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.