I came across an interesting tidbit the other day regarding the Statue Of Liberty. Having never been one to over indulge myself in the too finer points of American history other than those parts of history which are unmissable such as the civil war, wild west, Vietnam, Watergate and Hendrix etc. etc. I found it quite intriguing.
The statue was designed by a frenchman named Eiffel who was also the bod who knocked up the Eiffel Tower in Paris. When the Eiffel Tower was built it was destined only to stay up for one year as display of the strength and durability of the latest building material of the day, steel. It proved to be so popular that it was left in place to become as it is today, the enduring symbol of all things French.
The Staue Of Liberty underneath its hundreds of meters of copper sheeting has within it a mini Eifel Tower as the basis of its form. It has the same centralised elevator system that visitors use to rise to the top veiwing platform inside the crown. The statue was given to the Americans by the people of France in 1884 and arrived in New York in 1885.
During the several centuries before its arrival, ships that came and went through the waterways that surround New York used to dump all of their garbage overboard at the same spot each time they passed by. This dumping ground eventually rose up out of the bay and became large enough to be considered an island. The local north american indians of the time refered to it as, ``white mans oyster´´, I guess because it opened up from out of the ocean at the hand of the white man. After a succession of different owners and name changes this water born rubbish tip was finally purchased by a guy named Bedloe who quite naturally named it after himself. Bedloe Island was then selected to become the site of this unique historic gift from the people of France. On the day of the statues centenary celebrations in 1985 it was renamed Liberty Island.
I will leave you to garner what you will as to the subtle philisophical nuances surrounding the foundations of this symbol of american liberty and justice.
29.11.04
The Cauliflower Express
I have had some feed back from my mother regarding the history of the old Ballaarat railway line mentioned in my previous mail.
Traffic commenced on the rail link in September 1889. It continued to ferry passengers between Ballaarat and Buninyong until Nov 1930. It then remained in operation as a goods train hauling mainly farm produce, tanned hides, butter, beer and above all cauliflowers from the farms and factories of Buninyong back to Ballaarat for distribution and sale. It became known as, ``The Cauliflower Express´´. If a cauliflower weighed in at less than 20 pounds (9kg) it was considered undersized. It ceased operation forever in Feb 1947.
My mother tells me that a local farmer Jack Brusaski removed a lot of the old sleepers on his land as they harbored to many snakes. As a child, the remnants of the line always struck me as being so much older than that but there you go. Just a small update.
Traffic commenced on the rail link in September 1889. It continued to ferry passengers between Ballaarat and Buninyong until Nov 1930. It then remained in operation as a goods train hauling mainly farm produce, tanned hides, butter, beer and above all cauliflowers from the farms and factories of Buninyong back to Ballaarat for distribution and sale. It became known as, ``The Cauliflower Express´´. If a cauliflower weighed in at less than 20 pounds (9kg) it was considered undersized. It ceased operation forever in Feb 1947.
My mother tells me that a local farmer Jack Brusaski removed a lot of the old sleepers on his land as they harbored to many snakes. As a child, the remnants of the line always struck me as being so much older than that but there you go. Just a small update.
8.11.04
Click Your Heels Dorothy
Having spent much of my adult life in more tropical climes, coming to Germany is the first time in many years that I have enjoyed four seasons and had the opportunity to warm my soul with the vibrant cacophony of their hues. I am very much reminded of the paddocks that surrounded my childhood home in Mt. Helen just south of Ballaarat, which every Spring, became a sea of living colour from the daffodils, johnquills and bluebells that sprawled across the top of our property.
It was always a magical kind of place as the clumps of flowers often chose to hug the historic remains of the old Buningyong to Ballaarat railway line which was closed down in the early part of the 1900‘s. Those small sections still remaining, some how retained some lingering essence of the romance and adventure that surrounded that era of the steam locomotives. The skeletal remains of the track’s sleepers, still staked to the earth with rusting metal spikes, lay like broken bones almost turned dust amongst the verdent green of the Spring grass. The brittle, weather aged timbers proving a most welcome shelter for our local resident population of black, brown and copperhead snakes, that somehow saw it as their seminal duty in life to guard the ghosts of times long past.
As some of the more industrious local lads had discovered the age old art of hide tanning, some of these joe-blakes were destined to meet a far more ignominious ending by becoming a local trade item, in the form of hat bands and jean belts.
A fleeting piece of childhood memory momentarily regained. Unfortunately like all of lifes succinctly sweet moments it is never long before a little voice inside says, ``Click your heels together Dorothy cause you aint in Kansas anymore !´´
It was always a magical kind of place as the clumps of flowers often chose to hug the historic remains of the old Buningyong to Ballaarat railway line which was closed down in the early part of the 1900‘s. Those small sections still remaining, some how retained some lingering essence of the romance and adventure that surrounded that era of the steam locomotives. The skeletal remains of the track’s sleepers, still staked to the earth with rusting metal spikes, lay like broken bones almost turned dust amongst the verdent green of the Spring grass. The brittle, weather aged timbers proving a most welcome shelter for our local resident population of black, brown and copperhead snakes, that somehow saw it as their seminal duty in life to guard the ghosts of times long past.
As some of the more industrious local lads had discovered the age old art of hide tanning, some of these joe-blakes were destined to meet a far more ignominious ending by becoming a local trade item, in the form of hat bands and jean belts.
A fleeting piece of childhood memory momentarily regained. Unfortunately like all of lifes succinctly sweet moments it is never long before a little voice inside says, ``Click your heels together Dorothy cause you aint in Kansas anymore !´´
26.10.04
A Golden October And Thieving Ravens
We have been having really intense sunsets lately that are just fantastic. When the cloud is not blanketing the area these satin pink fingers seem to span out and caress the under belly of the sky and then the colours seem to pinwheel through the spectrum with such subtle changes and nuances that sometimes you are not quite sure just what the colour is that you ae looking at.
The yellows, pinks, reds and mauve against the waining blues as the night creeps in are most surely the inpiration of many great European landscape artists. I suppose that the hues are somewhat dependant on our relatively close proximity to the arctic / northern lights.
We have been having for the last two weeks what the locals refer to as a Golden October. Mild days but calm and sunny with the temp up around 22C but still falling to around 8C at night. Very much the same sort of weather we were having in my last couple of weeks in the Blue Mountains. All very pleasant especially with the Autumn colours really starting to take hold of the oaks, elms and ashes.
The walnut tree out the back has been dropping bucket loads of nuts which we collect to crush and feed the birds and squirrels during the Winter. I don’t think I am in the good books particularly with the local red squirrels as I have collected all the nuts each day and they are no doubt sizing me up for an attack onn my kneecaps. I watched the other day as one of them scurried around collecting walnuts in its mouth and then proceeding to bury them in the garden near the tomato bushes. Unfortunately for Squirrel Nutkins there was a large black raven perched high over head in the old cherry tree watching each mining expedition with great innterest. As soon as the squirrel took off to find another nut the raven was swooping down and pecking the nut out of the soil and zooming off with it. Kind of like a drive through take away for birds.
I have been flipping through a book on the birds of central europe. I have to admit at being somewhat amazed by the number of birds that are found here and in Australia. Eg: spoonbills, azure kingfishers, stone knee curlews and powerful owls. Others that surprised me as I thought them to be American / African were the buzzards and vultures.
There are a lot of chestnuts as well on the pavements around town which shall no doubt bring about a serious in-house conkers championship within the next few weeks. The little blighters are a serious pitfall when walking later at night as they shoot from under your feet like a ball bearing. My boots have a smooth leather sole and this is a really dangerous combination especially after a few ales at the English Club.
The yellows, pinks, reds and mauve against the waining blues as the night creeps in are most surely the inpiration of many great European landscape artists. I suppose that the hues are somewhat dependant on our relatively close proximity to the arctic / northern lights.
We have been having for the last two weeks what the locals refer to as a Golden October. Mild days but calm and sunny with the temp up around 22C but still falling to around 8C at night. Very much the same sort of weather we were having in my last couple of weeks in the Blue Mountains. All very pleasant especially with the Autumn colours really starting to take hold of the oaks, elms and ashes.
The walnut tree out the back has been dropping bucket loads of nuts which we collect to crush and feed the birds and squirrels during the Winter. I don’t think I am in the good books particularly with the local red squirrels as I have collected all the nuts each day and they are no doubt sizing me up for an attack onn my kneecaps. I watched the other day as one of them scurried around collecting walnuts in its mouth and then proceeding to bury them in the garden near the tomato bushes. Unfortunately for Squirrel Nutkins there was a large black raven perched high over head in the old cherry tree watching each mining expedition with great innterest. As soon as the squirrel took off to find another nut the raven was swooping down and pecking the nut out of the soil and zooming off with it. Kind of like a drive through take away for birds.
