single policeman). Or maybe it was because it was founded after Markgraf Karl III. Wilhelm left his previous capital city, named his new home "Charles' Rest", and had himself buried in a weird pyramid in the middle of the city after he died.

Karlsruhe, being relatively young for a Germany city (but, of course, still 61 years older than my home country), isn't particularly large or really all that beautiful. This isn't to say it was bad or something - but I think my expectations may have been a bit too high. And the mediocre weather didn't help. Anyway, this is the Museum of Natural History, which was apparently hosting a Hungarian festival for the day.

The real tourist site of Karlsruhe is the palace. It is now host to a state museum, which I did not have time to visit, but the palace gardens are huge and awesome. This statue here is of Karl Friedrich, who became the first Grand Duke of Baden.

Like I said, the gardens are pretty cool.

On the side of the gardens is the Staatliche Kunsthalle ("State Art Gallery"), whose modern art department is situated in the Orangerie visible in this picture. I checked out that exhibit, which was well worth it. Lots of great German stuff from the last century.

Reflexionen, an installation by Bernadette Hörder on the palace grounds. I like it.

Anyway, Karlsruhe was fine but not actually as cool as I'd hoped. (I'm glad I went with my friends to Trier instead last summer when we had a free and beautiful summer's day.) I made the most of it anyway.

Much thanks to Arkadius.

Back in the Beautiful South

2010-05-03T13:48:00.000-07:00

I recently was surprised to receive an email from my exchange program asking if I wanted to participate in one of the preperatory seminars for the Germans heading to the USA in August. The seminar was in Würzburg, and I would be there with a few past German participants to talk about the program, to share my experiences, and to talk about the USA. I of course accepted. The seminar was just a couple weekends ago, and thankfully the weather was great.

The seminar was held at the Akademie Frankenwarte. Pictured here is the Frankenwarte itself, built in 1894. The seminar was somewhat similar to the one I attended last August in Bonn; we even had the same intercultural trainer, although it was cool to see this time how she gave her presentation from the German side of things. I spent a lot of time just hanging out with the coming German participants, and it was great to hear their perspectives and interests and thoughts.

The seminar went on all week, but I was only scheduled for the weekend (I still have to work, after all!). So, on Sunday, after taking the bus down to the outskirts of the city, I started climbing the next hill up to the Festung Marienberg, a fortress originally built in the eighth century (but redesigned and reconstructed several times over the years). It was a bit of a hike, but it wasn't bad, since the whole hillside is a vineyard, and the view was great. And as something of a mixed blessing, it was an incredibly bright and sunny day, and I didn't have any sunscreen after my last bottle got confiscated in the airport on the way to London. Of course, being a Sunday, nothing was open. (I'm used to that German/European quirk by now, but I still don't like it!) Hence, I got my first light sunburn of the season. (Is that a good sign or not?)

After climbing up and wandering around the grounds, I started to head do to the city. I found this gate, the Neutor, on the way down.

The fortress offers a great view of the entire city. The river here is the Main, the same one that flows through Frankfurt on its way to the Rhine. The bridge is the Alte Mainbrücke, an old construction with large stone sculptures of important local figures lining the way (much like the Charles Bridge in Prague). In the middle of the picture are two churches: in the foreground is the Marienkapelle, and behind that is the Kollegiatstift Haug.

I crossed over the beautiful bridge there and started wandering around the city center. I quickly found this, the Schönbornkapelle, on the side of the cathedral, the Dom St. Kilian. I recognized it instantly from a picture my sister had taken seven years ago of the same place - but I'd never known until now that that's where these creepy figures are to be found.

The Dom itself is pretty cool: lots of tombs and altars and a crypt - everything that you could want from an German house of worship. I overheard a tour guide making fun of the lions in this statue; it's clear that the artist had never seen such an animal firsthand. It's hard to see in the picture (they lie on either side of the main figure's feet on top of little shields), but they look kind of like something between a small dog and human male face with long, scruffy hair.

There were several other cool churches, but I always post a hundred pictures of churches. This is instead the portal to the old central university building.

The real highlight of Würzburg, though, is not the fortress, nor the old bridge, nor the many churches: it is the Residenzschloss, a huge Baroque palace from the 18th century. It's a World Heritage Site and the area around it is apparently also used as the center of an annual marathon that happened to be going on while I was there. (This made crossing the street to get to the palace a bit of a challenge.)

The grand stairway is particularly notable for its ceiling, claimed to be largest fresco of its kind in the world. My tour guide was quick to point out that the Sistine Chapel's ceiling covers more space, but argued that since it consists of several different works, it doesn't count. Whatever. Point is: this was pretty cool. Each side features a then-recognized continent (Europe, Asia (which included Egypt...), Africa, and America. In this photo you can see Africa to the left and Europe to the right.

Asia on the left (note the pyramid...) and just a part of America on the right. By the way, there were plenty of other incredible rooms in this place, but photography was... discouraged. The Hofburg in Vienna may have been cooler, but this was just behind it. (I never did go inside Schloss Schönbrunn in Vienna, Schloss Sanssouci in Potsdam, or Schloss Augustusburg in Brühl, but the outside of all three is incredible and the interiors aren't supposed to disappoint. All of the above mentioned palaces stand on the World Heritage list.)

The south side of the palace. Like I said, beautiful day. Under each of the highly conical trees, such as the one in evidence here, stands a sculpture in the shade. Creepy... but cool.

Before catching my train home, I walked along the river and took this picture from just about the opposite point of view of the second picture up above. That's the Alte Mainbrücke on the left and the Festung Marienburg on the upper right. To the left, on the hill, barely discernable, is the Käppele, an 18th century church. Behind that, farther up on the hill, but obscured by the fortress, is the Frankenwarte, where the seminar took place.

Würzburg is really pretty. I highly recommend it. And it was so strangely nice to be in southern Germany again! I haven't been in either of the southern German states since my internship in the Villingen-Schwenningen area two years ago. Much as I love each distinct region of Germany, the southern part carries a special something for me. I think I look fondly back upon my old host family and the beautiful summer I had there - cities like Freiburg and Konstanz just blew me away. I miss the dialects and accents, the regional culinary specialties, and the incredible landscape. The Rheinland has each of those things as well, but northern Germany really lacks in the landscape department. (Sorry!) Although I've spent little time in Bayern/Bavaria and I never even spent that much time in Baden-Württemberg, it still felt somewhat familiar to be back.

By the way, these sorts of feelings tend to confuse Germans. They often find it funny that Americans love to trace their roots back to Germany and then come over to see their ancestral homes. What can I say? My ancestors come from lands with incredible city walls and gates and castles and beautiful landscapes. (I don't have any pictures online of my hometowns in the Czech Republic or Northern Ireland - you'll just have to trust me there.)

The World's Only Grand Duchy

2010-04-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post, my sister recently visited me. I still had to work, but we kept busy and had plenty of fun around Frankfurt nonetheless. For her second weekend in town, though, we decided to head out for a while, so we caught a train to Luxembourg.

We got into Luxembourg City late in the evening, so we just walked across town over somewhat confusing streets until we found our hostel and then went promptly to bed. The next morning, though, we met up with a friend of our mother's and together hopped on a train to the north of the country. The best part about the trains: a day ticket for all the trains and buses in the entire country costs 4€! By comparison, a day ticket for the city of Frankfurt is 6€, so I could hardly believe this. (Although, to be fair, more people live in Frankfurt than in the country of Luxembourg.) Anyway, we got off in Kautenbach, a tiny village, and went by car to this castle in Bourscheid.

The view from the keep was great - you can see down into the valley of the Sauer river and the train tracks that follow it. This castle dates originally back to 1095 - not quite as old as Luxembourg City, but I'll get back to that shortly.

Our friend happens to be the mayor of the commune of Boulaide, which includes three villages, one of which is Baschleiden (or Baschelt in Luxembourgian), which happens to be an ancestral hometown of my family. We ate at the one restaurant in town, a delicious pizzeria, and I took a picture of this Friddensbam (Peace Tree) planted just down the street. The town has under 200 residents, so there wasn't exactly much going on, but it was cool to be there.

Back in Luxembourg City, we decided to walk around the city center. Luxembourg, being the world's only remaining Grand Duchy, is still ruled by a Grand Duke. Pictured here is the Ducal Palace; in the area were lots of souvenir stores with postcards of the Ducal family.

I'm not really sure what's going on here. We found this on Rue des Capucins; I think that's a theater behind this sculpture.

We took a little break at a biergarten in the city center to try out some of the national brews, and I was quite impressed. Over the weekend I tried all three; Diekirch is good but pretty standard, while Bofferding stands a little stronger, and Battin is different than any other beer I've ever had and all the better for it. Enough about beer - we continued over to the park on the west of town and we found this building, which we assumed was Ducal in some way until we realized that it's a retirement home.

This is a view from up in the city center, looking down on the Pfaffenthal valley. On the bottom left is a hospital park, on the right is our hostel, in the middle are the train tracks that we rode on earlier in the day, and at the top is Kirchberg and the home of plenty of EU and other international offices. Luxembourg is a full founding member of the EU and the City is considered one of the "capitals" of the EU (along with Brussels and Strasbourg) - despite the relatively small size of the city (under 90,000 inhabitants), it is quite cosmopolitan.

The view down the street near our hostel looking up towards where I took the preview picture. Notice the Hohler Zahn ("Hollow Tooth"), the ruined tower with an awkard, still-standing arch on top.

Climbing up to Fort Thüngen in the Kirchberg area, I turned back and photographed the main city hill. Luxembourg is considered one of the most fortified cities of the world, and for good reason - the city center is built on a really, really big hill and it is surrounded by huge walls. Plenty of towers, gates, and other nearby fortifications still stand as well. There's a reason this whole city is a World Heritage Site! Note in particular here the "Three Sisters", the trio of towers on the right of this picture.

This is what Fort Thüngen itself looks like. It's a pleasant green area that leads up to the modern art museum (the fortress and glass building in the middle) and then to the international part of the city (the skyscrapers). In the lower middle of this picture is a little information signpost about Luxembourg settlers in Romania from hundreds of years ago whose descendents speak a dialect of Moselfränkisch mutually intelligable with modern Luxembourgian.

Language in Luxembourg is a fascinating story. The true native tongue is Luxembourgian (Lëtztebuergesch), and that appears to be what most natives use to communicate with each other, especially outside of the capital. French is the "official" language, generally used for most official needs and considered the "international" language of the area. German is also taught in schools and used regularly; it seems generally nearly universally understood and also used in some official purposes. English is also taught and understood by many, but French appears to be their preferred "international" language. I figured that between German and English I wouldn't have a problem, but I did run into a few people who didn't speak a word of either (or chose not to), and my sister's basic French came quite in handy. I should point out, though, the Luxembourgian is essentially a German dialect with lots of French loan words, but the spelling has been revised and the whole thing declared an independent, official language. Really, though, it's just as far away from Hochdeutsch as some of the more extreme German dialects that I've heard in Schwaben or Switzerland or Saxony.

The next day we decided to walk along the Pétrusse, one of the rivers that, over hundreds of thousands of years, carved out the valley that makes Luxembourg City such an obvious natural point of defense. It was a beautiful stroll, and along the way we noticed this little chapel built into the side of the valley's rock wall.

We ended up walking up on higher ground once more before leaving, and the view is just incredible. This is the Adolphe Bridge over the Pétrusse river, which is actually hardly a river at all. You can see it if you look close. In the middle of the picture, slightly to the left and bottom, is a little curved cement path, and the groove in the middle carries the water of the river. I doubt it was even a meter wide.

Luxembourg may be small, but it's quite pretty and I'm glad I went!

Much thanks to René.

London Urban Farms and Markets

2010-04-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

I'd been to London about a year ago with my family on our way to Northern Ireland to visit our distant relatives, and I liked the city a lot, but it was clear that there was plenty more to see. Three or four days isn't nearly enough time to cover much ground in a city as big as London, so when my sister suggested that we should go and visit some friends of hers there, I jumped on board. We had a lot of fun, and my sister's friends knew the scene well enough to show us some great places.

Upon arrival we walked around our host's neighborhood and had some good English food and drink. We took it fairly easy after our flight, but the next day, we undertook a long walk from London Fields all the way to the financial district. This trek brought us through several parks, urban farms (see guinea pigs above), multiple markets, and Brick Lane (featuring a huge variety of incredible Asian food - and Rough Trade East). The weather was great, the scenery was great, and it was a pleasant stroll.

After some delicious tea, we ended up in the famed financial district with the intention of getting on the subway at Bank. Above the station is the Royal Exchange (pictured here) and across from it the Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. The Bank of England, the stock exchange, and Deutsche Bank's London offices (as well of those of countless other major and minor banks) were all to be found in the area. Quite a daunting scene.

We rode the subway out a ways to Greenwich, a pretty neighborhood famed for its prestigious history. The area as it is known now started as a royal residence, then became a hospital, and then became the Royal Naval Academy. The famous Royal Observatory is also in the area (seen here in the middle, on the hill far in the distance, just to the right); this is where the Greenwich (Prime) Meridian comes from, and by extension, the Greenwich Mean Time. The entire grounds are a World Heritage Site. We walked around, drank some local brews, ate Chinese food, and headed home.