I have been flipping through a book on the birds of central europe. I have to admit at being somewhat amazed by the number of birds that are found here and in Australia. Eg: spoonbills, azure kingfishers, stone knee curlews and powerful owls. Others that surprised me as I thought them to be American / African were the buzzards and vultures.
There are a lot of chestnuts as well on the pavements around town which shall no doubt bring about a serious in-house conkers championship within the next few weeks. The little blighters are a serious pitfall when walking later at night as they shoot from under your feet like a ball bearing. My boots have a smooth leather sole and this is a really dangerous combination especially after a few ales at the English Club.
21.10.04
Darmstadt's Oktoberfest
We have had just a few festive happenings since my last mail that have included the Heinerfest, which is the local Darmstadt equivalent of the Oktoberfest in Munich. They blocked off the whole city centre for 4 days to cater for a massive sprawl of carnival side shows, beer tents, beer caravans and sound stages.
I took a wander down on the Saturday night with my friends Frank and Nicole and partook of a variety of foaming beverages along with a few helter-skelter, topsy-turvey show rides to settle it all down. Gad what it is to have the legacy of an Aussie iron gut constitution! The actual evening went through till 3am but we had already retired to the AnSibin Irish Pub for a Guinness or two by 1am having tired of jostling with the milling crush of the crowds and the endless queues attached to each beer stall. The festival finished on a Monday (which needless to say has been designated a local public holiday) and they had a firework spectacular to wind it all up that night.
Bettina and Thomas having weathered many of these fests in the past basically gave it all a big miss with the exception of Bettina on Sunday afternoon, ducking into a stall on the fringe of the bedlam to purchase a bag of special ginger bread pieces which only become available for sale during the fest. Armed with said bag of ginger confection we scurried off home to enjoy a few quiet beers in the sanctuary of own back yard, far from the madding crowds, the streets of broken glass and the weaving stumbling antics of the inebriated citizens of Darmstadt.
I spent an hour on the Monday night poised on a section of flat roof on our house with a camera and tripod getting some time lapse photos of the fireworks barrages emanating from the city centre and exploding high above the silhouettes of the neighbourhood tree tops. Le grande finale and farewell to the beer barons of Hessen.
I took a wander down on the Saturday night with my friends Frank and Nicole and partook of a variety of foaming beverages along with a few helter-skelter, topsy-turvey show rides to settle it all down. Gad what it is to have the legacy of an Aussie iron gut constitution! The actual evening went through till 3am but we had already retired to the AnSibin Irish Pub for a Guinness or two by 1am having tired of jostling with the milling crush of the crowds and the endless queues attached to each beer stall. The festival finished on a Monday (which needless to say has been designated a local public holiday) and they had a firework spectacular to wind it all up that night.
Bettina and Thomas having weathered many of these fests in the past basically gave it all a big miss with the exception of Bettina on Sunday afternoon, ducking into a stall on the fringe of the bedlam to purchase a bag of special ginger bread pieces which only become available for sale during the fest. Armed with said bag of ginger confection we scurried off home to enjoy a few quiet beers in the sanctuary of own back yard, far from the madding crowds, the streets of broken glass and the weaving stumbling antics of the inebriated citizens of Darmstadt.
I spent an hour on the Monday night poised on a section of flat roof on our house with a camera and tripod getting some time lapse photos of the fireworks barrages emanating from the city centre and exploding high above the silhouettes of the neighbourhood tree tops. Le grande finale and farewell to the beer barons of Hessen.
30.9.04
Berlin Is Tut Gut
My trip to Berlin was a real eye opener and Bettina and I spent the better part of 8 hours a day cruising around looking at all the buildings, parks, museums and shops that we could squash in. We stayed with Bettina‘s sister Urs and husband Peter. Their appartment is very central and has several underground rail links within a block or two. The Berlin underground rail or U-Bahn as it is called is once again a model of efficiency and just so very fast. I think that the longest wait we had for any train was 3 minutes. As Peter and Urs where both taking time off from work to stay home and do renovations, we were able to make use of their monthly rail passes to get around the city. A big saving in itself.
We were very lucky with the weather and despite some days being quite cool we saw very little rain which enabled us to do some very long walks across the city and parks. I won’t elaborate in too great a detail on all of our outings but we covered all the main tourist bits such as The Reichstag, Brandenburg Tor, Berlin Dome, Checkpoint Charlie, Technical Museum, Jewish Museum, Potzdamer Platz and Ka De We shopping centre (the Harrods of Germany).
I would have to say that the first thing that really strikes you about Berlin is the fabulous modern architecture. Some of the new complexes such as Potzdamer Platz are so 21st century that the architecture leaves you feeling like you have stepped onto another planet. Way, way cool ! We took an elevator up to the 36th floor of one building to have a walk on the viewing platform. The elevator took 8 seconds to go from ground to roof, fastest in Europe, no sense of stomach falling only minor pressure change in the inner ear. So quiet, so smooth, so quick.
The whole Berlin skyline is a mass of cranes which are not only working on new constructions but are in use as they renovate old churches, public monuments and buildings. The rebuilding of east Germany since the wall came down in 1989 has been constant as the soviet government had let it go to pot so badly. They have been getting rid of the tawdry public housing estates and run down old office buildings and basically rebuilding it section by section. It was quite staggering to see the difference between the two halves of the city. The west with all its wealth and power and the east, after 45 years of communist rule, grimly displaying its post war legacy of cardboard and string public housing architecture mixed with the few remnants of its former glory, retained soley by a handful of mosques and townhalls.
I was not aware till going to Berlin that it was in fact an island city having being cast adrift by geopolitical boundaries. The western alliance comprising of the U.S., France and Britain cut a deal with Russia that in return for the western half of the city the Russians could have a huge swag of surrounding countryside. The Russians gave up half of Berlin but in effect the territory that the alliance had relinquished effectively saw West Berlin completely cut off from the rest of Germany. All of the surrounding land was now under Russian control. From the border of East / West Berlin heading east it is approx 100 km to Czechoslovakia and going in the opposite direction to the West meant crossing 200km of Russian territory to reach the rest of Germany. The Russians attempted to blockade the western half of the city in the early fifties to stop the flood of money and goods from the east to the west. They threw up barricades around the entire perimeter of West Berlin with the intention of collapsing the financial infrastructure within. The west Berlin people opened an airbridge with the help of the western alliance and for 16 months all food and commercial goods were flown into and out of Berlin from Frankfurt and Hamburg. When the Russians saw that the blockade was ineffective they changed their tactics and built the wall to give them better control over the flow of people, goods and cash. So began the cold war and the very famous ``Checkpoint Charlie´´ in Freidrich Strasse.
The new Jewish Museum which has only just been opened, is a real eye popper, as the skin of the triple building complex has been covered in stainless steel and has angular, vertical and horizontal lines and triangular shape cutting at random across the walls, these lines and shapes are in fact the windows. Really spacey. The museum is a brilliant work of modern architecture. It is also an intelligent, well thought out and unbiased display depicting over 2,000 years of German Jewish history.
You can have a look for yourself by clicking on this link http://www.jmberlin.de/ .
The way that they handled the period of the holocaust was also very tactful. The area relegated to this period had huge vertical spaces above the displays which gave one a sense of air and room to breath. There were no pictures of concentration camps, mass graves or Nazi troops. They kept the depictions simple yet emotionally moving. Lots of small windows with photos of people, a brief history of their life, letters written to loved ones or diary notes they had made after being taken prisoner. In most cases a small card was at the bottom of the casement saying that they were then taken to Dachau or Auschwitz etc. where they were murdered. One of the larger vertical space halls was the Hall of Contemplation which ran some 30 meters long. The entire floor was covered in hundreds of symbolic faces cut from individual pieces of inch thick steel plate with an oxy-acetylene torch. It is a very quite area and the only thing you can hear is the clanking of the steel faces as they shift under your feet when you walk the length of the room. Another surprise was that one of the greatest Jewish philosophers and business men of all time, a man named Moses Mendelsshon, was in fact the father of the reknowned composer. It was well worth the 10DM entry fee even if the effect of a very somber yet enlightening experience left one feeling in a deeply contemplative mood.
The Reichstag was another of those amazing buildings which despite near total destruction in WW` has been rebuilt with the addition of a fabulous new dome on the roof. The centre column of the dome is a octagonal pillar which flutes out towards the top and is covered in hundreds of mirrored panels. Circling around the interior wall of the dome is a spiral ramp that wends it way to the top observation area. It then returns down again with the descending ramp interleaved with ascending ramp so as the foot traffic is all one way both up and down. Great views of the entire city skyline and a great liitle coffee shop for that much needed caffiene boost after queing for over an hour to get in. Security not only at the Reichstag but at all museums and public buildings etc. have metal screening and bag checks like the airports. All very labour intensive and it slows crowd movement to an absolute crawl through admission areas. Still most things are worth the wait. The best links to most of the pictures in and around Berlin if you want a Captain Cook are
http://www.berlin.de/home/English/VisitorsGuide
as well as
http://www.photomann.com/europe/berlin.htm
The security issue which is forever in your face at the moment was never more obvious than at the British Consulate, American Consulate and jewish mosques. The buildings were surrounded outside with razor wire barricades, machine gun toting police and armoured troop carriers with mounted water cannon and machine gun on top. I guess people there are used to them but it still makes my skin crawl just to walk within 10 feet of these dudes. It makes our police and there 9mm Glock side arms look like characters from Sesame Street.
The street flea markets were also really interesting as just about every imaginable item that could be smuggled out off Russia on the black market was available. Not just a lot of militaria such as full fighter pilot suits and helmets but also really ornate building fittings and Russian Orthodox religious icons. Some of these had quite high price tags. More akin to Southerby’s than a street market. One guy that I spoke to assured me that anything, but anything was available given a weeks notice and the right amount of folding stuff. Most of the traders seem to be either Czechoslovakian or Hungarian and I imagine that they feel vindicated in selling off their prime enemies national religious treasures and surplus military hardware. `` Pssst......I’m not Russian, I justa wanna kweek sale´´
All over Berlin they have huge fibreglass bears ( about the same size as real polar bears ) either walking on all fours, standing or doing headstands. Each one is painted with different art work or messages and some are just down right hillarious. Outside the Credit Suisse bank for instance there is one that is canary yellow and has holes all over it like swiss cheese and beside it another painted in red and white checks has an apple on its head with an arrow through it symbolising the William Tell bit. Outside the art gallery there is one covered in Piccasso style images. Or near the Unifiction sculpture there is an all white one in a walking stance coming nose to nose with an all black one. A really nicely thought out application of a city wide arts project. Hundreds of artists from all over the country have given up their time to painting them.
There are a huge number of parks and playgrounds every where you walk and at first I was really impressed that the government had enough vision to see the needs of the city as it expanded into the 21st century. Peter explained that yes, there were hundreds of parks and playgrounds through out the high density housing areas, sadly that no, it had nothing to do with bureaucratic forethought and that they were in fact locally refered to as, ``Bomb Gaps´´,and were simply the areas blown up and never rebuilt after the war. They are fairly easy to spot as the walls of the housing blocks on either side are invariably blank without windows. They have smply removed the demolished sections and bricked up the ends to strengthen them. Without a doubt, the myriad parks and playgrounds make a truly wonderful legacy for the people of Berlin. Maybe some clouds do have silver linings after all.
Berlin is surrounded and dissected by a maze of rivers, canals and lakes. Some of the larger lakes are far bigger than Sydney Harbour and the water way system reaches out all the way to Hamburg on the north west coast. A great deal of cargo and construction materials are transported throughout the district on massive barges that are pushed from behind by regular size tug boats. As one would expect there is a huge yachting community as well as the fleets of luxury motor yachts.
We visited one of the islands situated at the western end of the main lake, The Wennsee. Known as Pfaueninsel Naturschutzgebeit (Peacock Nature Reserve) the island has a castle, manor house and small chapel which were all built by Friedrich Wilhem ` for his mistress Wilhelmine Enke as a Summer retreat. The castle is distinctly odd in that it consists of two circular towers of about 6 floors each set apart by some 15 meters with an arched bridge, containing two floors of rooms, connecting the two turrets. The gardens are beautifully presented and as the name suggests our feathered friends were dotted around most of the parklands with their kaleidescopic plumage bristling. It is about a four kilometre walk on the track circumnavigating the grounds with marvelous views across the water, which on this particular day was just a mass of colourful sails as various sailing clubs competed in what would probably be one of the last races of the season. The majestic water front homes and private moorings across on the mainland have ``We’re alright Jack´´ stamped all over them. Berlin and big money really do go hand in hand.
After catching the ferry back to the mainland we walked around the edge of the lake to the lovely little church built by Freidrich I in the period just prior to those built by his son on the island. It is set high up the cliff with commanding views for miles to the east. On this particular day the carillon in the belfy was in full swing and you could only imagine how far the peeling chimes must have carried across the waters to the surrounding country. A really great outing with the only downside being the very cool weather of mid-Autumn and the stirring breeze emanating from the Nordic north.
Taking about Berlin and big money was never more evident than visting the Ka De We department store. Each of the shop windows were filled with a different replica crown from various germanic monarchs throughout the ages along with an item which could be purchased within. ``Wow, check out that crown. It must have cost the guy a fortune in chiropractic bills to wear that one. Oh and look, a beautiful silver tea pot at only 22,500 DM (take off 10% to get the Australian equivilant), wouldn’t it make for a grand cuppa char.´´ There were dresses in the windows at 30,000 DM which I guess are for when you have the neighbours round for a cuppa on Sunday arvo. Like Harrods of London, it is store with everything from the ludicrously expensive knick knacks through to a food hall that was enough to make a grown man cry. Someone pass me the kleenex please! I was impressed with the number of janitors working throughout the food hall although I suspect that their main vocation in life was simply to trail around after visitors like me mopping up the drool. They had vegemite at 12 DM for the small size jar and although I was sorely tempted to purchase one, I would never have been able to raise a large enough bank loan for the toast to go with it. It leaves one to wonder, who are these people that have 670 DM to purchase a whole Scottish salmon and just how can I get to meet them. One thought springs to mind, ``Excuse me I seem to have forgotten my phone number, can I have yours ?´´ Well hell it normally works in the local pub !
One of the other oddities that we came across was an initiative by Deutsches Post called Love Letters Building. They have wrapped the entire outside structure of a 4 storey corner building in the downtown area with some 35,000 poster size individual love letters. People were encouraged to write into the post office from all over Germany as part of the Unification Celebration. Inside there are a further 115,000 letters that you can sift through and read. There is a large room set aside with lounge seats where you are encouraged to sit a write your own folorn masterpiece.
I asked my partmner if we could stage a stand up, full blown, domestic barney outside the door as our contribution to artistic difference. You know the sort of thing, pottery in motion. Although the idea amused her, it was one arts project that was never going to get funding. In another room they had small upright posts with speakers fixed in the top and when you stood close enough you could listen to people reading their letters. Some of the posts were dedicated to letters written between historically famous people such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine. Unfortunately, to my somewhat unsympathetic ear, I could find nothing remotely romantic about a bunch of lovestruck lemmings ratting on in a language as abrupt and gutteral as German. Still it was a nice project with world peace overtones and it would be good to see it copied elsewhere around the planet.
One other building that we visited and worthy of mention was the Berlin Dome. As one of the skylines most recognisable features it is the main catholic church in the city and situated on the banks of the Spree River next to the state museum. The interior as expected is circular with the vast vaulted dome ceiling rising above to a central window of stained glass with images of doves inlaid. The dome itself is a replacement with the original having been obliterated in 1945. Nice patch up job if I do say so. About one quarter of the first level gallery is dedicated to the organ and its pipes. The pipes are racked in eight seperate boxed tiers each comprising of some 50 pipes as near as I could count. There were about 15-20 individuals scattered about through the rows of pews and as we walked down the central isle the organ suddenly burst into life playing some sort of Wagnerian choral piece. Very black, very heavy, very sinister and enough bass to make any respectable home boy turn green with envy. For once in my life I had no urge to ask for the volume to be turned up. People, let me tell you, this organist had the pedal to the metal, it was deafening. Bettina and I could only look at each other and grin. Awesome stuff. It had a real phantom of the opera kind of atmosphere to it. The subsequent mental effect of etherealization was to put it mildly, mind numbing. We escaped from the musical barrage after some minutes down a staircase into the crypt below. ``Back to the crypt´´. Lying in state are the caskets of most of the former kings, queens and bishops of Germany. A lot of the caskets had been made from lead and the lids were buckling inwards with the effects of several centuries of gravity. Several were split at the seams and rendered apart from the very bombs that destroyed the dome. Wilhelm III looked as if he caught the brunt of it. Good thing he had his armour on. Quite a shame about the casket as the ornate sculptures adorning the outside really were beautiful in thier craftsmanship.
We did quite a few of the bars annd night spots and sampled a few of the locallly brewed pils. The Holzwurm (Woodworm) was my favourite closely followed by the Hell & Dunkel (Light and Dark) named as such because they are the only 2 styles of beer that they brew. Part 2 was nice little place but a bit wierd as the whole thing was based on some sort of tropicana theme and the floor was completely covered in several inches of fine white sand. Bit odd when it’s close to snow outside.