The next day we decided to explore some more markets, so we headed straight to Camden, home to some of the biggest markets in town. This place just goes on forever.

Camden Town used to be home to a large array of stables for the various industrial functions of the area. Now the place has been converted into market halls. The associated public artwork in commemoration of the history is pretty intense. You have to walk under these stampeding horses to enter this segment of the markets.

Inside the Horse Tunnel.

We eventually wound through the serpentine passageways and got out of the multi-layered markets and onto the canal (or more accurately, next to it), which we followed the whole way to Regent's Park, an expansive, beautiful Royal Park. We picnicked there and watched the ducks.

I happened to remember that my former institute of higher learning (Webster University) has a campus in London, and I seemed to recall that it shared buildings with Regent's College. Indeed, this is it! What a place to study!

Another part of Regent's Park. We got to London at just the right time. It may have still been a bit cold at times, but the sun was consistently out and everything was in bloom. Incredible.

To finish the day, we walked along the Thames for a bit. I took this picture from the Golden Jubilee Bridges (next to the Hungerford/Charing Cross rail bridge) and you can see quite a bit of the London skyline.

Walking around a city like London is quite an experience. Like New York City or Paris, I've read or heard more about it than I've actually seen - so a look at the subway map fills me with countless thoughts of songs and books and films that refer to these places. It's incredible to actually go and walk around these things. Is it bad that most of my knowledge of London neighborhoods comes from Smiths, Kinks, Pet Shop Boys, etc. lyrics? Seeing the places described by my favorite artists carries a strange simultaneous feeling of discovery and familiarity. In the end, though, it turns out that even another three or four days isn't really enough to have seen every corner of London, let alone England! I'll just have to come back again...

Major thanks to Maxime and Steph.

Down in the Rainy Lower Countries

2010-04-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

Easter in Germany is a major holiday, in the sense that both the preceeding Friday and the following Monday are both national holidays. There were some very small Easter markets around town, but for the most part, unlike Christmas, Easter really is a holiday for resting and spending time with one's family instead of glorifying commercial interests. Religion probably factors in there somewhere, too. Anyway, since my family lives far, far away, I decided to undertake some serious holiday traveling. I recruited two co-interns and we road-tripped up in to Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) and Holland (the western part of the Netherlands).

We planned everything pretty late in the game and thus most hostels were already booked. We worked with what we could and took the advice of a coworker to visit Leuven (known as Löwen in German, which literally means "Lions"). Leuven lies just outside Brussels and is primarily known as a student town with some beautiful buildings and a massive bar scene. We got into town and headed to the center, and this is what we found. The Stadhuis (city hall) on the left in incredible, but the Sint-Pieterskerk (St. Peter's Church) on the right is cool enough to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list (along with 55 other belfries in Belgium and northern France; more on that later). Speaking of World Heritage Sites, Leuven is also home to two of the Flemish Béguinages also inscribed on that respective list. (I only visited the large one in the south of the city.)

As I said, Leuven is a student town, and this is the incredible university library. Since my and my cohorts are registered students, we asked if we could get in to look around, and sure enough, it wasn't a problem.

Being in Flanders and later Holland, I knew to be prepared to work with Dutch, which, when it comes to reading, is sort of like a puzzle made up of oddly-spelled combinations of English and German words. It's actually not that hard to figure out, although speaking or hearing it is an entirely different story. Anyway, in the library, I was surprised to find this in the stairwell: apparently after the building's destruction in WWII, a bunch of American universities and associations came together to help fund the restoration of the building.

The main reading room is awesome. I entered a side room and looked up to find this in the corner.

There's plenty more going on in Leuven, but we really only spent about a day there. For some reason, we kept very mobile, almost always either walking or on the road. The next day, we drove up to Antwerp, known in Dutch and German as Antwerpen.

This is the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal (Cathedral of Our Lady) with a statue of Peter Paul Rubens out on this central square, since his paintings are all over the interior of the cathedral. This building is also a World Heritage Site.

This place actually costs money to get in, but it was worth it: it was beautiful! It had everything: huge building, big paintings everywhere, lots of stained glass, big organ, and pictured here, dauntingly large pulpit.

This is the Stadhuis of Antwerpen, another cool city hall, but in front of it is a... special... statue. Legend holds that a giant used to demand a tax to those crossing the river Scheldt by the city, and those who couldn't pay had their hands cut off and thrown in the river. Well, this Roman soldier, Silvius Brabo, had had enough and proceeded to cut of the giant's hand and throw it in the river. Apparently this is how the city got its name: "ant" = "hand" and "werpen" = "to throw" (like German werfen).

This is the Het Steen, a castle on the banks of the Scheldt dating from about 1200. The statue out front depicts Lange Wapper, another giant that pestered Belgians back in the day. Somehow this seems to have been a common problem.

Anyway, the weather is Antwerpen was really awful, and after wandering around another couple hours, me and my fellow travellers decided that we had two options. We could keep wandering and maybe find some of the interesting museums, like the famed art museum, or the Plantin-Moretus Museum (a printing museum listed on the World Heritage list), or the diamond museum (since over half the world's diamonds are traded in the city). Or we could walk back to our car and go to Gent (known in English as Ghent). We chose the latter on a whim.

Gent turned out to be really, really pretty, and the weather temporarily improved when we got there. This is the Sint-Baafskathedraal (Saint Bavo Cathedral), another really cool religious structure. In the foreground at the bottom of this picture is a statue of the brothers Van Eyck, the famous painters active in the area during the 15th century.

Just across from the cathedral is the Belfort or Belfry, used as a clocktower, watchtower, treasury, and cloth hall. This building is the only one in Gent inscribed on the World Heritage list of Belgian and French belfries - neither the cathedral nor the Sint-Niklaaskerk, another big church on the other side of the Belfry, share the honor.

You can see the weather (and thus the quality of the lighting) in my pictures getting progressively worse again. By the time I crossed the Scheldt onto the western bank, it was raining pretty hard. These buildings along the waterfront, known as the Graslei, are incredibly cool and some are several hundred years old. That tower belongs to the old post office, now a shopping mall.

Gent had plenty more offer, like the Sint-Michielskerk (with its conspicuously unfinished belltower) and the Het Gravensteen (a castle from about 1180), and plenty of museums, but as the end of the day came, we had to head back to Leuven for the night.

The next day we drove north up to Leiden, a Dutch university town between Den Haag and Utrecht. The town was extremely quiet, which is hardly a surprise considering that it was Easter Sunday. The weather was again rainy and cloudy, but we decided to trek along the countless canals anyway to see what we could. Our first destination was De Burcht, an 11th century castle in the middle of town, but it was closed. Normally it is free and open to the public; I was disappointed.

We continued exploring the area and ending walking by something that was a familiar site to me: my alma mater's Dutch campus! Several of my friends spent a semester or so at Webster-Leiden, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it in the middle of town along the waterways.

Here you can see the Molen de Valk, a big windmill in standard Dutch style, and a sundial on the ground before it. Just to the right of this picture was a carnival, one of two sites of activity in the entire city for the day.

In further wandering, we found another big windmill, several poems written on the sides of buildings, and this installation in honor of Rembrandt, who hails from the city.

A bit more wandering brought us to the botanical gardens of the university, the second locale of actual activity. We went in and found some great exhibits. Here was a series of carnivorous plants held at the top of a big greenhouse.

The exterior grounds featured this very warm and friendly-looking tree. Not sure what the story was (or if there needs to be one).

The main draw was a big orchid exhibit, and indeed the flowers were fantastic. I liked this scene because of the bright purple flowers alongside another plant with the wildest air-roots that I've ever seen. Creepy and awesome all at once.

Leiden was cool, but it was cold and wet, so after heading past the Pieterskerk, known for its connection with Reverend John Robertson, who organized the Mayflower expedition to the USA but died before he could organize a second voyage, we decided to head to Den Haag, where our accomodations for the night were.

Den Haag, known as The Hague in English, is the administrative capital of the Netherlands, which means that although Amsterdam is the biggest city, and the official capital, all the actual work gets done in Den Haag. This is where the Queen lives and works and where all the embassies are. The city is very international; several major international courts are located there, among plenty of other big organizations. On a different level, the city has a rather large Chinatown and a large non-Dutch population. We ended up eating one of our meals at a Surinamese restaurant, which was quite good. (I'd previously never thought much about that country's former status as a Dutch colony and that there were still be some connection there, as also with Indonesia.)

We again walked around the city center but didn't have enough time to thoroughly investigate the famous buildings and museums. It was quite cool just to see the area, though. This monument remembers the founding of modern Netherlands under William Frederick in 1813.

Amongst the various public works of art in the city (of which there were plenty), this may have been my favorite. Found on Raamstraat, this mural does a sort of Escher-like transition from scene to scene. It may be hard to really see it well, but I liked it. (And coincidentally, there is a museum to M.C. Escher in Den Haag.)

Anyway, five cities in four days: quite the weekend! We saw a lot and had some good fun despite the bad weather. And sorry this is coming far after the fact: I've been busy, but I've got some more posts on the way.

On the Outskirts of Town

2010-03-31T15:36:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I'd planned on going to the Saalburg with a friend and then wandering through the Taunus mountain range. Rain and cold stalled our plans, so we decided to try it again this weekend.

First we met up in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, a suburb just north of Frankfurt but actually an old city in its own right. (It was once known simply as Homburg before the name was expanded to prevent confusion with other similarly-named places. Bad, by the way, is a false friend; it means "bath" or "spa", and in this context it indicates that the city is known for its natural springs.) I got in a bit early and walked from the train station to this church, a Russian chapel designed by Leonti Benois, who also designed the Russian chapel in Darmstadt.

I met up with my friend and we caught the bus up to the Saalburg, a reconstructed Roman fortress near the former Roman Limes, the border wall built around 200 CE to keep out the barbarians (Germans). It's a cool place to walk around, even if it isn't original. It's a museum these days, focusing on the history of Romans in this area.

This stone must have been here a while....

And just outside the fort-museum is indeed the former Limes, which are these days mostly just a raised earthen mound. Still, it's a World Heritage Site! (I think this is one of the most interesting Sites, since it is split between Hadrian's Wall in England, the Antonine Wall in Scotland, and the Germanic and Raetian Limes in this area. The entirety of the Limes once stretched around the entire European, Asian, and African border of the Roman Empire.)

Anyway, around this time it was beginning to rain, and it only got worse when the bus that only comes every two hours drove off. Mountain hiking in the rain and cold seemed less than ideal, so we waited for the next bus and went home.

The next day, I decided to take things relatively easy, since I didn't have a voice and had been just a bit sick for a few days. Thus, I went to Offenbach am Main, a neighboring city to the east. It's a Großstadt (over 100,000 residents) and calling it "just a suburb" of Frankfurt apparently isn't taken kindly there. Anyway, it does have plenty of history of its own; Goethe spent plenty of time there, and several other famous figures lived and worked there (i.e. Sophie von La Roche, the major classical writer; Alois Senefelder, inventor of lithography; Regina Jones, the first ordained female rabbi... ever). Offenbach also enjoys the special status of being home to the German Weather Service. Anyhow, this scene is right in the middle of downtown - at the bottom you can see the Marktplatz U-Bahn station; on the right is the City-Tower (I think the highest skyscraper in Offenbach, but of course far below the highest in Frankfurt), and on the left is the Französisch Reformierte Kirche (French Reformed Church).

The Isenburger Schloss. This is the back side; the front side is much plainer and faces the river Main. 450 years old, just down the street from the marketplace.

Just behind the Schloss is the Hochschule für Gestaltung, a cool-looking university of arts and design.

Found on Herrenstraße, known as Handwerker ("Craftspeople"). Apparently these were formerly part of the façade of a local building.

Sitzender Mann ("Sitting Man"): descriptive. Behind him is the Büsing-Palais, another fantastic palace sitting right there in the middle of town. This one is at least in part home to a museum.

The Capitol, a concert venue. (Ultravox plays here in two weeks! But I probably won't end up going...) If it looks distinctly like a different kind of building... you're right - it used to be the main town synagogue. After Nazi destruction and post-war reconstruction, the Jewish community gave the building to the city for public use and then built a new, smaller synagogue across the street.

Offenbach used to be known as one of the biggest producers of leather in Germany; the Deutsches Ledermuseum stands in honor of that history. I decided to check the museum out, but (as seems to continually be the case...) it was entirely closed for renovation, except for one room. Entrance was thus free, and the one room was cool, but it's supposed to be a huge museum.... I was sad, but there were some horrific/fascinating examples of leather creations to be found, like this alligator-foot handbag.

After enjoying the one room, I moved on to the Rosenheim-Museum, dedicated to the artist Bernd Rosenheim. The groud floor featured an exhibit of Yongbo Zhao. Both exhibits were definitely worth the visit - quite different than the normal art museum fare.

The other interesting thing to report is from last Thursday: Deutsche Bank hosted a "Social Day" (that's what they called it even in German) for their collection of interns. About 60 of us took a couple buses out into the Taunus woods and we helped plant trees to establish a new section of forest that is designed to hold a greater water reserve than normal. They fed us well, took us on a hike through nature, and of course, let us take a day off of work to hang out in the hills. I was happy to participate. I think the bank definitely uses the day as a bit of a media event, but can you blame them for publicizing the good things that they do?