The trip up and back on the ICE express was really good. The backs of some seats have little tele screens like on some of the jets with movies and games etc. They have read out screens at both ends of the carriage that tell you time and distance to the next station as well as the final destination. They also read out the speed at which you are currently going. I never caught it over 255kph but even so that’s fairly motoring along. Superbly quiet and very comfortable. The lounge car was great as you could sit at the tables running lengthwise down the carriage and look out through big panoramic windows at the countryside blurring past.
We were very lucky with the weather and despite some days being quite cool we saw very little rain which enabled us to do some very long walks across the city and parks. I won’t elaborate in too great a detail on all of our outings but we covered all the main tourist bits such as The Reichstag, Brandenburg Tor, Berlin Dome, Checkpoint Charlie, Technical Museum, Jewish Museum, Potzdamer Platz and Ka De We shopping centre (the Harrods of Germany).
I would have to say that the first thing that really strikes you about Berlin is the fabulous modern architecture. Some of the new complexes such as Potzdamer Platz are so 21st century that the architecture leaves you feeling like you have stepped onto another planet. Way, way cool ! We took an elevator up to the 36th floor of one building to have a walk on the viewing platform. The elevator took 8 seconds to go from ground to roof, fastest in Europe, no sense of stomach falling only minor pressure change in the inner ear. So quiet, so smooth, so quick.
The whole Berlin skyline is a mass of cranes which are not only working on new constructions but are in use as they renovate old churches, public monuments and buildings. The rebuilding of east Germany since the wall came down in 1989 has been constant as the soviet government had let it go to pot so badly. They have been getting rid of the tawdry public housing estates and run down old office buildings and basically rebuilding it section by section. It was quite staggering to see the difference between the two halves of the city. The west with all its wealth and power and the east, after 45 years of communist rule, grimly displaying its post war legacy of cardboard and string public housing architecture mixed with the few remnants of its former glory, retained soley by a handful of mosques and townhalls.
I was not aware till going to Berlin that it was in fact an island city having being cast adrift by geopolitical boundaries. The western alliance comprising of the U.S., France and Britain cut a deal with Russia that in return for the western half of the city the Russians could have a huge swag of surrounding countryside. The Russians gave up half of Berlin but in effect the territory that the alliance had relinquished effectively saw West Berlin completely cut off from the rest of Germany. All of the surrounding land was now under Russian control. From the border of East / West Berlin heading east it is approx 100 km to Czechoslovakia and going in the opposite direction to the West meant crossing 200km of Russian territory to reach the rest of Germany. The Russians attempted to blockade the western half of the city in the early fifties to stop the flood of money and goods from the east to the west. They threw up barricades around the entire perimeter of West Berlin with the intention of collapsing the financial infrastructure within. The west Berlin people opened an airbridge with the help of the western alliance and for 16 months all food and commercial goods were flown into and out of Berlin from Frankfurt and Hamburg. When the Russians saw that the blockade was ineffective they changed their tactics and built the wall to give them better control over the flow of people, goods and cash. So began the cold war and the very famous ``Checkpoint Charlie´´ in Freidrich Strasse.
The new Jewish Museum which has only just been opened, is a real eye popper, as the skin of the triple building complex has been covered in stainless steel and has angular, vertical and horizontal lines and triangular shape cutting at random across the walls, these lines and shapes are in fact the windows. Really spacey. The museum is a brilliant work of modern architecture. It is also an intelligent, well thought out and unbiased display depicting over 2,000 years of German Jewish history.
You can have a look for yourself by clicking on this link http://www.jmberlin.de/ .
The way that they handled the period of the holocaust was also very tactful. The area relegated to this period had huge vertical spaces above the displays which gave one a sense of air and room to breath. There were no pictures of concentration camps, mass graves or Nazi troops. They kept the depictions simple yet emotionally moving. Lots of small windows with photos of people, a brief history of their life, letters written to loved ones or diary notes they had made after being taken prisoner. In most cases a small card was at the bottom of the casement saying that they were then taken to Dachau or Auschwitz etc. where they were murdered. One of the larger vertical space halls was the Hall of Contemplation which ran some 30 meters long. The entire floor was covered in hundreds of symbolic faces cut from individual pieces of inch thick steel plate with an oxy-acetylene torch. It is a very quite area and the only thing you can hear is the clanking of the steel faces as they shift under your feet when you walk the length of the room. Another surprise was that one of the greatest Jewish philosophers and business men of all time, a man named Moses Mendelsshon, was in fact the father of the reknowned composer. It was well worth the 10DM entry fee even if the effect of a very somber yet enlightening experience left one feeling in a deeply contemplative mood.
The Reichstag was another of those amazing buildings which despite near total destruction in WW` has been rebuilt with the addition of a fabulous new dome on the roof. The centre column of the dome is a octagonal pillar which flutes out towards the top and is covered in hundreds of mirrored panels. Circling around the interior wall of the dome is a spiral ramp that wends it way to the top observation area. It then returns down again with the descending ramp interleaved with ascending ramp so as the foot traffic is all one way both up and down. Great views of the entire city skyline and a great liitle coffee shop for that much needed caffiene boost after queing for over an hour to get in. Security not only at the Reichstag but at all museums and public buildings etc. have metal screening and bag checks like the airports. All very labour intensive and it slows crowd movement to an absolute crawl through admission areas. Still most things are worth the wait. The best links to most of the pictures in and around Berlin if you want a Captain Cook are
http://www.berlin.de/home/English/VisitorsGuide
as well as
http://www.photomann.com/europe/berlin.htm
The security issue which is forever in your face at the moment was never more obvious than at the British Consulate, American Consulate and jewish mosques. The buildings were surrounded outside with razor wire barricades, machine gun toting police and armoured troop carriers with mounted water cannon and machine gun on top. I guess people there are used to them but it still makes my skin crawl just to walk within 10 feet of these dudes. It makes our police and there 9mm Glock side arms look like characters from Sesame Street.
The street flea markets were also really interesting as just about every imaginable item that could be smuggled out off Russia on the black market was available. Not just a lot of militaria such as full fighter pilot suits and helmets but also really ornate building fittings and Russian Orthodox religious icons. Some of these had quite high price tags. More akin to Southerby’s than a street market. One guy that I spoke to assured me that anything, but anything was available given a weeks notice and the right amount of folding stuff. Most of the traders seem to be either Czechoslovakian or Hungarian and I imagine that they feel vindicated in selling off their prime enemies national religious treasures and surplus military hardware. `` Pssst......I’m not Russian, I justa wanna kweek sale´´
All over Berlin they have huge fibreglass bears ( about the same size as real polar bears ) either walking on all fours, standing or doing headstands. Each one is painted with different art work or messages and some are just down right hillarious. Outside the Credit Suisse bank for instance there is one that is canary yellow and has holes all over it like swiss cheese and beside it another painted in red and white checks has an apple on its head with an arrow through it symbolising the William Tell bit. Outside the art gallery there is one covered in Piccasso style images. Or near the Unifiction sculpture there is an all white one in a walking stance coming nose to nose with an all black one. A really nicely thought out application of a city wide arts project. Hundreds of artists from all over the country have given up their time to painting them.
There are a huge number of parks and playgrounds every where you walk and at first I was really impressed that the government had enough vision to see the needs of the city as it expanded into the 21st century. Peter explained that yes, there were hundreds of parks and playgrounds through out the high density housing areas, sadly that no, it had nothing to do with bureaucratic forethought and that they were in fact locally refered to as, ``Bomb Gaps´´,and were simply the areas blown up and never rebuilt after the war. They are fairly easy to spot as the walls of the housing blocks on either side are invariably blank without windows. They have smply removed the demolished sections and bricked up the ends to strengthen them. Without a doubt, the myriad parks and playgrounds make a truly wonderful legacy for the people of Berlin. Maybe some clouds do have silver linings after all.
Berlin is surrounded and dissected by a maze of rivers, canals and lakes. Some of the larger lakes are far bigger than Sydney Harbour and the water way system reaches out all the way to Hamburg on the north west coast. A great deal of cargo and construction materials are transported throughout the district on massive barges that are pushed from behind by regular size tug boats. As one would expect there is a huge yachting community as well as the fleets of luxury motor yachts.
We visited one of the islands situated at the western end of the main lake, The Wennsee. Known as Pfaueninsel Naturschutzgebeit (Peacock Nature Reserve) the island has a castle, manor house and small chapel which were all built by Friedrich Wilhem ` for his mistress Wilhelmine Enke as a Summer retreat. The castle is distinctly odd in that it consists of two circular towers of about 6 floors each set apart by some 15 meters with an arched bridge, containing two floors of rooms, connecting the two turrets. The gardens are beautifully presented and as the name suggests our feathered friends were dotted around most of the parklands with their kaleidescopic plumage bristling. It is about a four kilometre walk on the track circumnavigating the grounds with marvelous views across the water, which on this particular day was just a mass of colourful sails as various sailing clubs competed in what would probably be one of the last races of the season. The majestic water front homes and private moorings across on the mainland have ``We’re alright Jack´´ stamped all over them. Berlin and big money really do go hand in hand.
After catching the ferry back to the mainland we walked around the edge of the lake to the lovely little church built by Freidrich I in the period just prior to those built by his son on the island. It is set high up the cliff with commanding views for miles to the east. On this particular day the carillon in the belfy was in full swing and you could only imagine how far the peeling chimes must have carried across the waters to the surrounding country. A really great outing with the only downside being the very cool weather of mid-Autumn and the stirring breeze emanating from the Nordic north.
Taking about Berlin and big money was never more evident than visting the Ka De We department store. Each of the shop windows were filled with a different replica crown from various germanic monarchs throughout the ages along with an item which could be purchased within. ``Wow, check out that crown. It must have cost the guy a fortune in chiropractic bills to wear that one. Oh and look, a beautiful silver tea pot at only 22,500 DM (take off 10% to get the Australian equivilant), wouldn’t it make for a grand cuppa char.´´ There were dresses in the windows at 30,000 DM which I guess are for when you have the neighbours round for a cuppa on Sunday arvo. Like Harrods of London, it is store with everything from the ludicrously expensive knick knacks through to a food hall that was enough to make a grown man cry. Someone pass me the kleenex please! I was impressed with the number of janitors working throughout the food hall although I suspect that their main vocation in life was simply to trail around after visitors like me mopping up the drool. They had vegemite at 12 DM for the small size jar and although I was sorely tempted to purchase one, I would never have been able to raise a large enough bank loan for the toast to go with it. It leaves one to wonder, who are these people that have 670 DM to purchase a whole Scottish salmon and just how can I get to meet them. One thought springs to mind, ``Excuse me I seem to have forgotten my phone number, can I have yours ?´´ Well hell it normally works in the local pub !
One of the other oddities that we came across was an initiative by Deutsches Post called Love Letters Building. They have wrapped the entire outside structure of a 4 storey corner building in the downtown area with some 35,000 poster size individual love letters. People were encouraged to write into the post office from all over Germany as part of the Unification Celebration. Inside there are a further 115,000 letters that you can sift through and read. There is a large room set aside with lounge seats where you are encouraged to sit a write your own folorn masterpiece.
I asked my partmner if we could stage a stand up, full blown, domestic barney outside the door as our contribution to artistic difference. You know the sort of thing, pottery in motion. Although the idea amused her, it was one arts project that was never going to get funding. In another room they had small upright posts with speakers fixed in the top and when you stood close enough you could listen to people reading their letters. Some of the posts were dedicated to letters written between historically famous people such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine. Unfortunately, to my somewhat unsympathetic ear, I could find nothing remotely romantic about a bunch of lovestruck lemmings ratting on in a language as abrupt and gutteral as German. Still it was a nice project with world peace overtones and it would be good to see it copied elsewhere around the planet.
One other building that we visited and worthy of mention was the Berlin Dome. As one of the skylines most recognisable features it is the main catholic church in the city and situated on the banks of the Spree River next to the state museum. The interior as expected is circular with the vast vaulted dome ceiling rising above to a central window of stained glass with images of doves inlaid. The dome itself is a replacement with the original having been obliterated in 1945. Nice patch up job if I do say so. About one quarter of the first level gallery is dedicated to the organ and its pipes. The pipes are racked in eight seperate boxed tiers each comprising of some 50 pipes as near as I could count. There were about 15-20 individuals scattered about through the rows of pews and as we walked down the central isle the organ suddenly burst into life playing some sort of Wagnerian choral piece. Very black, very heavy, very sinister and enough bass to make any respectable home boy turn green with envy. For once in my life I had no urge to ask for the volume to be turned up. People, let me tell you, this organist had the pedal to the metal, it was deafening. Bettina and I could only look at each other and grin. Awesome stuff. It had a real phantom of the opera kind of atmosphere to it. The subsequent mental effect of etherealization was to put it mildly, mind numbing. We escaped from the musical barrage after some minutes down a staircase into the crypt below. ``Back to the crypt´´. Lying in state are the caskets of most of the former kings, queens and bishops of Germany. A lot of the caskets had been made from lead and the lids were buckling inwards with the effects of several centuries of gravity. Several were split at the seams and rendered apart from the very bombs that destroyed the dome. Wilhelm III looked as if he caught the brunt of it. Good thing he had his armour on. Quite a shame about the casket as the ornate sculptures adorning the outside really were beautiful in thier craftsmanship.
We did quite a few of the bars annd night spots and sampled a few of the locallly brewed pils. The Holzwurm (Woodworm) was my favourite closely followed by the Hell & Dunkel (Light and Dark) named as such because they are the only 2 styles of beer that they brew. Part 2 was nice little place but a bit wierd as the whole thing was based on some sort of tropicana theme and the floor was completely covered in several inches of fine white sand. Bit odd when it’s close to snow outside.
The trip up and back on the ICE express was really good. The backs of some seats have little tele screens like on some of the jets with movies and games etc. They have read out screens at both ends of the carriage that tell you time and distance to the next station as well as the final destination. They also read out the speed at which you are currently going. I never caught it over 255kph but even so that’s fairly motoring along. Superbly quiet and very comfortable. The lounge car was great as you could sit at the tables running lengthwise down the carriage and look out through big panoramic windows at the countryside blurring past.
21.8.04
Praise The Lord And Pass The Bottle
We have completed about a third of the cellar wall project and we may have to continue with the rest of it next year. It has been a bit of a priority over the last couple of weeks to try and whip the garden into shape for the annual house party on August 24th. I took to the back lawn with the push mower on Sunday which resulted in several hours of sweating and cursing given the length of the grass. It also resulted in several hours of cooling off with a nice cool beer in the shade afterwards. If the grass doesn’t die from the toxic over load of my sweat falling like rain all over it, it should be looking good for the party.
The fruit trees have absolutely thrived with the high humidity of late and as such we are seeing the branches of the plum trees sagging under the weight of fruit. One of the plum types is a mirabelle, which is particularly favoured in the making of schnapps given that it has such a potent floral aroma. The downside of this fruit is that when mature it is only the size of a table grape and the juice yield is not fantastic, as such it takes a great many kilos to make the required size mash for distilling.
The regular purple plums on the other hand are also in abundance and aside from our bulging tree we are to be given the produce from Alfred’s monster grand daddy plum tree in his garden at Heppenheim. Thomas is due to collect the first station wagon load this week.
Looks as if the schnapps production factory is about to rock and roll, lordy, lordy, hallelujah brother and pass the jug.
Production through the distillery is quite an expensive process with the government taxes etc all being based on alcohol percentage. A good 50 litre batch will cost around 600 euros. Luckily we already have 3 partners lined up to share the costs. Each group should end up with about 25 litres for their share. We may do a second one if we can find enough of some other fruit for free. Possibly apples but more hopefully quinces. Quinces once again have very little juice and hence you end up having to buy a lot of additional juice to make a mash. It can be quite an expensive item to purchase additional quince juice. Having been in a position to sample 8 and 11 year old quince from Thomas’s cellar I can only say....money well spent. It is absolutely fantastic and without a doubt one of the most aromatic and smooth digestives I have ever sampled. Brilliant stuff and like way, way potent. His eleven year old is approx 47% by volume. Nice little night cap if I do say so myself.
We planted a hop vine some 4 months ago beside the outside spiral staircase. It is now up to the second story on the stair railings and zooming ever skyward. Our only concern at this point is whether or not it is a female. It has not shown its true colours yet so I guess we just have to wait. If it is female we should get enough flowers to make quite a few batches of beer. Fingers crossed. Maybe if we water it with beer it might get the general idea of what its true purpose in life is. Before you ask, the answer is yes, it is legal to grow hops here in Germany unlike Australia where I think it is a standing fine of $20,000 for unlicensed hop plants.
Beer brewing is a national birth right over here. I’ll drink to that!
The fruit trees have absolutely thrived with the high humidity of late and as such we are seeing the branches of the plum trees sagging under the weight of fruit. One of the plum types is a mirabelle, which is particularly favoured in the making of schnapps given that it has such a potent floral aroma. The downside of this fruit is that when mature it is only the size of a table grape and the juice yield is not fantastic, as such it takes a great many kilos to make the required size mash for distilling.
The regular purple plums on the other hand are also in abundance and aside from our bulging tree we are to be given the produce from Alfred’s monster grand daddy plum tree in his garden at Heppenheim. Thomas is due to collect the first station wagon load this week.
Looks as if the schnapps production factory is about to rock and roll, lordy, lordy, hallelujah brother and pass the jug.