A word of warning: I have big plans over the next two months, but my opportunities to write up descriptions of them may be limited. I'll do my best.

Worms Is Great

2010-03-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

I hope that my title is bothering all of your grammatical sensibilities, but there's a reason for it. In case you don't know all your German cities, Worms is one of the oldest cities in Germany (in constant debate with Trier and Köln for the title as officially oldest).

Anyway, this past weekend was another where I had a nice set of loose plans and then I changed them all at the last minute. To be fair, the main change was that I didn't go hiking in the mountains due to the strong threat of rain on Sunday (which failed to maintain itself after 10am). Anyway, the good news is that Spring has finally come, so on the first day that felt like the season (Friday), I wandered around Frankfurt and enjoyed the relatively nice weather.

On Saturday, though, I went to Worms. And what is Worms known for? No, it's not for having a name identical to the English designation for a non-arthropod invertebrate, it's actually because of its big Romanesque cathedral. If you're tired of me writing about Roman cities on the Rhine with medieval Romanesque imperial cathedrals, have no fear: this is the last time... Speyer, Mainz, and Worms are the only places that share the honor.

Anyway, this place is awesome. Although it's the smallest of the three, the Wormser Dom is definitely cooler than the Mainzer Dom and comparable to the Speyerer Dom.

I could take pictures of this building forever.

The second reason that Worms is famous is because of Luther: he came here to do some major protesting against Kaiser Karl V in 1521, and although Worms is home to a major Catholic cathedral, Protestantism did secure a hold here. This is a pretty serious monument, the second largest in honor of the religion in the world.

The monument features the coats-of-arms of the German cities and states that accepted Protestantism (including places no longer in Germany today, like Straßburg/Strasbourg and Königsberg/Kaliningrad). There are several other figures, some historical figures and some metaphorical, like this one, Protestierende Speyer, referring to the protestation of the imperial diet of Speyer in 1529.

Worms is also known for its Jewish history. The Wormser Synagoge is one of the oldest in Germany, nearly a thousand years old (but heavily damaged several times throughout history), and this graveyard, known as Heiliger Sand ("Holy Sand"), is the oldest Jewish graveyard in Europe. Pictured here are the graves of Meir von Rothenburg and Alexander ben Salomon Wimpfen, two major thirteenth century rabbis. My incomprehension of Hebrew and medieval Jewish history sadly limited my understanding of the further significance of the other graves here.

The Schicksalrad ("Wheel of Fortune"), depicting the city's history. As you might be able to tell in this picture, the sun was out (while I wasn't stuck in an office building)! This sort of weather hasn't happened in a good six months. Apparently, it was some sort of special day in Worms, because there were people everywhere and a band was playing music in this square. I think the Easter markets had just opened as well.

The third reason that Worms is famous is because it is the center of action in the first part of the Nibelungenlied. Hence, there is a museum, several fountains and statues, and plenty of these dragons (clearly inspired by Berlin's Buddy Bären, which itself is borrowed from some other city, I think) dedicated to the song cycle. If you don't know, the Nibelungenlied is something of the medieval national epic of Germany, stemming from around 1200 CE or so. It's a big deal, and so all the cities mentioned in the story are allowed to carry the extra title of Nibelungenstadt. (Usually these titles are reserved for things like Universitätsstadt ("University City") or Landeshauptstadt ("State Capital"), but there are exceptions, like the Hansastädter.)

Spotted between the Dom and the Dreifältigkeitskirche. Worms is all about the dragons.

The competing symbol of the city is the Nibelungenbrücke, completed in 1900 but blown up by the retreating Nazi army in 1945. (As if the Allies hadn't already bombed enough of the country.) There used to be two of these massive towers, but the one on the eastern banks of the Rhine (the far side) wasn't rebuilt. You can't really tell here, but the other side of Spring had begun to show its face by the time I trekked out to the river: the sunshine was quickly covered by thick, imposing gray clouds and it only took a couple hours for mild rain to fall for the rest of the day. Didn't stop me, though! I wandered through a couple other churches and the local history museum before catching a train to Wiesbaden to hang out with a friend for the evening.

Romans and Romanesque Architecture

2010-03-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

I knew I wanted to take more day trips this past weekend, but I couldn't make up my mind where to go. On a whim I decided to spend my Saturday in Speyer, an old but not particularly large city in Rheinland-Pfalz, known mostly for its huge Romanesque Dom.

Like I've said before, every good German city used to have city walls, and although only a scant few still retain the better part of them, most cities still have some portions, especially their big, famous main gateways. Speyer is no exception. Seen here is the Altpörtel. There is a straight line from here to the Dom, along which the Rathaus and plenty of other old, cool buildings stand. For the record, Speyer was not heavily damaged in the war and thus it retains most of its old charm.

It was cloudy all weekend. I was lucky to see the sun for a hours this morning. Hence, all of my pictures are a bit gray and dark. Sorry, can't help it, even with my rudimentary photoediting software. Anyway, this fountain here was constructed in honor of the fallen soldiers in WWI; I liked the triumphant warrior stepping on some sort of large lizardy beast. In the background is the Alte Münze (literally, "old coin"), a fine-looking building.

This was another one of those buildings that I could take a hundred pictures of, kind of like the Vienna Stephansdom. (Maybe I just like huge medieval cathedrals...) The Dom is the largest Romanesque cathedral of the world. (There used to be a larger one in France... but the revolutionaries set it on fire. Oops.) This building is also a World Heritage Site, and for good cause: it's incredible.

Sadly, the main organ in back is under renovation and behind wraps. Still, you can see just how tall this place is in this shot.

The other highlight (that is, beyond being huge) is the crypt underneath the whole place. This city and cathedral were beloved by the Holy Roman Emperors around the 11th century and hence four are buried here, along with four German kings and a few of the wives of the above. There are also some great relics in a side chapel.

See what I mean? It's so easy to photograph this place. The nice little bit of leftover city wall provides a great counterpart.

An average person's disc-throw away from the above photograph is this fantastic sculpture. Apparently it depicts an old Speyerer story, a ferryman's dream: eight shrouded figures call out to be ferried over the Rhine into Speyer, and despite his fright he obeys. On their way to the Dom, each gives him a coin bearing the image of one of the emperors or kings buried in the Dom. They'd come back to restore power and unite the German (Holy Roman) Empire.

I then went to the Historisches Museum der Pfalz; beyond a few special exhibits that I skipped over, there was plenty of regional history, some local art, and a wine museum. The Rheinland and Pfalz/Palatinate regions are the core of German wine production, which is quite a contender for most beloved alcoholic beverage in many parts of the country. Anyway, they found this bottle (still containing fluid!) in a Roman grave in Speyer; it's considered the oldest existing wine of the world.

Before leaving town, I wandered around the old streets of town and found a couple art galleries. One was showing an exhibit of art made by internees at the Gurs internment camp in southern France during WWII. Historically fascinating, and the work is actually pretty good. There was also a very contemporary exhibit of static artwork featuring little tricks on the eye or some sense of movement. I was too late to enter the other gallery, but their sculpture garden in the back was still open. Sadly, unlike the exhibits I did see, it wasn't too special.

Never have I wanted more than now to know what was on the other side of a particular door. Found on the northern exterior of the Josephskirche, a big Catholic church built conspicuously near to the Gedächtniskirche der Protestation ("Memorial Church of the Protestation"), in turn named quite conspicuously considering the region's largely-Catholic but occasionally-Protestant past.

Again on a fairly spontaneous decision, I went to Mainz on Sunday, since it isn't far away and I knew I could just walk around and see some cool stuff. I'd been to Mainz once before... over three years ago. My old blog has some decent pictures of the Dom, the Stephanskirche, and a weird statue by the latter (which you may recognize as an album cover of mine).

Mainz is another ancient Roman city. This is made pretty clear by the southern S-Bahn station, named "Römisches Theater" quite appropriately after the amphitheater ruins literally right next to the tracks.

Just up the hill from the ruins is the Zitadelle, a fortress built in 1660 (on top of much older structures). It's a pleasant area, and the buildings mostly house government offices these days, but you can walk along the walls and ramparts, which is pretty cool. I mean, there's a moat! (Even if there's no water and part of it has become a street...)

You get a decent view from the Zitadelle walls. That's the Dom in the distance.

Next to the Zitadelle fort is the Windmühlenberg (windmill mountain/hill), formerly home to (big surprise!) windmills, currently home to a monument to the 87th Infantry Regiment of the Prussian Army of Nassau and a big slide stemming from a decently-sized windmill. (I of course climbed up to take pictures, but the trees limited my success.) In the distance you can see the Holzturm, part of the former city wall.

Back when I was in Mainz last time, I wasn't so skilled with my then-relatively-newly-acquired digital camera. Well, it's been three years and now I know how to photograph beautiful stained windows inside of a dark church. Therefore, disregard my picture of the Stephanskirche from my old blog and zoom in on this photo! Marc Chagall designed the windows of this church, since they'd been destroyed in the war, although the church itself is from 990.

I also went back to the Dom, another huge Romanesque cathedral on par with the one in nearby Worms (a day trip is in the works) and just behind the one in Speyer. It's hard to get good pictures, though, since the interior is really dark and the exterior is right in the middle of the downtown, hardly seperated from the surrounding architecture. This picture, however, turned out quite nicely.

The actual main reason I had gone to Mainz, though, was to go the Museum of Ancient Shipping, a secondary location of the local Roman-Germanic History Museum featuring five Roman ships found in Mainz, buried after shipwreck in an earlier path of the Rhine, and two full-sized reconstructions. Super cool. Of course, all five originals only exist in fragments, but it's still cool to think that these things are about 1700 years old. These situations are always a bit ironic, though, in that it's the failures that outlive the successes and that end up thoroughly documented in museums (see also the Vasa Museum in Stockholm).

Don't think that I've given up on Frankfurt or anything, by the way. I'm still regularly visiting museums and walking around town, but I'm waiting for the weather to improve before I start checking out the parks and gardens and woods. I'm working on planning a variety of travels, but I'm also expecting guests before too long...

Hundertwasser Houses and Medieval Abbeys

2010-03-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

Armed with my new student ID from the Fachhochschule Frankfurt, I decided it was time to break out of my city limits and see what else is in the state of Hessen. I matriculated here for several reasons, but of course one of them was undeniably that I'd get a semester ticket which would be valid for the rest of my time in Germany. Although it doesn't have quite the range that my ticket in Hannover had, I can cover some pretty good ground. I'm certainly not complaining! Anyway, after a productive week at work, I headed out for my first regional day trips.

I first went to Darmstadt, which I've long since known about because of the Technische Universität there. This here picture is of the central marketplace and the Residenzschloss (royal palace), which is now used by different government offices... and the TU. I'm so jealous of all these universities housed in palaces. This is a trend that the USA needs to pick up on.

I was walking around by the city hall when I found a music store and then this mural. I have no idea what's going on here, except that "Wein" means "wine". Is that Darmstadt on the left, and maybe Burg Frankenstein on the right? (Supposedly Mary Shelley got her name for her book and the eponymous scientist from the castle ruins that lie in the area, but this is not known as fact.)

Behind the palace is a large Schlossgarten (palace park). Off to the side is a nice little garden featuring two beautiful buildings. This is the gate to one of them, the Prinz-Georg-Palais, dating from 1710. There's a porcelain museum in there, but since I just visited one in Höchst, I didn't go in.

One of the symbols of Darmstadt has become the Waldspirale (sort of meaning "wooded spiral"). Designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the awesome peace-loving Austrian, this is an apartment complex, just like the most famous Hundertwasser-Haus in Vienna. (See my description of his Viennese buildings at my old travelblog here.)

On a similar note, I heard tell that Hundertwasser had designed a Kindertagesstätte (day care) right here in Frankfurt. This was no lie! Out in the neighborhood of Heddernheim, a short walk from the subway, hides this crazy little construction. I went one day last week after work, but as I feared, it was already getting dark when I got there.

Anyway, back to Darmstadt. I then walked back to the middle of town and headed off towards the Mathildenhöhe Künstlerkolonie, an artist colony founded by Großherzog Ernst Ludwig von Hesse und bei Rhein in 1899 because he wanted to make his Grand Duchy cooler. No joke. He wanted to show that his domain could produce new and innovative designs and products, so he decided to invite a bunch of artists to come live in his capital city on his dime to produce the newest and the best they could. Some of them were already pretty famous, like Joseph Maria Olbrich, who was an important underling of Vienna's great Jugendstil architecht Otto Wagner. Anyway, Ludwig held four big exhibitions before World War I, and in that time he established Darmstadt as a major center of Jugendstil / Art Nouveau culture. This tower here was built by the city of the Darmstadt in honor of one of Ludwig's marriages, hence the name Hochzeitsturm (Wedding Tower).

The Mathildenhöhe is full of awesome architecture (and two museums of top-notch art and design work), most of which thankfully survived the war. Everything was designed by the Künstlerkolonie artists, except this building, a Russian chapel designed by a St. Petersburg architect and funded by the Czar. It's an incredible construction, and somehow it doesn't seem too out of place.