Production through the distillery is quite an expensive process with the government taxes etc all being based on alcohol percentage. A good 50 litre batch will cost around 600 euros. Luckily we already have 3 partners lined up to share the costs. Each group should end up with about 25 litres for their share. We may do a second one if we can find enough of some other fruit for free. Possibly apples but more hopefully quinces. Quinces once again have very little juice and hence you end up having to buy a lot of additional juice to make a mash. It can be quite an expensive item to purchase additional quince juice. Having been in a position to sample 8 and 11 year old quince from Thomas’s cellar I can only say....money well spent. It is absolutely fantastic and without a doubt one of the most aromatic and smooth digestives I have ever sampled. Brilliant stuff and like way, way potent. His eleven year old is approx 47% by volume. Nice little night cap if I do say so myself.
We planted a hop vine some 4 months ago beside the outside spiral staircase. It is now up to the second story on the stair railings and zooming ever skyward. Our only concern at this point is whether or not it is a female. It has not shown its true colours yet so I guess we just have to wait. If it is female we should get enough flowers to make quite a few batches of beer. Fingers crossed. Maybe if we water it with beer it might get the general idea of what its true purpose in life is. Before you ask, the answer is yes, it is legal to grow hops here in Germany unlike Australia where I think it is a standing fine of $20,000 for unlicensed hop plants.
Beer brewing is a national birth right over here. I’ll drink to that!
11.8.04
Day Of The Out Landers - Begegnungsfest
The English Club is organising a street stall later next month for the Begegnungsfest (coming together festival) on the Auslandertag (outlanders day).
They close of the central city area (it hardly ever seems to be open for anything other than partying) and set up information, food, wine and beers stalls for different countries from all over the world. Our stand will sell Guinness and John Smiths Ale on tap as well as bags of kettle chips. Maybe we can hand out excerpts of Monty Python scripts to cover the information angle. After all we are supposed to be educating people on the virtues of the United Kingdom. Maybe people could just soak their heads in a large vat of good old British fish and chip grease to help them get the general feel of the country. Either way it should be a fun day and I am looking forward to going to see what other stands have to offer.
In about 6 weeks time the club is doing a bicycle pub-crawl with the highlight being a 2-hour Rhine River cruise with BBQ lunch. I hope it fits in with the rest of the summer calendar, which is filling, fast with a variety of visits and party invites. We have our own annual house party again in about 5 weeks time. We have decided this year to get a 50 litre barrel of Glucks Pils as last year we ran dry a little too early in the evening for most punters and we had no recourse but to attack the bottled supplies stashed in cellar. The gear on tap is just so much nicer than the bottled stuff as you may one day discover yourself should you come to visit at the right time of year.
They close of the central city area (it hardly ever seems to be open for anything other than partying) and set up information, food, wine and beers stalls for different countries from all over the world. Our stand will sell Guinness and John Smiths Ale on tap as well as bags of kettle chips. Maybe we can hand out excerpts of Monty Python scripts to cover the information angle. After all we are supposed to be educating people on the virtues of the United Kingdom. Maybe people could just soak their heads in a large vat of good old British fish and chip grease to help them get the general feel of the country. Either way it should be a fun day and I am looking forward to going to see what other stands have to offer.
In about 6 weeks time the club is doing a bicycle pub-crawl with the highlight being a 2-hour Rhine River cruise with BBQ lunch. I hope it fits in with the rest of the summer calendar, which is filling, fast with a variety of visits and party invites. We have our own annual house party again in about 5 weeks time. We have decided this year to get a 50 litre barrel of Glucks Pils as last year we ran dry a little too early in the evening for most punters and we had no recourse but to attack the bottled supplies stashed in cellar. The gear on tap is just so much nicer than the bottled stuff as you may one day discover yourself should you come to visit at the right time of year.
11.7.04
Can One Coconut Make Any Food Thai?
One of Bettina’s long time mates had his birthday last week so we went out to a local Thai restaurant for a celebration feed. David and Lynne joined us as well which made for a good size group of us. Some of the Thai restaurants here are quite good whilst others seem to be a concoction of Chinese/Cantonese styles with a bit of chilli and coconut cream thrown in to re-label it Thai. Certainly none of the local Thai places here can even hold a candle to the blissful array of Asian restaurants that we take for granted in Australia. Maybe it is a localised peculiarity of Darmstadt and I may find some far more authentic Thai dishes if I was to look around in down town Frankfurt. At any rate the meal was quite reasonable and my plate of crispy duck on a bed of crisp vegetables in a chilli and coconut sauce was extremely palatable.
We cruised a little way up the road after dinner to the Grohe Brewery which is one of Darmstadt’s oldest. There we partook of several rounds of the local ale, which together with the general air of jocularity surrounding the occasion was cause for much mirth. It is a tremendous brewery as you can sit in the beer garden and look into the main brewing area with the fermentation tanks standing several stories high behind the glass facade. You are never in any doubt as to a constant supply of the stuff given the size of these tanks. It is also one of the few original buildings in town to have survived the fire bombing of the 1940’s and a lot of the pictures on the walls were taken shortly after that period and show just how close they came to losing such a truly magnificent local watering hole.
Alex, Bettina and I returned home from there to continue for a short while in the kitchen. Bettina finally surrendered to the sanctuary of her bed as Alex discovered the delights of his birthday CD, The Essential Radio Birdman. Yes indeed folks, from under the ashes the resurrection of Birdman in Darmstadt 2002. I think the evening ended somewhere around 3am. Great night, good mates and magic music.
We cruised a little way up the road after dinner to the Grohe Brewery which is one of Darmstadt’s oldest. There we partook of several rounds of the local ale, which together with the general air of jocularity surrounding the occasion was cause for much mirth. It is a tremendous brewery as you can sit in the beer garden and look into the main brewing area with the fermentation tanks standing several stories high behind the glass facade. You are never in any doubt as to a constant supply of the stuff given the size of these tanks. It is also one of the few original buildings in town to have survived the fire bombing of the 1940’s and a lot of the pictures on the walls were taken shortly after that period and show just how close they came to losing such a truly magnificent local watering hole.
Alex, Bettina and I returned home from there to continue for a short while in the kitchen. Bettina finally surrendered to the sanctuary of her bed as Alex discovered the delights of his birthday CD, The Essential Radio Birdman. Yes indeed folks, from under the ashes the resurrection of Birdman in Darmstadt 2002. I think the evening ended somewhere around 3am. Great night, good mates and magic music.
29.6.04
Cheap Flights In Europe
One of the cola and peanut airlines over here, called Ryan Air from Ireland, have an online booking web site which allows you to pick your flights by date and time and them book them instantly. I have been choosing mid-week take off dates and mid-week returns during the early and late hours of the prospective dates. So far I have found return flights from Frankfurt to Milan in Italy for €2.75 there and €3.50 back which is €6.25 or about AUD$10 return. Way cool! I know they don’t offer a lot of them but if you play around with dates and times far enough in advance they are available. I also got Dublin return for about AUD$14.50. I must say I was pleasantly surprised with my findings as it makes so many places around Europe so accessible. Yeeeehah! I used Ryan air flying back from the U.K. last year and given that most flights are no longer than 2 or 3 hours the no frills approach is not a problem. I for one am quite happy to pack a sambo and a tinnie in my kit bag at those prices.
28.6.04
Kraut Rock And Rose Tattoo Revived
We have had the Schlob Grabben Fest (Castle Moat Festival) on this last weekend past. It was really good with a huge array of over 60 acts on 4 sound stages over 4 days. Last year the fest attracted over 280,000 people and this year they are saying that the number is significantly more. They had all styles of music from grunge, hip hop, blues, soul and rock to rap and house.
My friends from the English Club Frank, Nicole, David and Lynne as well as Bettina and Thomas all came down town on the Saturday night. As it was Frank’s birthday we had an extra cause to celebrate and began the evening with a meal at Cafe Chaos. Towards the end of the evening we headed down to one of the local Irish pubs for some Guiness, Beamish and a Talisker malt whisky to round off the night. We returned home about 3 in the morning but all in all it was a really good night out.
They have something in the order of 3 or 4 more free festivals happening over the next couple of months. One of them is being headlined by The Cure, Lenny Kravitz and Santana. In 2 weeks time have Rose Tattoo are playing up the road in Neu Isenberg. They have just finished a new album in Frankfurt and are touring for the first time in 20 years. Unbelievable hey!! I can’t believe that Angry even has a voice left to scream with let alone that he is playing just up the road from here. I suspect that John Meyer who helped to write and play guitar on Under The Southern Cross was fairly influential here as he spent several years in Berlin working the underground there after the Tatts disbanded.
My friends from the English Club Frank, Nicole, David and Lynne as well as Bettina and Thomas all came down town on the Saturday night. As it was Frank’s birthday we had an extra cause to celebrate and began the evening with a meal at Cafe Chaos. Towards the end of the evening we headed down to one of the local Irish pubs for some Guiness, Beamish and a Talisker malt whisky to round off the night. We returned home about 3 in the morning but all in all it was a really good night out.