On Sunday I went to Lorsch, a small village south of Darmstadt known mostly as being home to one of the first and most important abbeys of Germany. Founded in 764 and oft visited by Karl der Große (Charlemagne), not much of it survives today, but the few parts that do are a World Heritage Site. Don't expect anything to great here, but it was cool to walk around and see. This is the former main entrance.

This is all that remains of the former church building, and sadly you can't even get inside. In the foreground here is an herb garten in the tradition of the garden maintained by the monks way back when. Some of the abbey walls still stand, and there are apparently some remains of structures underground.

I then went to the museum next door to the abbey, which is actually three museums. One describes the history of the abbey, one describes the history of the region (most notable for the incredible destitution of the common folk), and the last describes the history of tobacco. Apparently that used to be a major crop here. The highlight of the collection was this pipe, which, as the little placard says, holds the Guinness World Record as the largest functioning pipe. Uh, weird.

Lorsch is actually a pretty nice little town. I walked around and saw some great Fachwerkhäuser. This here city hall is actually facing the abbey; the marketplace here is quite pretty.

The other thing that Lorsch is known for is the Wattenheimer Brücke, a bridge on the edge of town. It might not look special, but apparently bridges over this river have existed for millenia, and this area has been inhabited for a long, long time.

More to come! I've got plenty of adventures in the works...

An Intern's Life in Frankfurt

2010-02-27T14:10:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I live in Bankfurt, no doubt about it. I find myself walking by this part of town a lot, since it connects the downtown Römer area with the Hauptbahnhof by means of an international district featuring lots of great grocery stores and Indian places selling veggie samosas -,50€ a piece. This is Willy-Brandt-Platz, home of the European Central Bank, in turn home of the Euro. This city is not joking around when it comes to how many banks call it home.

The other nickname of Frankfurt is Mainhattan; Frankfurt lies on the banks of the river Main and shares several traits with New York City, namely the easily-recognized skyline, multiculturalism, and unequivical financial importance. I took this photo on the way home after work; that's my office over on the right. As I mentioned before, I take the commuter train outside of city limits, and then walk over the bridge from which I took this picture to reenter the city. I don't mind the daily walk too much, especially since it's slowly getting warmer.

Possibly the weirdest part of my commute is the Eschborn Südbahnhof, where I depart my commuter train. The station is covered in murals depicting the progression of history from Roman times until now. I'm not sure how many of the hundreds of employees from IBM, Deutsche Bank, and other large firms in the area bother to look at the public art, but it's pretty hard to miss.

The Paulskirche, St. Paul's Church, but better known as the birthplace of German democracy. During the German revolutions of 1848, the first-ever German parliament met here. The whole thing didn't last long, but for a few years, Frankfurt was the capital of a semi-democratic greater German nation... before the Deutscher Bund fell back in the hands of an emperor and eventually became the Deutsches Reich under Bismarck. This place is no longer used as a church, as the interior shot here should make clear. It's now a free museum with a mural that provides a rather critical portrayal of the history that took place here.

I've been to several museums in Frankfurt over the past few weeks; there are certainly a lot here! The Communications Museum featured an awesome robot outside (which my family should remember from our visit here six years ago) and these sheep inside. The History Museum was disappointing, but the art museums I've been to so far, the Liebieghaus (sculpture museum), and the Architecture Museum were all great.

Today I went to Höchst, since 1928 a part of Frankfurt but previously a city with plenty of history in its own right. This church, the Justinuskirche, was built around 830 and is the oldest standing building in Frankfurt. Honestly, Höchst still feels like a completely different city, primarily because this quarter survived the war unharmed, unlike most of the core of Frankfurt.

Höchst is replete with old Fachwerkhäuser, which still haven't lost their charm to me. I've seen I don't know how many hundred by now and I still love them. As you may be able to tell, a moat separates the location from which I took this photo and those houses. That's because Höchst is home to a castle.

You can see the main tower of the castle here in the background, but in the foreground is the Maintor (the Main Gate) and behind that the Zollturm (Toll Tower). Much of Höchst's former city walls still stand, most notably along the banks of the Main. The castle and these gates existed for the purpose of imposing fees on all trade done along the Main, and to a lesser extent, defense.

This guy stands on the bridge over the moat (which is now a pleasant, green walking path) to the inner castle grounds. It's a very nice little area, complete with café and great view of the Main.

The Josefskirche, only about a hundred years old, but with a way cooler interior than the Justinuskirche.

Höchst is famous for two businesses: Hoechst AG, a chemical firm, and the Höchster Porzellanmanufaktur, the second-oldest German porcelain manufacturer in Germany (founded 1746); second in age and renown only to Meißen. Today it's a museum. I particularly liked this work. (Look closely and notice my creepy reflection.)

Oh my god, a train is coming right at me! Found underneath the Galluswarte S-Bahn station.

So, turns out I really like Frankfurt. It's expensive and overloaded with bankers (to which I find myself included), but I love the internationalism, the expansive public transit, the historical presence, the museums, and all of the publicly-viewable architecture and art. I'd like to point out the Kunst im öffentlichen Raum website, which lists and describes practically all the public works of art in Frankfurt. It has already proved itself to be a valuable resource to me in my attempts to label my photos accurately! Anyway, there's a lot going on here, and even if my job keeps me pretty busy, at least I like what I'm doing. I'm proud to say I've implemented the RSA encryption algorithm, although my next task is to subvert it. And in other news, I successfully made (vegan) sushi that was actually really good. (I did have some help, though!)

Kölner Karneval Is Crazy

2010-02-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

Karneval, often referred to as the fifth season of the Rheinland, can be loosely related to Mardi Gras in the USA and other parts of the world. The high point is essentially the same, that is, the days leading up to Ash Wednesday and the fasting that the Catholic church more or less dictates in the following Lent season. But the way it is celebrated, and for how long and to what degree, varies greatly. Just as Mardi Gras in the USA is most important in the former Catholic French Louisiana Purchase territories, Karneval, also known as Fasching and Fastnacht, is most important in the Catholic southern and Rheinisch parts of Germany. (Oddly, I don't remember it being celebrated when I was in (Catholic) Vienna, but it certainly must have been, with or without my knowledge.)

And guess what: of all places in Germany, the capital of Karneval is undisputedly Köln. Düsseldorf and Mainz are the runners-up. In Frankfurt and Hannover, it's barely celebrated. For the record, Frankfurt is less than 40km away from Mainz, but Mainz is on the Rhein while Frankfurt is on the Main and Mainz is traditionally Catholic while Frankfurt is traditionally Protestant (although recognized for its religious tolerance). And since the fasting associated with Lent is only important to Catholics, the partying associated with the days leading up to it has been historically (relatively) pointless for the Protestant northern and eastern parts of Germany.

Anyway, I decided to go back to Köln for Karneval (yes, even though Mainz is just ten stops farther on the same S-Bahn I take home from work). I wanted to see my friends and host family, I wanted to pick my guitar back up, and I wanted to experience one of the most intense holiday celebrations in Germany. And even though I missed the two biggest days of celebration (Weiberfastnacht, where Weiber is an outdated and slightly derogative term for women and Fastnacht roughly means "Eve of Fasting"; and Rosenmontag, "Rose Monday"), I caught two and a half days of craziness. Keep in mind that Köln takes this very seriously, that the whole thing begins at 11:11am on November 11th of the previous year, that something like a million visitors come every year, and that the city reportedly makes billions of dollars out of the whole thing.

After my expensive high-speed train was 45 minutes late, this is what I caught on Friday night. This is on the Alter Markt, where some thousand people "schunkeln" (a special, rarely-ever-otherwise-used word meaning "to sway left and right") to Karneval music until late in the night. Oh, and they also stand in specially-constructed stage stands while getting really drunk and somehow not noticing that it's snowing and very cold out. And important people, like the "Dreigestirn" (three people chosen each year by complicated means to represent the festivities), talk in the incomprehensible Kölsch dialect about who knows what.

The next morning I helped arrange Strüssjer (Hochdeutsch "Strauß", meaning "flowers" or "bouquet") for my former host family's neighborhood school in Zündorf (the part of town they live in). This took a lot of time but is somehow important. See below.

This is the best part of Karneval. Look closely here. You will see: a) a tractor pulling some sort of float, b) people dressed up like it was Halloween in the US, c) things flying through the air, and d) a woman who threw them. That's right, a central key point of Karneval is constant parades where people throw things at the crowds - and not just anything! They through Kamelle, meaning in Hochdeutsch "Karamelle", loosely meaning in English "caramels". Yeah, they throw candy at people. Awesome. This goes on for hours in multiple parts of the city from Thursday till Tuesday.

The parades are often composed of various Vereine (clubs) of the city, of which there are an unceasing supply. (An analysis of German Vereine could merit a post of its own.) These are the Wahner Schotten. Wahn was the neighboorhood in which the parade was taking place (a slightly larger neighbor of Zündorf), although Wahn also means "delusion" (and wahnsinnig "crazy"), and Schotten means "Scotspeople". Also note the people standing in the window. Clearly, their choice of apartment comes with certain benefits (or drawbacks, if you dislike Karneval). Apparently, the people who live around the Alter Markt (see above) often rent their apartments out during these six days and go out of town.

The coolest float in the Wahner parade was this pirate ship. They were not messing around, as should be obvious from the smoke machines, but also from the huge chocolate bars they tossed out.

Sunday was the Schull- un Veedelszöch (Hochdeutsch "Schul- und Vereinszug"), the main parade for schools and clubs. This is the second biggest parade, only lagging behind the Rosenmontagszug, which I didn't get to see, since it was on Monday and I have a job. Rosenmontag is a school holiday and unofficial work holiday because it's not like anyone would get anything done anyway. My coworker who commutes from Mainz said he probably wouldn't even be able to go to work if he had wanted to. (He said you either celebrate or you leave town; there's no other choice.) Also, check out the glockenspiel-trio leading the marching band: awesome.

No comment necessary.

Many of the schools in the parade had highly political statements as a part of their costume and float get-up, including statements about the changing academic schedules and climate change (seen here). This has some connection to the supposed history of Karneval, which claims its roots in protesting the rule of imperialistic French and/or Prussian rulers and thereafter celebrating their independence. The throwing of candy, and associated dispersion of the aforementioned Strüssjer, have a more tenuous connection to history, as far as I can tell.

Check out that popcorn! Remember, all of that is just waiting to be thrown at the crowds.

This fantastic float featured weird humanlike figures, a mechanical heart that alternated between breaking and healing, and a crooked model of the Kölner Dom. Shortly after this was when most of my host family marched in with their neighborhood school, but I didn't really get any good pictures.

But I did get some decent chocolate.

From the Rhein to the Leine to the Main

2010-02-05T13:43:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe it, but it's already been a week since I left Hannover, and just two weeks since I was in Köln. Well, maybe it's only hard for me. Anyway, my last week in Hannover, excepting the two day trips already described, consisted of taking finals, preparing to move, and seeing friends one last time. I wandered around town a few last times and visited a few museums I hadn't yet been to. Although I could not find the Veterinärmedizinhistorisches (History of Veterinary Medicine) Museum (I think it closed), I went to the Kestnergesellschaft (a contemporary art gallery) and the Museum für Energiegeschichte(n) (a pun on the fact that Geschichte can mean "history" or "story"; thus the museum is for the history of and stories about energy).

I still don't know most of my grades yet, but I do know how my programming project wrapped up. The class had been divided into fourteen groups of three or four students, each of which was required to program the board game Blokus. That meant writing an AI, being able to take AIs from other teams and run them in your own application, creating a GUI, and making sure human players play by the rules. I handled the first two parts all by myself for my group (and a bit of the last part). On the day of the final, all the teams met to let their AIs compete in a tournament. To my surprise, the AI that I wrote won.

Here are some pictures from my last walks around Hannover:

This is a local branch of Deutsche Bank, specifically the one that inspired me to apply there. (I figured it'd be cool to work in a building like that!)

The Neues Rathaus at night. I never did get to tour it, but it sure is a cool building.

A monument to the Göttinger Sieben, a group of seven professors in Göttingen (including the Brothers Grimm) who in 1837 protested the king's plans to abolish or alter the Kingdom of Hannover's relatively liberal constitution. They lost their jobs and some even lost their citizenship.

So anyway, then I moved to Frankfurt am Main (not to be confused with Frankfurt an der Oder, a much smaller city on the Polish border, Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky, or any of the other Frankforts in the USA). I had a short weekend and then started work at Deutsche Bank. Although most of the city lies on the northern side of the river Main, I live on the southern side in the district of Niederrad (which literally means "Lower Wheel"). Every day I catch a commuter train to the Hauptbahnhof (central station), which is just one stop away, and transfer to another to ride all the way to Eschborn, a neighboring city. Then it gets a bit funny, since I walk over a bridge and thereby re-enter Frankfurt to get to my office building.

I work as an intern in the Cryptography Competence Center at Deutsche Bank. There is no German name for the department, and I'm still not sure what the "competence" part is supposed to mean. The department is small and forms a nice little community together; there are only twelve or fifteen employees, five of whom are college-age interns, and two of whom are not much older. A lot of the work done in the office focusses on handling digital certificates and internal encryption projects, such as office smart cards.

My job, however, is focussed on Cryptool, a free, open-source educational tool for cryptography and cryptanalysis. Check it out - it's free, it's available in German or English, and it's apparently pretty widely used. I'll be working on implementing a cryptoviral/kleptographic attack and the appropriate countermeasures. In the meantime I'm editing and updating the support documentation and deciding whether to add my plugin to the new Java or C# beta versions. Since my boss is also a professor, and I'm working on a project that has relatively little to do with the bank, I feel like I'm working rather at a university or something. I like it.

In my spare time, I've been exploring grocery stores and the city at large. Here are some of my initial finds:

Goethe. He's from Frankfurt, and Frankfurt's pretty proud of that. (The man himself preferred Italy and Weimar, but that's another story.) When I was visiting the area three years ago, I went to his birth-home here in town. (A picture, as well as pictures of a few other sights in Frankfurt, Mainz, and Wiesbaden, can be found on my old travel blog here.)

Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press, and company. Found just around the corner from the Goethe-Denkmal seen above. Gutenberg is actually from Mainz, and a museum in his honor can be found there. (Again, see my post from my last go-round for some more details and pictures.)

Foreground: a statue that I am yet to identify [edit 2010.02.27: it's called "Mann in Drehtür", meaning "Man in Revolving Door"]; background: the Bockenheimer Warte, one of several watchtowers still standing that are all the remain of the former city walls. This is apparently a cool part of town, since the university is right here and the hip Leipziger Straße begins here.

On the other side of town is Bornheim, another hip quarter that sort of extends along Berger Straße. I followed it almost to the end and found here the former Rathaus (city hall), from when the city hadn't yet been incorporated into Frankfurt, and Zur Sonne, a typical Apfelweinlokal (apple wine restaurant/bar) that I later happened to visit for a friend's birthday. Apple wine is big here.

So far, so good! There's plenty more to tell but plenty more to learn and experience first.

Last Day Trips in Niedersachsen

2010-01-30T12:43:00.000-08:00

As implied by the title, I decided to spend the last of my time in Hannover to the fullest, that is, of course, by taking more day trips! First I went to Lübeck, a beautiful city on the Baltic Sea and the former capital of the Hanseatic League.

The Holstentor is the most famous image of the city, and with good reason. There used to be seven of these gates, of which only two still stand. Upon arriving in Lübeck via the train station, you more or less have to pass by this one. It's pretty big and it's leaning pretty hard, but it's pretty cool to walk underneath. This was originally just the middle gate - it used to be part of a series of three that had to be traversed! I can only imagine how this city looked 300 years ago.

The Petrikirche (St. Peter's Church) doesn't actually have a very cool interior, but you can ride an elevator to the roof, which provides quite a nice view! Pictured here is the Rathaus (city hall), right in the middle.

A detail of the Rathaus. This is a fantastic building.

Lübeck has no lack of churches: the historic city center has at least seven massive, very old churches. This is the high altar of the Dom (cathedral). When me and my friend entered, a man started explaining to us the history of the place. I'd already noticed the copy of the famous lion statue in honor of Henry the Lion (I'd seen the original in Braunschweig), but apparently he also was the founder of Lübeck. The historian/caretaker told us that he (Henry the Lion) supposedly saw a deer carrying the same golden chain that Charlemagne had placed on a large deer four hundred years ago in Saxony, and that was at this location, so he decided to build a church here. Huh. He also pointed out that on the high altar, Mary Magdalene and the bishop are placed on equal footing. Not bad. I like the massive clock, too. A lot of the churches in northern Germany have similar such fanciful clocks near their altars.

Some stained-glass windows in the Marienkirche (St. Mary's Church). Look closely! This church was next to the Rathaus and probably the coolest. Outside was a statue of a devil sitting on a stone, accompanied by a story about how the devil tempted the builders of the church to build a wine tavern instead. (Apparently they compromised by building the tavern under the Rathaus.) This church also features a massive Gothic nave, an especially creepy grave marker near the entrance, and separate memorials to both world wars.

Sorry for all the churches - but these buildings are too cool to pass up looking at! This is the organ in the Jakobikirche (St. Jacob's Church). Definitely the best organ in town.

Check out those pipes!

Lübeck is also famous for its several native authors. This is the Buddenbrookhaus, a museum on the location where Thomas and Heinrich Mann both lived for a time. Günter Grass' former home is also a museum in his honor.

The Heiligen-Geist-Hospital (Holy Spirit Hospital), one of the oldest standing social institutions of the world, built in 1286. Yeah, this is a hospital. One of the coolest buildings in the city is a hospital. What a city! The interior is also appropriately intricately designed.

Lübeck is also quite famous for its marzipan. The Niederegger Café has been the main producer for the last two hundred years. Of course I had to try it! Unfortunately I could not convince my friend to purchase this 48.50€ marzipan model of the Holstentor. I also refrained from purchasing a Buddenbrook-book filled with marzipan and chocolate.

The next day I headed west to Osnabrück, which calls itself the Friedenstadt (City of Peace) because the first treaty of the Peace of Westphalia was signed in the Rathaus (pictured above) of the city. For the record, the second treaty was signed in nearby Münster, which I visited back in August. In both cities, the respective Friedenssaal (Hall of Peace) is open to the public, and it's kind of cool to be able to walk around such important historical places.

Osnabrück's second claim to being a city of peace is that it was the home of Erich Maria Remarque, author of Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front), one of my favorite books and one of my absolute favorite titles in both languages. I visited the eponymous Friedenszentrum (Peace Center) founded in his honor, and above is a picture of a graph listing every book he wrote and every language they were translated into. (Makes me want to read more of his books!) Depsite 26 translations of his most famous novel in the year of its publication (1929), Remarque's literature was declared counter to the German spirit in 1933 and hence subject to the Nazi book burnings. Remarque was one of many German authors forced into expatriation (along with the above-mentioned Mann brothers). The museum wasn't actually that great, and turns out he was quite the socialite and womanizer (Marlene Dietrich being one of his biggest flings), but it was nice to learn more about him, and I think the center is involved in more activities than just hosting a free museum.

Part of my reason for going to Osnabrück was also to meet up with two of the other program participants who have been living there. They introduced me to their mentor, and collectively they showed me around town. This was one of the coolest things they showed me: the Staatliches Gymnasium Carolinum, gegründet von Kaiser Karl dem Grossen (Carolinum State High School, founded by Charlemagne). Existing since 804, it's the oldest school in Germany.

Osnabrück lies on the river Hase, which also happens to be the word for "rabbit". I have found no explanation for this coincidence. One of the bridges over the river features this statue as a neighbor. Apparently water shoots out of his gun if you press a button on the bridge, but much to my dismay (and that of a group of schoolchildren), it wasn't working.

Like every good German city, Osnabrück was fortified with city walls several hundred years ago, but also like most German cities, those walls were mostly torn down and turned into streets, either by Napolean or by city officials who realized that Napolean was probably on to something with his crazy ideas. (Neubraundenburg is an interesting exception in this regard.) This gate, the Heger Tor, was actually built two years after the walls in Osnabrück were torn down in commemoration of the Battle of Waterloo.

Outside of the Heger Tor (behind the spot from where I took the previous photo) is the Kulturgeschichtliches Museum (Cultural History Museum) and the Felix-Nussbaum-Haus. The former wasn't particularly enthralling; I felt like it didn't stand up to some of the similar museums I've seen elsewhere in Germany. But the latter was great. Nussbaum was a Jewish painter whose work grew increasingly paranoid and dark as he tried to elude the grasp of the Nazis. (Sadly, he was eventually found with his wife in their Belgian hideout and both were murdered in Auschwitz.) I've always liked the above painting, Selbstbildnis mit Judenpass (Self-portrait with Jewish Identity Card), but the museum had a ton of his work, which was thankfully protected by a friend during the war. I was impressed. The building was designed by Daniel Libeskind and emits a rather eerie mood (but unfortunately it was partly under construction; story of my life in Germany).

This is the Fachhochschule Osnabrück, or part of it, hosted in former military barracks. I swear, every other university in Germany was ten times as cool-looking as the one I studied at.

Thanks to Nicholas, Anastasia, Ralf, and Kerstin.

A Week in the Rheinland

2010-01-25T13:53:00.000-08:00

I am now officially halfway through the program. Hard to believe, but it's true: I arrived on August 1, 2009, and will leave on July 14, 2010. And to make the point stronger, I just came back from the program's mid-year seminar in Köln.

The seminar wasn't bad at all. We all stayed in a hostel for four nights, they gave us public transit tickets for Köln and Bonn for all week, and we mostly had our evenings free to do whatever we wanted. During the seminar sessions, we talked about how things had been going and what to expect for the rest of the program, but we also went to Bonn to visit the InWEnt offices and the Bundeszentral für politische Bildung (National Center for Political Eduation, which publishes quality free or cheap political literature), and we split into groups according to interest for a day to learn a bit more about a particular part of Germany.

The three group choices were Education and the Workplace (boring), Industry and the Environment (sounds good), and Art and Media (sounds great). I of course picked the latter. We went down to Bonn for the day to visit Deutsche Welle, the German international broadcasting network, sort of a combined PBS/NPR/Voice of America, only with real funding and a stronger internet presence. It was pretty cool; it's housed in former German government offices, which feature an awesome cafeteria and a compilicated network of passages, tunnels, and stairways.

That afternoon our group went to Hotel Beethoven, a former hotel on the Rhein that used to house some big names back in Bonn's heyday. The building is to be torn down soon to make way for luxury apartments (the view is great, after all), but in the meantime, someone decided to turn the place into an art space, and so fifty artists were invited to do whatever they wanted with one of the rooms. The results spanned quite a distance and made for quite a variety. I was surprised by the lack of destructive installations, considering the fate of the building, but the above picture shows part of the best work in that direction. Some rooms were locked but had sound installations, others had only subtle alterations, some where monochrome, some were socio-political statements, and so on. Fantastic concept and good execution.

When the entire group of program participants went down to Bonn on another today, we finished the day with a visit to the Haus der Geschichte (History House), which details post-war German history, East and West. I was quite impressed, and it's a huge place. The last room featured the above work. It reads: "Your Christ a Jew, your car Japanese, your pizza Italian, your democracy Greek, your coffee Brazilian, your vacation Turkish, your numbers Arabian, your script Latin, and your neighbor just a foreigner?"

It was great to see some of my friends that I've made in the program who have been placed far away. I spent most of my evenings hanging out with them, and twice we went to one of our most beloved haunts in Köln, Falafel Habibi, home of some of the best falafel I've ever had. I also took the chance to met up with my former host family a couple times.

While in the area, I decided that I didn't want to waste my opportunities. Although the seminar ended Friday morning, instead of taking a train back to Hannover, I hopped on the suburban tram in the opposite direction and went to Brühl. I'd meant to go there while living in Köln but somehow it never worked out. It's a small town, but well worth visiting: the city is home to two very famous and beautiful palaces. Neither is open in January, but I walked around them nonetheless. Pictured above is Schloss Augustusburg.

The palace also includes a beautiful Schlosskirche (Palace Church).

Because one palace is never enough, the ruling archbishop of Köln (who actually usually resided in Bonn anyway) also had the Jagdschloss ("Hunting Palace") Falkenlust built two and a half kilometers away. Yes, I walked the whole way and back with my heavy backpack despite the place being closed. We're talking about World Heritage Sites; I knew it'd be worth it.

I noticed that near Falkenlust was a little chapel very fancifully bedecked with seashells. I again couldn't get inside but took this picture through the doorwindow.

Brühl has one other claim to fame: it is the birthplace of Max Ernst, one of my favorite painters and sculptors. After returning back to the center of Brühl, I went to his eponymous museum, which is currently featuring a David Lynch exhibit - quite the combination! Sadly, I didn't really like Lynch's art very much, but they were screening Eraserhead and hearing "The Lady in the Radiator Song" echo through the place was pretty creepy/awesome. And Ernst's work was of course fantastic.

My wanderlust still unsated, I returned to Köln for the night and caught a train to Aachen the next morning. Aachen, the westernmost Germany city, lies on the border of Belgium and the Netherlands and is most famous for its cathedral (Dom).

This is the only cathedral I've seen that honestly can rival the Kölner Dom. Both are also World Heritage Sites. The Kölner Dom is bigger, taller, supposedly has the bones of the Three Wise Men, and definitely has that awesome window from Gerhard Richter, but the Aachener Dom has a way prettier interior.

Even the ceiling was great. Check out the weird little thing hanging down with a medieval angel at the end.

I guess this is a weird gargoyle, but it seems like a more modern bat-thing appended to the side of the cathedral.

The Aachener Dom as senn through the Römerbogen (Roman Arches), dating from the second century CE.

The Rathaus (city hall). This is just the back side!

"The Golden Unicorn". Indeed, that is a golden unicorn! I keep running into these, and I can't stop photographing them.