They have something in the order of 3 or 4 more free festivals happening over the next couple of months. One of them is being headlined by The Cure, Lenny Kravitz and Santana. In 2 weeks time have Rose Tattoo are playing up the road in Neu Isenberg. They have just finished a new album in Frankfurt and are touring for the first time in 20 years. Unbelievable hey!! I can’t believe that Angry even has a voice left to scream with let alone that he is playing just up the road from here. I suspect that John Meyer who helped to write and play guitar on Under The Southern Cross was fairly influential here as he spent several years in Berlin working the underground there after the Tatts disbanded.
7.6.04
Anger Management German Style
The city of Leipzig had a major protest 2 weeks ago when the extreme right faction referred to as, ``the Brown Shirts´´ or neo-nazis returned to the city for the 3rd time in a year. Some 1300 of them got off at the train station to walk to the center of the city where there is a statue depicting the ousting of the Romans from Germany by the people. The statue has long been a symbol of the purity of the German race.
The Brown Shirts were met by a 10,000 strong crowd, rallied there to protest their presence in the city and the political ideals for which they stand. On hand were 4,500 police to ensure that there was no major trouble as quite often with these marches there is a faction from the extreme left present who are known as, ``the Black Shirts´´.
You can imagine the potential for violence at times when both the extreme left and right come together. People in general here support neither as the Black Shirts are equally violent in their demonstrations against the Brown Shirts with rock throwing and bloody clashes.
There is a professor at the university in Leipzig who studies crowd violence, crowd mentality and non-violent solutions to demonstrations. His solution to the problem was put to the test at this particular protest. As the Brown Shirts walked through the city towards the statue they were showered by thousands of people with confetti. Now in Germany, confetti is not used for weddings and the like. Here they use rice for that purpose. Confetti is only used during, ``Carnival´´, which is the period I have described previously, where people go out on the streets and into shops, restaurants and schools dressed up in fancy dress and perform pantomime etc. to chase away the Winter and herald in the Spring. To shower the Brown Shirts with confetti was to say we think your uniforms are carnival costumes and that you are nothing short of a pack of clowns.
Their march continued to the statue in the city center where they rallied and began to make speeches over a hand held megaphone. Unbeknownst to the Brown Shirt leader giving his political diatribe at the foot of the statue, someone had positioned two large sacks of confetti on top of the statue and as he just got into the swing of things these sacks were opened by remote control and the entire area around the statue was flooded in storm of confetti and the roar of laughter emanating from the 10,000 strong anti-Brown Shirt crowd. Needless to say the humiliation was so complete that they immediately packed up their bits and bobs and goose stepped back to the railway station where they swiftly and gladly departed.
There was no violence on this occasion mainly due to the fact that there were some 14,500 people in opposition to the Brown Shirt brigade of 1300. They would have been hard pressed to win any form of physical confrontation against such overwhelming odds.
I have included this snippet in here as an example of the general attitude of the people here and the fact that there can be non-violent solutions to problems, given some forethought and careful planning. I thought it was just simply magnificent.
These two extremist parties, the Black and Brown Shirts can make life very difficult for the government of the day particularly should the government take a stance to which neither faction adheres. Caught between a rock and a hard place so to speak.
Germans in general are overwhelmingly opposed to Nazism and any form of its return to political strength. There will remain for some years to come the remnants of the old school but the modern generations have little interest in upholding or following the subversive and anti-social nature of these parties.
The Brown Shirts were met by a 10,000 strong crowd, rallied there to protest their presence in the city and the political ideals for which they stand. On hand were 4,500 police to ensure that there was no major trouble as quite often with these marches there is a faction from the extreme left present who are known as, ``the Black Shirts´´.
You can imagine the potential for violence at times when both the extreme left and right come together. People in general here support neither as the Black Shirts are equally violent in their demonstrations against the Brown Shirts with rock throwing and bloody clashes.
There is a professor at the university in Leipzig who studies crowd violence, crowd mentality and non-violent solutions to demonstrations. His solution to the problem was put to the test at this particular protest. As the Brown Shirts walked through the city towards the statue they were showered by thousands of people with confetti. Now in Germany, confetti is not used for weddings and the like. Here they use rice for that purpose. Confetti is only used during, ``Carnival´´, which is the period I have described previously, where people go out on the streets and into shops, restaurants and schools dressed up in fancy dress and perform pantomime etc. to chase away the Winter and herald in the Spring. To shower the Brown Shirts with confetti was to say we think your uniforms are carnival costumes and that you are nothing short of a pack of clowns.
Their march continued to the statue in the city center where they rallied and began to make speeches over a hand held megaphone. Unbeknownst to the Brown Shirt leader giving his political diatribe at the foot of the statue, someone had positioned two large sacks of confetti on top of the statue and as he just got into the swing of things these sacks were opened by remote control and the entire area around the statue was flooded in storm of confetti and the roar of laughter emanating from the 10,000 strong anti-Brown Shirt crowd. Needless to say the humiliation was so complete that they immediately packed up their bits and bobs and goose stepped back to the railway station where they swiftly and gladly departed.
There was no violence on this occasion mainly due to the fact that there were some 14,500 people in opposition to the Brown Shirt brigade of 1300. They would have been hard pressed to win any form of physical confrontation against such overwhelming odds.
I have included this snippet in here as an example of the general attitude of the people here and the fact that there can be non-violent solutions to problems, given some forethought and careful planning. I thought it was just simply magnificent.
These two extremist parties, the Black and Brown Shirts can make life very difficult for the government of the day particularly should the government take a stance to which neither faction adheres. Caught between a rock and a hard place so to speak.
Germans in general are overwhelmingly opposed to Nazism and any form of its return to political strength. There will remain for some years to come the remnants of the old school but the modern generations have little interest in upholding or following the subversive and anti-social nature of these parties.
13.5.04
Asparagus - A National Dish Unsurpassed
Spargel. Strange word but it is in fact asparagus. Here in Darmstadt we are at the centre of Germany’s asparagus growing region. The harvest time is in early Spring and they have Spargel festivals as well as a variety of other activities all relating to continuing glory of the plant.
It is very different to the asparagus that we are used to at home as it is grown under the soil during the Winter months. As a result as soon as it breaks the surface of the soil they dig it up and the resulting plant is white and not green. It tastes pretty much the same but you need to peel off the woody external husk with a vegie peeler before cooking.
Hollandaise sauce is the prefered condiment along with a nice cool glass of local rhine riesling.
It is very different to the asparagus that we are used to at home as it is grown under the soil during the Winter months. As a result as soon as it breaks the surface of the soil they dig it up and the resulting plant is white and not green. It tastes pretty much the same but you need to peel off the woody external husk with a vegie peeler before cooking.
Hollandaise sauce is the prefered condiment along with a nice cool glass of local rhine riesling.
14.4.04
Planning And Plotting To Conquer Europe
Work is going well and I have been making the acquaintence of a good many of the staff here. A really nice group of people and as I mentioned earlier and a wealth of European knowledge and contacts, Today is a public holiday in Britain but not here in Germany.
As such, I sit here waiting for the phone to ring but it has stayed dead most of the day. I have tired of the internet for the moment so I have leapt into this for something different to kill the last 2 hours of the shift. It really is an amazingly laid back job and so long as you really do your job well when you are on line to the customer no one cares how you fill in the void between. Today I have been here six hours and had 3 phone calls making enquiries into accomodation in the south of France. It will be the same again tomorrow no doubt as the hols continue for the U.K..
The really good part about this job is doing the research required for different bookings to make sure that people can get what they need as they want it when they arrive. It is giving me such a good all round over view of Europe and the places to go and not to go.
A good example is Naples in Italy. Absolutely no one wants to book there during the high season holidays. They would rather stay home if they can’t get into Sorrento or Capri. It must be hellish crowded and choked with tourists and backpackers. One for the late Autumn months no doubt when things quieten down a bit. I get similar feed back on a lot of other destinations and it will enable me to plan my upcoming holidays to the right places at the right time of year.
As such, I sit here waiting for the phone to ring but it has stayed dead most of the day. I have tired of the internet for the moment so I have leapt into this for something different to kill the last 2 hours of the shift. It really is an amazingly laid back job and so long as you really do your job well when you are on line to the customer no one cares how you fill in the void between. Today I have been here six hours and had 3 phone calls making enquiries into accomodation in the south of France. It will be the same again tomorrow no doubt as the hols continue for the U.K..
The really good part about this job is doing the research required for different bookings to make sure that people can get what they need as they want it when they arrive. It is giving me such a good all round over view of Europe and the places to go and not to go.