I went to the Couven-Museum, a sort of local applied arts and civil culture museum, and found myself particularly enthralled by the porcelain colleciton. Two rooms were filled with different scenes and patterns all over the walls. My favorite was this set of weird sea creatures.

I can't help it, I just have to post this, just like how I couldn't help myself from indulging in one of these Apfelberliner and some Mutzenblätter. The former are essentially the German equivalent of apple donuts, the latter (at the top) are sort of almond beignets, and the Mutzenmandeln (in the middle) I assume to be like almond donut holes. For the sake of the reference, I haven't seen any of these three pastries anywhere else in Germany, although I've seen some similar things. Regardless, the two I tried were delicious.

Aachen has several other very old and impressive churches, including the Kirche St. Adalbert, which features this stained glass window with a red angel played the didgeridoo. (Just try to tell me that isn't what's happening here.) Speaking of stained glass, I also went to the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, an art museum with a great modern and medieval stained glass collection.

Aachen also has a few castles and palaces, including this one, Burg Frankenberg. As you can see, it's now a park (although there's a museum inside, to be fair). This castle is just sitting in the middle of town, occupying a large square, surrounded by urban residential housing. I know I've said it before, but I cannot imagine growing up here and asking my parents if I could hop across the street to go play in the park and go down the slide next to the thirteenth century castle! This concept still blows my mind.

Is if this city didn't have enough, it also was a favored residence of Charlemagne, and the natural springs of the area have been visited by hundreds of royal figures and famous personages since Roman times.

And then, finally, I took a complicated series of regional trains back to Hannover, where the snow from three weeks ago still hasn't melted and the cold is only getting more oppressive. I think I'm about ready to move.

Bremen Is Prettier Than Hannover

2010-01-16T15:59:00.000-08:00

I went back to Bremen for the weekend to visit my Bolivian friend who is studying there and to see some more of the city. We covered some good ground in two days, but there is still plenty I didn't get to see. I've got to say, the place is beautiful. Maybe not as as beautiful as some of the other cities I've been to recently, but it's better than Hannover, and for being able the same size, there are far more awesome buildings and cool corners around town. Above is the Herdentorsmühle, a windmill that stands where the former city wall once stood, just about halfway between the modern train station and the central town square.

These pigs stand in the middle of town in memory of this street's former state of being home to many pig stalls. It's kind of cute.

The Schnoor is a quaint quarter of town, featuring some very narrow streets and really old buildings. The oldest date I saw was 1402. There's a great little tea shop tucked away in here. It's a very small and narrow building but the teas are great.

The Böttcherstraße is a sort of Art Nouveau street with nice shops and awesome ornamentation all over. Just down the cross-street here is the Schüttinger Gasthausbrauerei (a local microbrewery), where we met up with several other students.

This is the former Gewerbehaus, a guide hall. Fantastic building.

We went to the Überseemuseum (Overseas Museum), which mostly featured exhibits on world cultures. The best parts were the Pacific islands and Asian sections. Seen here is part of the Asian display, most notably including a Buddhist temple. I was hoping for an exhibit on emigration, since Bremen is known for being a major port city both in terms of trade and human transport, and Bremen happens to be the port where most of my German ancestors departed for New York. However, all that I really found was a little display on some of ship companies and a bit more on the trade part. Still, the world culture parts were pretty cool.

In the continued spirit of museums being closed or under construction, the Kunsthalle Bremen (the main art musuem) was closed for the season, but I saw on their website that they were hosting a temporary exhibit in the Kulturkirche St. Stephani (St. Stephen's "Cultural Church"). As the name implies, the space is used less for services and more for things like this, where several projectors and a few TV screens and colored lights were used to create a pretty cool atmosphere, open only in the evenings. I thought the idea was cooler than the actual execution, though. It was definitely cool, but there just wasn't much going on. I was hoping for more projectors or more activity somehow.

That's all I've got! See my last post about Bremen for some more pictures from my last go-around. I'm going to miss being able to take all of these trips around Niedersachsen for free with my student ID. It'd be so nice to return to some of these places in summer, and especially to go up to the North Sea, but my time up north is limited and soon I'll have a new part of Germany to explore.

Well, My Village Is Only 800 Years Old...

2010-01-14T15:17:00.000-08:00

While at the Museum August Kestner, a local cultural history museum, with a German friend of mine, we were examining some relics and religious objects that originate from this area approximately a thousand years ago. I was amazed how many wars and political changes these items had lived through and thus was totally impressed. My friend said something like, "I guess that's pretty old. I mean, my village is about 800 years old, but that's not really that old." I was speechless. Personally, I can't fathom that - what I consider to be my hometown (Olathe, Kansas) is a mere 153 years old. You just can't compare here! (I realize that Native Americans were in the area long before 1857, but there was not a settlement at that location.)

I simply cannot imagine what it is like to grow up in Germany (or any country with such a long history). For example, pictured above is the Kaiserpfalz, a nearly thousand-year-old imperial palace, in Goslar, a small but rich mining town. Just behind the palace, just off to the right of this picture, are regular residential houses. (Well, by regular, I mean houses that are probably a few hundred years old, but after all, that is regular here.) The last house is seriously only a few meters from the farthest-back tower of the palace. Can you imagine living in a home where you can step out back, take ten steps, and then lean against a thousand-year-old palace? You're living practically on top of a UNESCO world heritage site! Unfathomable.

Anyway, the point is that yesterday I took a trip out to Goslar, home of the Rammelsberg mines, one of the oldest mining sites in the world. It was first mentioned in 968 and ran almost continuously until 1988, and now it is a museum.

It's actually a really awesome museum, especially when you're just about the only person who rides a bus in a small town to go up a mountain in the middle of winter, with -10°C weather and 15cm of frozen snow that fell over two weeks ago and still hasn't melted. I got a personal tour because no one else came for the particular one I signed up for, which was to go down into the mines to see how they did the job 200 years ago. In this picture you can see some of the many vitriols that can be found down there. Beyond the ores and precious metals mined here (zinc, copper, silver, and gold), these vitriols were also captured and sold to artists. On a similar note, the museum hypes up the fact that Goethe visited the mines.

The highlights of the tour were three water wheels deep in the mountain, two which were used to make raising buckets of ore easier. The other was used in pumping water out of the mines (ironic and seemingly illogical, but they made it work). The wheel pictured here is a reconstruction, but the other two were originals. Consider that this has a 10m diameter and that I had to duck when walking through many parts of the mines - they had to build these things in the mines themselves! And as you can see by the motion blur, the wheels are still functional. A little bit of water goes a long way!

It was a bitterly cold day, but this scene was beautiful. This is facing away from Rammelsberg, although the buildings pictured are part of the museum. That's the sun you see there, but I seriously thought it was the moon before I realized it was just that foggy and cloudy.

Goslar itself is a pretty cool town. The UNESCO designation applies both to the mines and to the historic city center, including hundreds of Fachwerkhäuser like these ones. The one with text has a fairly standard bit about God hearing the family's prayers and protecting the house, but it gives the date as 1577.

I could post fifty pictures of 500-year-old Fachwerkhäuser and 1000-year-old churches, but I'm trying to hold back here. This pulpit, found in the Marktkirche, is one of the most intricate I've ever seen. I think in one of the scenes you can see what looks a lot like the Kaiserpfalz in the background.

The craziest building of Goslar: the Kaiserworth, a former guild house, today a hotel. It's way cooler than the Rathaus (city hall), which was just behind where I took this picture.

So that was Goslar. And today, after taking a final, I caught a train to Braunschweig, historically known in English as Brunswick, that is, the Brunswick, after which all others, i.e. New Brunswick in Canada, are named. It's real claim to fame, though, is being the home of Henry the Lion. Pictured above is the Braunschweiger Schloss (palace), sort of. See, after the first version, built in 1718, was burned down by revolutionaries in 1830, and the second version was bombed out in World War II, the entire ruin was removed in 1960 in favor of a park. And then in 2004 they decided to rebuild the building, or at least the facade. I'm not sure if that was the coolest, craziest, or stupidest decision that could be made, but it's only in Germany where they'll rebuild a twice-destroyed palace and make it into a gigantic shopping mall.

Just down from the Schloss Arcaden (Palace Mall), which you can see here on the far left, is the Happy Rizzi House, designed by James Rizzi. What the building is used for is unclear; even the website only mentions a restaurant on the ground floor. Regardless, I like it, especially in balance with the 1000-year-old Magnikirche (St. Magnus' Church), whose second tower was never rebuilt after the bombing.

Braunschweig is replete with massive, 800+ year-old churches. Here's another, the Martinikirche (St. Martin's Church), right next to the Altstadtrathaus (historic town hall).

The facade of the Rathaus is pretty cool, but the style isn't that unique compared to everything else here, whereas this portal is quite hip. Lions are featured prominently, although honestly, they're featured prominently everywhere in this city. They take Henry the Lion seriously.

The Gewandhaus, the 700+ year-old tailor's guild hall, can also be found on the same square, but I again found the most interesting part to be this Renaissance-era portal. Note the lions.

And here is the Burg Dankwarderode, built over 900 years ago and used as the ducal residence for several centuries, most notably for Henry the Lion. Note the lion statue that I inopportunely hid behind a pole in this picture. (It's not a great statue, but it is the oldest statue of its type north of the Alps. And this is a copy, anyway - the real one is in the museum in the castle, and another copy is in the hall of the Landesmuseum (state museum), from whose entrance I took this picture.)

Apparently, this winter is the season for renovating every third museum in Germany, or at least every third art museum: Düsseldorf, Bremen, a few I can't remember off the top of my head, and now Braunschweig, have all closed their doors for the time being to renovate, and plenty of other museums have sections closed off (including the Rammelsberg museum in Goslar). I realize winter isn't exactly tourist season, but it's a bit of a frustrating series of coincidences. Anyway, the castle's museum was open, and in the beautiful Rittersaal (Great Hall) behind these doors was a selection of works from the temporarily-closed Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum.

The Landesmuseum was good, too, although several parts were under construction. Regardless, I gleaned plenty of knowledge and was particularly thrilled of their display of Weimar Republic-era money. Note the increasing amounts; I think the largest is the Zweihundert Milliarden Mark (two hundred billion mark) bill.

To make up for closed and partially-closed museums, I snuck through a gate that was left open in the area to check out the courtyard behind the beautiful Fachwerk facade. To be fair, I didn't even know it wasn't publicly accessible until a woman closed the gate when I left. It was wide open! And clearly contained wonderful secrets! Apparently this is the Handelskammer (chamber of commerce), and the second beautiful Fachwerkhaus behind the first one features all sorts of great signs, as you can see above.

To whoever it was who told me Braunschweig wasn't pretty and not worth visiting: what the heck were you talking about!?

Berliner Silvester

2010-01-03T05:25:00.000-08:00

After Sarah left, I decided to escape impending loneliness by running off to Berlin for New Year's Eve, known in German as Silvester. (When a ticket there costs 25.50€, this isn't hard to do.) Let's just say it was well worth it.

When I arrived in Berlin, it was about noon, below freezing, snowing, and New Year's Eve. After meeting a friend in the train station, I chose this opportunity to walk from Potsdamer Platz to the Bauhaus-Archiv, a mere two kilometers. The museum is pretty cool - it felt a bit full circle after my long appreciation of the band of the same name and subsequent discovery of the movement after which they'd named themselves. This plaque stands outside the entrance and reads something like, "Non-Temporal Zone: A representation of the eternity in each moment; ideal/eternal time before utopia." Awesome.

After that, I decided to walk the entire way to my friend's house near Kunsthaus Tacheles. (For the record, that's nearly six kilometers and I am probably insane.) This path was quite nice and was only enhanced by the craziness that was already brewing at 5pm in anticipation of the new year. The entire two-kilometer Straße des 17. Juni, stretching from the Siegessäule (Victory Column) to the Brandenburger Tor, was closed to automotive traffic and instead filled with slushy snow and two continual lines of street vendors. As you can see above, the party had already started, and Coca-Cola wasn't going to let that happen without stamping their ugly, gaudy face right in the middle of it. (Look closely at the Bradenburger Tor if you can't tell what I mean.)

After an hour and a half I finally made it past Tacheles, which I finally took a decent picture of. (The text seems strangely reminiscent of a Smiths song. Was this intentional?) But instead of partying at the Gate or at Tacheles, me and my friends gorged on vegetarian sushi and other tasty dishes before heading to a nearby punk bar to see some live music. At midnight we stepped outside to see people launching fireworks and snowballs one after the other. Wild.

Suffice to say we stayed up pretty late and slept in pretty late, but still got up early enough to have time to head to a museum. We wanted to go to the Neues Museum (New Museum, known for its Egyptian collection) but it was already sold out for the day. We went to the Altes Museum (Old Museum, known for its Greek collection) instead, and that was cool enough. The whole Museuminsel (Museum Island) is a pretty great place to hang around, constantly busy and worthily cited as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its entirety.

On Saturday I went to the Brandenburger Tor again... but not quite! I went to the neighboring city of Potsdam to visit another friend and he showed me around town. As if Berlin wasn't big and awesome enough, just next door is the capital of the state of Brandenburg, famous for its six ridiculously large palaces. Yeah, six. The emperors just couldn't get enough, apparently. One or two just don't cut it these days. Anyway, the public transit is cool and well-connected enough that the only-slightly-more-expensive three-zone Berlin ticket covers the entirety of Potsdam, too. Good deal. Anyway, Potsdam also has a Brandenburger Tor, pictured here. Also important: behind the gate is a vendor selling veggie dogs. I'd been waiting a long time for one of those.

The emperors of Prussia weren't content just to have their multiple palaces in their home away from home (Berlin was the actual capital, but they chose Potsdam as their city of residence); they also wanted a cultural paradise. Therefore, they built miniature versions of selected world cultures. Most notable are the Dutch Quarter and the Russian Colony (pictured here), although strange things like an ice cellar shaped like a pyramid can also be found. It makes for a cool environment, albeit so very weird.

First we have Schloss Sanssouci. ("Schloss" means "Palace" and "Sanssouci" is apparently French for "without worries".) This isn't a great picture, but you get the idea that it's big and grandiose. About half of the area of Potsdam is actually just parks, the biggest of which is this one, Park Sanssouci.

Like I said, one wasn't enough, so the even-larger Neues Palais (New Palace) is just down the way. There are also two smaller but equally extravagent buildings behind this one, one of which belongs to the university. Studying in a former palace would be pretty cool. (Note that the university in Hannover primarily resides in the former Welfenschloss, too, although I'm at the Fachhochschule, not the actual Uni.)

Keeping in line with artificially bringing other cultures to Potsdam, this Chinese Teahouse lies near the center of the park. It's incredibly beautiful and an annoying speaker system will yell at you if you get too close.

I didn't even get to Schloss Charlottenhof, but I did go to the Orangerieschloss, from which I took this picture. There are several other buildings in the area, including another Chinese-influence Dragon House, a Belvedere, and in other corners of the park, a big obelisk, Roman baths, and so on and so on. It just keeps going.

Of course, Sanssouci is just one park. The other main one is the Neuer Garten (New Garden), most famous for Schloss Cicilienhof, where the Potsdam Conference took place in 1945. Check out the chimney on the right, in which each of the five stacks is designed in a different style.

Looking in from the back of the palace. This is where the conference took place; note the flags.

Major palace number six: the Marmorschloss (Marble Palace). In this park there are also countless other little treasures, like the aforementioned pyramid, a Gothic library (which seemed impossibly small to be suitable for that title), and a nice little slope for sledding. Actually, plenty of people were sledding down the side of the Schloss Sanssouci, which was kind of great. The neighboring Heiliger See (Holy Lake) also provides some nice views.

If Berlin is the most culturally intense place in Germany, Potsdam is the most architecturally astounding. For a city that really isn't all that big, it has more incredible parks and palaces that any other place I've heard of (except Versailles, which I haven't seen), at least on a per capita basis. Well worth the short trip outside Berlin.

German-Polish-French-American Christmas

2009-12-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

The idea of spending Christmas in Germany was probably both the most exciting and controversial point of me participating in this exchange program. On one hand, I'd be able to experience the Christmas markets in full, but on the other, I wouldn't be able to come home to celebrate the holiday with my family as has been done for as long as I've lived. However, via Skype, several exchanged packages, an invitation to celebrate the holiday with my landlords, and a visit from my girlfriend, I was able to enjoy the time in a very unique way. Much as I missed seeing my family, the experience I have had here will be hard to forget.

I usually avoid mentioning names on my blog, but since my entire past week was largely spent with her, and I obtained her express permission to do so, I will unashamedly report that Sarah flew all the way over the ocean to come visit me for a little over a week. It was great. We walked all over town, visited the Christmas markets, did some shopping, went to some museums, took a day trip to Celle, ate street food, cooked, relaxed, talked to our American families, opened gifts, and hung out with my landlords. Why isn't every week like this?

Christmas was quite interesting. The main day of celebration here is the Eve, and most stores closed either the day before or at midday and remained closed for the next two days, which are reserved for pure relaxation with friends and family. As mentioned, my landlords invited us to their festivities. My landlords are actually Polish, but since they have each lived in Germany for multiple decades, they are rather German as well. The nationality and language situation only got more complex - some guests were from Tunisia and France, others still lived in Poland, and of course, me and Sarah are Americans. Polish may have been the most widely-spoken language among the group, but multilinguality was unavoidable. At some points a conversation would be translated from the Polish speakers to me via German, to Sarah via English, and to the Tunisian via French. It was great.

Dinner on Christmas Eve was prepared in traditional Polish Catholic manner: twelve different fanciful dishes, all pescatarian (no red or white meat, just fish). Highlights for me were the delicious pierogi, a potato/vegetable salad, plenty of beets, and a fantastically spiced apple Kompot. After dinner we shared gifts and sang songs in different languages. By request I spontaneously performed a few Christmas songs I knew. Thereafter we returned to the table for fancy deserts, including cheesecake, poppyseed strudel, and something like Bienenstichkuchen (bee sting cake?). We stayed up for quite a while just talking away, although Sarah and I eventually left to go to an almost-midnight mass at the Basilika St. Clemens. I had never been inside the building before, and my curiousity to see the beautiful interior and to witness a German holiday mass outweighed my normal disinclination.

The next morning we joined my landlords and some of their family members for breakfast, which was essentially more leftovers accompanied by delicious German breads and cheeses; in other words, it was great. Since pretty much everything was closed on the first two days of Christmas, including most museums, we took it pretty easy, but we did go to the Herrenhäuser Gärten for a beautiful change of scenery.

On Sunday we went to Celle, probably the prettiest town I've been to yet. Incredible Fachwerkhäuser like this one are everywhere.

We went to several museums in the city, including the Residenzmuseum inside the Schloss Celle (the castle, as pictured in my last post) and the Kunsthalle Celle, a so-called 24-hour art museum. This is actually achieved by just having a light show along the perimeter of the building during after hours, which is a bit of a let-down, but it was still kind of cool. The art museum was interconnected with the Bomann-Museum, a museum of local and regional history. I find this awesome grandfather clock there. Note the butchery scene above the clockface.

"The Big Fat Pancake". Found in a fairy tale exhibit underneath the art museum.

Just one of four incredible walls of a restored Ehrenhalle (Hall of Honor) built during the days of the Kingdom of Hannover. I love the prevalance of unicorns in artwork from this era, which may have something to do with the relationship between Hannover and Great Britain, who historically has loved unicorns more than any other culture I know of.

Another of the walls. The lighting made picture-taking difficult, and the script is really hard to read, but this room was incredible. High ceilings and detailed paintings everywhere.

We wandered around the streets of Celle just for fun, since they were full of beautiful buildings, like this one, the oldest known Fachwerkhaus in town.

The Christmas markets of Celle remained active a few days after Christmas, so we consumed our last Kartoffelpuffer (potato pancakes) of the season. So delicious.

While showing Sarah around Hannover, I finally photographed one of my favorite buildings in town. This lies on Prinzenstraße between the Schauspielhaus and Thielenplatz. Check out the lizard, spider, and sun on the side of the building.

For those of you who know Sarah, you may have just noticed something. Her last name is Thiele, and one of the squares downtown is known as Thielenplatz. Of course this required photodocumentation.

Again, I usually avoid so many personal pictures, but I had to include this. For those of you who saw my offer on Twitter or Facebook, you've missed your opportunity. As Sarah was the first person to fly over the ocean to visit me, she earned a hot chocolate and slice of Baumkuchen from the Dutch chocolate café. I love that place.

A big thank you goes out to Sarah, my family, my landlords here, and my host family in Köln.

Snow Is Finally Falling Over All of Germany

2009-12-20T08:19:00.000-08:00

Life is busy over here, what with homework and projects to be done, searching for apartments in Frankfurt, preparing for Christmas, and of course attending various holiday-related events and/or just wandering around the Christmas markets. Nonetheless, knowing that my school break is just days away, I decided to go on a few adventures this weekend to do things I'd been meaning to for a while but somehow still hadn't.

Early Friday morning, despite the first snow of the season, I met a friend at the train station, took a regional train to the beautiful town of Celle, caught a bus to the village of Bergen, and rode just a bit farther to the community of Belsen. You may recognize the name.

Bergen-Belsen was originally just a POW camp started in 1940 at the site of former construction worker housing. The majority of the prisoners were Soviets, although plenty of Polish rebels and the several other stray prisoners were brought here as well. Although conditions were definitively not good, they got definitively worse as the camp was transformed in a concentration camp, starting in 1942. After the war, the area was used a displaced persons camp, eventually housing 11,000 Jews waiting to find a home. Today, the place is a Gedenkstätte, a memorial. This building is a documentation center and museum.

Once upon a time there were barracks here, overcrowded and wrought with disease (thyphoid in particular was a problem). The focus of the camp was not total annhilation, as it was at the extermination camps like Dachau and Auschwitz, but there was one incinerator, and in the awful conditions of the place, plenty of people met their end here.

"Here lie an unknown number of dead people." No one knows for certain how many people died here, but it's estimated at least 100,000. At least a dozen of these mass grave stones can be found on the grounds, most of which do have numbers (1000, 2500, 5000, etc.).

A memorial stone for Margot and Anne Frank, both of whom died here. In the background is a memorial for all the victims who were Jewish. Beyond that is a memorial ground for the Soviets who died here. Other memorial gravestones remember other particularly notable victims.

It's a very sad place, that's for sure, and the snow seemed strangely appropriate. It's odd, though, that getting there is such a chore - the only way by public transit is this bus that comes once an hour, only on weekdays. This is really out in the middle of nowhere.

On the way back, we briefly walked around Celle, although the intense cold was really getting to us. The little I saw was quite beautiful and I hope to return soon. This is the castle, sitting right in the middle of town. Awesome. (Reminded me a lot of Schloss Glauchau.)

The next day I decided it was time to return to Hamburg. I'd been there briefly a couple months ago, but I knew I wanted to come back, so I finally did. It was cold and snowing, but I was well-protected and I didn't mind. I walked all over the city, first going to the Rathaus (city hall) and then to this old neighborhood. This is the Trostbrücke, originally built approximately 800 years ago. Behind it, between the buildings, you can see the ruins of the Nikolaikirche, another church left unrestored after the war to stand as a memorial.

However, the bell tower of the church still stands, and even has an elevator and observation deck, so I went on up to take a look around. (This was not a sight I'd recommend for those not fond of heights... we're talking about a church built in the 19th century, bombed out 65 years ago, left that way, with an elevator. Is that safe?) Anyway, thankfully it wasn't as foggy and grey as the last time I was in Hamburg, but the snow didn't help either. I did find this beautiful view of the Rathaus and the Alster, the human-made lakes.

I then continued on my way for a couple miles until I got to the Reeperbahn, certainly the most famous red-light district of Germany. I went during the day, since my intentions were not impure; I just wanted to see where the Beatles had played nearly 50 years ago.

This square is officially named "Beatles-Platz", and these figures stand to commemorate that. (Poor Stu Sutcliffe, standing off to the side.) This is found at the intersection of Grosse Freiheit, where a few of the clubs where the band once played were. Today the area is just a gaudy line of clubs and what I assume to be strip joints. (Actually, come to think of it, that probably hasn't changed much in fifty years.) All the clubs where the Beatles played don't exist anymore, although there is a place just across from the former Star Club that looked reputable. There was a also a museum, but I declined entrance considering that I didn't think I'd learn anything I didn't already know. (Also, Hamburg is a big city and I only had so much time.)

I then walked to the Schanzeviertel, a hip and lively district with several record stores (which were all really expensive, ugh). Similar to the Kunsthaus Tacheles, I stopped by the Rote Flora, a semi-squatted liberal den of artists/activists/dissidents. I couldn't get in; apparently it's really more of a club than an art space, and at one in the afternoon it was pretty quiet. I liked this homemade billboard, though. Around that time, I met up with another PPPler (participant of my program, that is) who lives in Hamburg, and she took me to an awesome (and cheap) baked potato bar.

After visiting Altona, another lively district, we went back to the Rathaus to meet up with some other current PPPlers and a few past German participants down at the local Christmas market. The place was incredibly packed, but it was really fun to see some of my peers again and to talk to some of the former German participants. The area was beautiful and I even found Nutella-covered roasted almonds. Hannover has nothing on Hamburg, I have to admit. Going there renews my initial wish to have been placed there, although I do have my handy Semesterticket Niedersachsen that lets me go all over the state for free, and the Hamburgers don't get that luxury. Now I want to go back again, since I didn't go in any museums, and the Kunsthalle is supposed to be great. We'll see; my time in northern Germany is running out and I have a few other destinations in mind.

Day Tripping Part II

2009-12-16T02:58:00.000-08:00

Since I had another weekend without big plans, I decided to make some more day trips, specifically, to places where I can travel to for free (thanks to my student ID) and that have Christmas markets that had been recommended to me as worth checking out. First I went to Hildesheim and then to Lüneburg; the latter was especially pretty, but I took a lot of pictures that I like, so I'm just going to show the best here.

But before I get to that, I have some good news to share: I now know for sure where I will be interning come February 1st: I will be in the cryptography department at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt am Main. It'll be bittersweet to leave Hannover earlier than I had planned to, but I'm always excited for new adventures in other parts of Germany, and the position sounds solid.