A good example is Naples in Italy. Absolutely no one wants to book there during the high season holidays. They would rather stay home if they can’t get into Sorrento or Capri. It must be hellish crowded and choked with tourists and backpackers. One for the late Autumn months no doubt when things quieten down a bit. I get similar feed back on a lot of other destinations and it will enable me to plan my upcoming holidays to the right places at the right time of year.
27.3.04
Politics Of Interests
I came across an interesting add on that I read the other day.
The British National Party is the U.K. equivilant of the Socialist Partei Deutschland. They have a very large following in the U.K. which is surprising given that the WWII was primarily fought by the British to rid the world of Nazism.
In the latest elections in the U.K. where the BNP was represented in 41 electorates they pulled better than 21% of the votes in all areas. For a radical right wing party to poll so highly across the board it has to be food for thought. Anarchy in the U.K.!
The other political item that came to me a few weeks ago was a statement by the infamous french fascist. Jean Marie Le Pen who stated that the person he most admires in the world today is none other than John Howard.
I wonder if Little Johnnie finds this a tasteful add on to his political C.V.. His notoriety is certainly making waves around the world in terms of human rights and refugee policies.
Maybe the cards will turn and Johnnie will be found to be an illegitimate love child of Pauline Hanson and the local Ipswich fish monger.
The British National Party is the U.K. equivilant of the Socialist Partei Deutschland. They have a very large following in the U.K. which is surprising given that the WWII was primarily fought by the British to rid the world of Nazism.
In the latest elections in the U.K. where the BNP was represented in 41 electorates they pulled better than 21% of the votes in all areas. For a radical right wing party to poll so highly across the board it has to be food for thought. Anarchy in the U.K.!
The other political item that came to me a few weeks ago was a statement by the infamous french fascist. Jean Marie Le Pen who stated that the person he most admires in the world today is none other than John Howard.
I wonder if Little Johnnie finds this a tasteful add on to his political C.V.. His notoriety is certainly making waves around the world in terms of human rights and refugee policies.
Maybe the cards will turn and Johnnie will be found to be an illegitimate love child of Pauline Hanson and the local Ipswich fish monger.
18.3.04
Howard, Blair And St Patrick
I have had some small giggles this month with coined phrases and jokes and oddities. Thomas came up with a gem the other day relating to decisions made and then changed by females and the ratification, or lack of, the logic behind the decision. The word....Femalogical. What a beautiful word which leaves no room for discussion on the subject at hand. No offence meant to my female readers of course.
Roger at the English Club has offered the definition of a Welsh biggamist as, a shepherd.
If you think Little Johnnie Howards recent blunder with losing billions of tax payers money gambling on the currency futures market was something then consider Tony Blairs latest from England. In a country where the road system is near paralysed by congestion and desperately in need of repair country wide, a rail system that is on the verge of non-existance by virtue of delays, track failure and quite simply old age, the Blair government has given massive amounts of funding, that would go a long way towards sorting out some of these nightmares, into the building of a new canal system. England already has more miles of canals than it does major roads. I am sure the average commuter will be overjoyed at knowing that the serene waterways of England are forever safely preserved whilst they sit in their cars, gridlocked.
What is it with these people and the decisions they supposedly make on behalf of their constituants ?
I see Howard’s recent loss of tax payers money as nothing short of outright theft of public monies. If I was working as a public servant and went to the Star City Casino and blew billions of dollars at the gaming tables using government money, I would be locked up and the key thrown away. I do not see any difference in this to what Howard and his cronies have just perpertrated. Imagine what that money could have done to help sort out the refugee crisis, which I may add is nothing short of an international embarrassment.
On a lighter note, yesterday was St. Patricks Day and said celebration was duly held at the English Club last night. The question that has so long baffled the world has always been, ``Just why did St. Patrick drive the snakes out of Ireland ? ´´. The answer was disclosed to me last night amidst the clink of Guiness and Murphy bottles. He drove them out of Ireland because they were too tired to crawl.
Roger at the English Club has offered the definition of a Welsh biggamist as, a shepherd.
If you think Little Johnnie Howards recent blunder with losing billions of tax payers money gambling on the currency futures market was something then consider Tony Blairs latest from England. In a country where the road system is near paralysed by congestion and desperately in need of repair country wide, a rail system that is on the verge of non-existance by virtue of delays, track failure and quite simply old age, the Blair government has given massive amounts of funding, that would go a long way towards sorting out some of these nightmares, into the building of a new canal system. England already has more miles of canals than it does major roads. I am sure the average commuter will be overjoyed at knowing that the serene waterways of England are forever safely preserved whilst they sit in their cars, gridlocked.
What is it with these people and the decisions they supposedly make on behalf of their constituants ?
I see Howard’s recent loss of tax payers money as nothing short of outright theft of public monies. If I was working as a public servant and went to the Star City Casino and blew billions of dollars at the gaming tables using government money, I would be locked up and the key thrown away. I do not see any difference in this to what Howard and his cronies have just perpertrated. Imagine what that money could have done to help sort out the refugee crisis, which I may add is nothing short of an international embarrassment.
On a lighter note, yesterday was St. Patricks Day and said celebration was duly held at the English Club last night. The question that has so long baffled the world has always been, ``Just why did St. Patrick drive the snakes out of Ireland ? ´´. The answer was disclosed to me last night amidst the clink of Guiness and Murphy bottles. He drove them out of Ireland because they were too tired to crawl.
11.2.04
Spin Me A Yarn
I recently came across an article which was reporting on current trends in science. I am not sure of the publication date and to some of you it might well be old news but I shall briefly cover it here.
It brings to light some facts on a really bizarre and quite frankly, very scarey genetic alteration that is being experimented with. It seems that spider web has more far more tensile strength and withstands greater stress than steel or kevlar, the stuff they make bullet proof jackets and F1 motor racing / fighter jet cockpits out of, however the problem is that they can not get enough spider web silk from spiders to make it an economically viable proposition to use as a manufacturing substance.
So some of the boffins down in the lab have been implanting the gene of the spider that creates the web material into sheep so that it can be created along with the milk. The sheep are then milked and the silk web element extracted from the milk in far greater volumes than they had ever previously managed to garner. I personally find it almost too sci-fi even for my likings and the thought of crossing arachnids with the Sunday roast is the stuff of nightmares. Mind you the possibility of 8 legs of lamb to the beast is quirky.
I can imagine Farmer Bloggs going out to muster his sheep for shearing and not being able to find them because they are suspended in webs in between the trees. One can visualize them hanging by there udders from a branch, mad bulging blood shot eyes the size of cart wheels, glowing with a firey insanity like the coals in a smithies forge, flailing their hoofs to maintain vertical attitude as they drop down on unsuspecting sheep dogs, wrap them up in web and hoist them back into the treetops for future torture at their own leisure.
This would probably include entertainment like the dastardly sheep dog yo-yo routine, combining well known feats such as ``Round The World´´ and ``Walking The Dog´´. Sweet revenge ! Let´s face it, sheep were never meant to dangle from trees. It´s just not natural. I guess we might have to call them Flannel Webs or Fleece Fangs.
The article was in Die Zeit newspaper in December last year. You might also find it on the Web.(ha ha).
It brings to light some facts on a really bizarre and quite frankly, very scarey genetic alteration that is being experimented with. It seems that spider web has more far more tensile strength and withstands greater stress than steel or kevlar, the stuff they make bullet proof jackets and F1 motor racing / fighter jet cockpits out of, however the problem is that they can not get enough spider web silk from spiders to make it an economically viable proposition to use as a manufacturing substance.
So some of the boffins down in the lab have been implanting the gene of the spider that creates the web material into sheep so that it can be created along with the milk. The sheep are then milked and the silk web element extracted from the milk in far greater volumes than they had ever previously managed to garner. I personally find it almost too sci-fi even for my likings and the thought of crossing arachnids with the Sunday roast is the stuff of nightmares. Mind you the possibility of 8 legs of lamb to the beast is quirky.
I can imagine Farmer Bloggs going out to muster his sheep for shearing and not being able to find them because they are suspended in webs in between the trees. One can visualize them hanging by there udders from a branch, mad bulging blood shot eyes the size of cart wheels, glowing with a firey insanity like the coals in a smithies forge, flailing their hoofs to maintain vertical attitude as they drop down on unsuspecting sheep dogs, wrap them up in web and hoist them back into the treetops for future torture at their own leisure.
This would probably include entertainment like the dastardly sheep dog yo-yo routine, combining well known feats such as ``Round The World´´ and ``Walking The Dog´´. Sweet revenge ! Let´s face it, sheep were never meant to dangle from trees. It´s just not natural. I guess we might have to call them Flannel Webs or Fleece Fangs.
The article was in Die Zeit newspaper in December last year. You might also find it on the Web.(ha ha).