Hildesheim, much like the very-nearby Hannover, was decimated in the war. However, forty years later, the city decided to recreate the central marketplace in the original style down to the last detail. This is also where the Christmas market in town takes place. Talk about a beautiful place to walk around! The building pictured here is the Rathaus (city hall). Later in the evening, a brass section was standing a few meters in front of where I took this picture, performing Christmas songs for fun. Beautiful buildings, roasted almonds, Glühwein, and pretty music - what could be better? (Answer: all of that and good company, but you can't have everything at once.)

One of the reconstructed buildings. I don't care that it's fake. It's incredible.

More reconstructed Fachwerkhäuser. The large one on the right, the Knochenhauerkamtshaus (the former Butcher's Bureau, although the literal translation is "bone cutter office house"), is one of the most splendorous Fachwerkhäuser in northern Germany (or was, depending on how you look at it).

The Knochenhaueramtshaus has all sorts of little figures and designs and paintings on it - quite a work of art! This one depicts a depraved man hoarding gold coins and reads "Avarice is the root of all evils". (And how much money did the constructors of the building have!?) Another one depicted the Grim Reaper grabbing a king and a pauper and reads "Rich or poor, death makes everything equal." (Again, who's talking here?)

This is what you see when you stand a couple meters from the door and look up. Apparently the building extends over two meters outward across five stories.

I then made my way to the Dom St. Mariae (St. Mary's Cathedral), built just under a thousand years ago. This picture depicts the front doors as seen from the inside, known as the Bernwardtüren (St. Bernward doors) after the local bishop under whose authority these were created (along with another impressive church just down the street, the Michaeliskirche). That church and these doors are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Beat that, Hannover! Thankfully these doors was protected and hidden during the war and thus were not destroyed, unlike practically everything else in town. Also of note in the cathedral is the Tausendjährige Rosenstock (thousand-year-old rose bush). About 1200 years ago a local Kaiser was holding mass in the woods while hunting, and afterwards he somehow forgot to take his relic-garments with him. When he finally remembered and came back, they were magically not stolen and unable to be removed from the rose bush on which he had laid the garments. This was declared a miracle and the rose bush has been honored and kept alive since. It burned up in the war, but a couple branches were saved and replanted, so it's technically still going.

I made my way to the Roemer-Pelizaeus-Museum, an archeological museum world-famous for it's Egyptian and Peruvian collections. The Chinese porcelain collection was also great, but most impressive was this extremely accurate reproduction of an Egyptian tomb. In the interest of preserving the original, this copy was constructed with complex reproduction techniques. (The specific challenge was replicating the uneven surfaces.) I was going through that part of the museum backwards, so I suddenly just saw a meter-high gap in the wall that appeared to be publicly accessible, so without noticing the accompanying text, I just ducked and went in, where I was confronted with this view. Awesome!

So that was Hildesheim. It's not that big, but the churches are way better than anything in Hannover, and the fake market square is such a delight. Then on to the Universitäts- und Hansestadt Lüneburg. It's one of the rare Germans that has two official designations: one for its university and one for being an important member of the former Hanseatic League, an alliance of northern European trading guilds, which basically means it's rich. (Not as important as Lübeck, though, which I hope to visit soon.)

My first stop in Lüneburg was the Johanniskirche, which was all-around impressive, but this organ was one of the most detailed and ornate that I've ever seen. If you know me and/or my picture-taking habits, you know I love church organs, and this one is pretty high on the scale. I also went to the Michaeliskirche (apparently every city has one), which was also very pretty. It's particularly famous for the fact that between 1700 and 1702 one Johann Sebastian Bach sang in the choir before he reached puberty (at which point he moved to the organ). Honestly, though, Bach is more typically associated with Weimar and Leipzig, and in a similar sort of attempt at second-rate fame, Lüneburg is proud of its Heinrich-Heine-Haus, although it was actually just where Heine's brother and parents lived, and apparently Heine himself hated the city. The city doesn't seem to mind - the building now houses all sorts of literary societies, and I think I saw a wedding procession on the doorsteps.

Across from the Heine house, though, is this: the beautiful Rathaus (city hall), the marketplace, and best of all, the Christmas market. At midday I saw another brass section, but each evening at 5pm, a choir sings inside the Rathaus and speakers in the opened windows project the music for the enjoyment of the Glühwein-drinkers and Schmalzkuchen-eaters. Pretty cool!

This is another view, just to prove that Lüneburg takes their Christmas market seriously. See, not only does Lüneburg have the advantage of historically being rich due to its Hanseatic association (the main money-maker was the city's huge salt mine; a museum now stands there, which I had the pleasure to visit), it also wasn't destroyed in the war. The city is loaded with old Fachwerkhäuser, all off-kilter and fantastically pretty.

This street, Auf dem Meere ("on the sea", although as to which sea, I have no idea... there aren't any around at all), is particularly charming, with its very uneven cobblestone and quaint Fachwerkhäuser. These buildings are all over town, providing countless wonderful examples of Brick Gothic (also seen in Neubrandenburg) architecture. Some even have nice little sayings, like "Bauen ist ein schöner Lust - Was es kost ist mir bewuszt" ("Building is a beautiful desire - And I know what it costs").

I'd heard about a free brewery museum, and indeed, it exists and is fairly interesting albeit small. It's housed in the former brewery of Lüneburger Kronen, which, although bought out by Holsten and now brewed in Hamburg, is not easy to find - you can only get it in local watering holes, since they don't bottle it. It's from the tap or not at all. (And for the record, it is indeed good.) On the way to the museum, though, I noticed this pig.

Upon leaving the museum, I noticed that next door was the Ostpreußisches Landesmuseum (East Prussian National Museum). I'm surprised I hadn't read about it before departing, since East Prussia is exactly one of the places I'm most interested in learning more about. It's part of the territory of the (Second) German Empire / Weimar Republic / Third Reich that was divided between Poland, Russia, and Lithuania after the World Wars. I've always wanted to learn more about those areas - cities like Danzig and Königsberg used to be major German cities, farther East than what we call East Germany today, but now associated with entirely different nations and cultures. (Both of those cities were heavily damaged in the war; Günter Grass' The Tin Drum tells the story of Danzig... sort of.) It's weird to think of all the parts of Europe that were once German (see this map) but aren't now; this is also comparable to the extensive former Austo-Hungarian Empire. Pre-WWI, German was the language of Middle Europe (just as French was even before that). Anyway, I was really excited to find the museum, and I was happy to learn some history. Their art collection wasn't bad either - I was particularly impressed be their amberworks collection. I want that plate with East Prussia inlaid in amber.

Das war's! (That's all!)

Ancestoral Hometown!

2009-12-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I couldn't resist the urge to return to Berlin. I went with a group from my Fachhochschule to a city history museum (The Story of Berlin), which was pretty thorough. The highlight was the Cold War bunker underneath the museum and the Ku'damm (the biggest shopping street in Berlin), built by the West Germans in case of nuclear fallout. Pretty creepy space, especially when you think about how many thousand people were supposed to fit in that small of a space for two weeks. (For some reason I failed to take any pictures.)

I then walked down the Ku'damm until I got to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, a bombed-out memorial church left mostly in it's post-WWII state (much like the Aegidienkirche here in Hannover). I'd been there before, but it was cool to see again, especially that's where one of the city's biggest Christmas markets is taking place.

No, I didn't eat here, but I would've if I hadn't just eaten really awesome Ethiopian food. So good. But anyway, this made me realize that it's really easy to advertise to me... if you know how. And since no one is interested in appealing to my microscopic margin, it doesn't happen often, but things like this restaurant or the Surrealist Cookbook I bought at a book sale years ago are just an instant irresistable impulse for me. And probably just me.

But the real highlight of that neighborhood is Kunsthaus Tacheles, a crazy squatter art community. The building is several floors of art spaces and galleries and the back yard is a large metal works. Two bars are also nestled inside, but you almost wouldn't notice, since their decor fits the same style, and everyone is playing music everywhere. The environment is wild, as in, wildly awesome.

And because I'm crazy, I decided to hop on another train that night and ride up to Neubrandenburg. Two reasons bring me to this relatively small, uninteresting town: my friend and fellow program participant that lives there, and the fact that my great-great-great-grandfather was born there. What a place!

After wandering around a bit in the dark with my friend, we wound up at a German student party. This was the only good picture I took that night; this is the Friedländer Tor, one of the four gates of the city wall, which for the most part still stands around the inner city.

The next day we walked around the Tollensee (which could probably be translated as "awesome or crazy lake") and the Kulturpark before reentering the city center. It's pretty cool to enter a city by walking under a gate like this! (This one is the Stargarder Tor.)

This is the Konzertkirche St. Marien. That means "concert church" - services are no longer served here, as the parish sold the building and now they just play music. Apparently the acoustics are awesome, but I couldn't get in, since it's only open for performances.

This is the center of town. The marketplace currently has an ice skating rink on it. Sadly, the former beautiful city hall was destroyed in the war, and the new one is the ugliest thing you could imagine (even by post-WII Soviet standards). However, I do appreciate the charm of this particular post-WII Soviet building; it's known as the Kulturfinger (Culture Finger), and the story is that the East Germans built it so that the tallest building in town would no longer be a church. It is the only skyscraper in the city. The lower part is a library, and the top is a café and bar that is decorated in DDR-style, which is pretty cool, although the place is tiny. The Christmas market was also right in this area.

This is a church.... or not. It's a theater known as Latücht, and more was I unable to learn. I'm quite curious as to the story here.

Even more curious about this church-theater are the awesome windows (I know it's hard to see because of the glare) and the crazy orange December-blooming berries. I did not eat them.

This is the Zingel, for which I cannot find a good translation. It's part of the city wall, on the other side of the Friedländer Tor (pictured above). This picture also serves as proof that I was there.

The Franziskanerkloster (Franciscan Closter). I could not obtain entry here, either. (For a Sunday morning, none of the buildings that would appear to be churches seem to let anyone inside.)

The Fangelturm (AKA Mönchenturm), built right into the city wall, just like a row of Fachwerkhäuser. I wonder how much rent is? Supposedly one has a café or bar or something, but we couldn't find it.

And then I had to return to Hannover for an Advent party, at which I performed a few Christmas songs. Weird. And tomorrow the adventures continue... if it doesn't rain as much as it did today.

German Thanksgiving

2009-12-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

Knowing that I'd be spending a year in Germany, one of the things I was most excited to experience was the Christmas markets. And indeed, last Friday, when I went down to see how it looked, I was blown away. Hannover has about six different market areas all within the downtown area. They take this seriously.

When I first saw this thing in the middle of the Kröpcke square (essentially the center of town), I couldn't believe it. I mean, I've seen these before, but I've never seen one more than a foot or two high! Of course, the candles were fake (meaning the fanwheel was automated) and the prices were high, but it's a sight to behold.

Huge Christmas tree next to the Marktkirche! The whole market area is continually crowded with people looking at fancy woodcuts, drinking massive amounts of delicious Glühwein (hot spiced wine), eating tons of roasted nuts, potato pancakes, Schmalzkuchen, and Bratwurst, and generally causing terminal destruction to their pocket money. The best part is probably the Finnish Market, featuring the Finnish version of Glühwein, Glögi, which is even better. Yes, it's a sight to behold. (You can also get reindeer sausage, which I naturally turned down.) (Also check out those cute owls on the roof.)

As most of my readership is probably aware, last week was Thanksgiving. I argue that no other holiday is as distinctly American. (Every country has an Independence Day or something similar (i.e., Tag der Deutschen Einheit), and Germany does indeed have the Erntedankfest (Harvest Festival), but it is not a holiday nor a big deal; I didn't even know it happened despite living here when it took place in early October.) Seriously, I haven't met a German who knew what I was talking about when I mentioned the holiday. Anyway, in light of my absence at my parents' home, where I've celebrated the holiday every previous year of my life, I decided to make do here.

I invited a fellow participant of my exchange program to come over for the weekend after Thanksgiving (since I sure didn't have the actual holiday off or anything) to make our own Thanksgiving meal. We had some challenges to face, such as my vegetarianism, the unavailability of certain American items (i.e., cranberry sauce, pumpkins, Tofurkey), and my limited kitchen equipment, but we made do. I had a ton of fun, and it turned out awesome.

Since my complete shot is blurry, here's how my plate looked. We made mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, green bean casserole, stuffing, and appropriately seasoned tofu and seitan. As I said, it was awesome and well worth the hours of cooking. I'm still working on the leftovers.

While my friend was here, we took some time to do a little bit of traditional tourism, and I've got to say, this woman's costume (I think from 18th century Hannover) is not only quite respectful but also very philosophical, reaching to the depths of infinity. I want that hat.

And for a taste of weekly randomness: the City Hotel Flamme, just east of the Hauptbahnhof. I assume they didn't ask Mondrian for permission. I've got to wonder, what would an artist think upon seeing such a clearly derivative example of his or her own work? Is that an honor? Is this building an homage? I don't even really like Mondrian that much myself, but yet I think this building is awesome. I'd stay there if I didn't already live here.