Cars!

These are some of the more uncommonly seen cars in the USA, but really common in Europe... they always get the cool ones!!!


a cool smart for 2 with the sporty half windshield and no roof!


a cool flat green smart with sliding rag top roof



VW cross polo, its like a lifted bigger polo SUV...



VW polo GTI really cool! i think we are getting these in the states next year!


This is a sweet Alfa Rameo hatches... I like these alot too!





VW Golf plus, like a bigger taller golf




Cool VW Crafter, like a big work truck... we aint got these back home



Maseratti!



nice little Mercedes vans, A1 i think


A late MKI polo i think,



Cool new Honda Civic hatches



Little Nissan Micras, they are cool


MKVI Golf all decked out in flags for the German Fußball games! these cars were everywhere flying their flags proud!





VW Scirocco, these are some awesome cars! i really wish we had them back home too



BMW 1 series wagon



VW Sharan VR6, kinda ugly...



and one of my favorite colors! Dove blue euro van (transporter)

Well im kind of VW biased but here is a small sample of what normal Europeans drive... no big SUV suburbans or giant jacked up Ford trucks anywhere!!!

Memorilizing the past

This is a difficult subject that the German people have to face with their particular history. When most people think of Germany in general they think of Nazis and the terrible things that their leader did to the rest of the world and the people that lived there. When we think of Germany we see the images of concentration camps full of Jewish people starving to death and the being gassed and burned alive! But that was only a certain time period, however recent; there have been many other things that have happened in Germany too.


So the German people have to decide what they would like to remember about their selves and what they would like for the rest of the world that comes to visit will remember when they come. I think that they have preserved all that they can of the troubled Nazi past; we visited many WWII memorials that were both sided and unbiased. They tried to display everything that had happened during and before the war. We visited Dachau, the first concentration camp, started in 1933, which was very well preserved with the barracks that the prisoners had to live in, but we also think of only the Jewish population that was held there. In fact the camps were started to hold mostly the opposition to the Nazi party. They also held homosexuals, gypsies, and yes Jews. But in Berlin we visited many memorials that were to the murdered people of the Holocaust, the memorials were not only to the Jews but to all people that were killed at the camps. I think that Germany has done a great job of helping us remember the past but also letting us remember it in a calm, more relaxed way. For example the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, by Peter Eisenman, which is just a simple formation of perfectly straight blocks protruding from the ground. This place has no pictures or writing anywhere, it is just a memorial site for peace of mind and to reflect on why this memorial is here.



the memorial by Peter Eisenman

Another even more recent part of Germany’s past is when the country was divided after the war, here we find that the whole country was split down the middle making East and West Germany. This was a rough time for the Germans when they split families, friends, and relationships between people. The westerns were usually allowed to cross the borders and visit their friends and family however the Easterners were under stricter rule and weren’t allowed to cross the borders to West Germany or to many other countries. The East was under communist rule and when we think of communism we feel the strict rule of being told what to do, what to were, and how to act. This was the way of the East but they had everything they needed to survive too. They were without a few of the luxuries of the west, such as bananas and other restricted goods. After the fall of the wall many of the Easterners came to west for a better life and to reunite with their old family and friends from before war. There can still be a tension that is felt between the two sides of the country from the older residence, but I felt that it had been mostly resolved with the reunification of the country almost 20 years ago now. They have managed to save a section of the wall with the tower and the space of “no man’s land” that is always there to remind them of an earlier time.



the section of the wall that has been preserved, picture taken from the West side.

I think that the German people have done a great job in realizing that they cannot change their past and have decided to let the rest of the world see what they have done too. There are many museums, memorials, and monuments to what has happened in this country for the past 80 years, but they have also managed to restore and rebuild many of their older castles too. This reminds us that less than 100 years ago the German people were ruled by kings and noble royalty. So for this to be such a new country is the sense of democracy, I think they have done well in preserving the past.



the Hohenzollern castle

The Wall Jumper

The Wall Jumper was a book that was set in the time of the Berlin Wall. It is a collection of stories told from a western Berliner who meets many people and listens to their ways of life and then he tells of their recollections and the troubles they have had along the way. I think that in the book we find many people that have had to go through the separation of Berlin and that do not know how to act to the new situation that they have been put in. We meet many different people from both the east and west that think that the other side of the country is better, the narrator tells us these two Eastern brothers that devise a system with a rope to cross the wall several times to go and watch the new westerners movies that were playing. But he also tells of a western man that was supposed to marry an Eastern woman but she kept standing him up, however he started to notice the cheaper prices of the East and the more structured way of the East and he fell in love with it and finally after three years decided to move there and start his life again. I think for the people of Germany, and Berlin especially, it was a hard time for them to figure out what was going on in their country and what their government wanted them to do. I can see how both the East and the Westerners could see that the grass was greener on the other side. The east under communism and the West was capitalist both being drastically different made the people strive for what they did not have and made them want the forbidden.

weekend in Meckenheim

Well this past weekend i visited my friend and her family in Meckenheim and had a blast! Unfortunately it was like a 5 hour train ride to Bonn so i got there late on Thursday night. The next Friday i went to school with her and felt really weird because they all spoke German all the time and one of her classes was French class too. So that class i was totally messed up because i know very little German and absolutely no French! But it was cool for me to experience what it was like to go to her school, she is in the 12th grade and she has one more year until she will graduate.
So later that day we drove out to a place that overlooked the Rhine river about 20 minutes away from her house that was pretty spectacular.




And later that night we went to the giant field, next to the school, where all the local kids showed up and we just sat and listened to music, danced, and drank the night away. I think that in America we need to adopt some of the cultures of the Europe and to instill them in our lives. Here in Germany they have these huge multipurpose parks where anyone can come and do what ever they want... as long as they don't get to loud and trash the place up. And like drinking in public, i think that it should be legal to do this, just like here in Germany. Needless to say i learned some new German drinking games that night! :)



just a pic of before people got to the party field

The next morning her older brother was graduating from high school too, and of corse i wanted to come witness this happening and im glad i did. Of course it was all in German but it was different... they had lots of live music from some of the graduation senoirs and they had a little skit where the teachers of the class stood on stage with little rabbit posters and another teacher came by and fed the rabbits... i am assuming this was representing the teachers giving something back to the students as knowledge and growth... But after that we all headed to the Seit river for lunch and then stuck our feet in the water and skipped rocks like a family thing.

Later that night we were invited to a huge 4 person birthday party for some of Lisa's friends which was held in a warehouse that had been converted into live band stage and dance floor, and outside this place was a buffet and bar with tables and tons of food for all the guests. I have never been to suck a cool big function where there were 150 friends all together parting and dancing in a warehouse! That was a total blast!

And then came Sunday!!! the battle Royal!!! Germany vs. England!!! We started that morning with a traditional Germany breakfast of rolls, cheese, butter, cheese spread, and strawberry jam(which we picked the strawberries Friday morning, so it was fresh) and sat around and talked for a while. Then we headed to the soccer field with some friends and played soccer for about 2 hours before the game!!! I have never played soccer before but i have a new appreciation for the sport now!!! I was really tired and worn out when we stopped but we headed home and showered then got the house ready for the game! They don't have a tv in the living room but her father had a projector that we put on the wall and hooked a big sound system up to and it was great. I think there was about 35 people that came over to watch the game and they all went crazy!!! Im just glad that Germany won so that i didn't see 35 people go ballistic about a loss! Haha! But it was great fun and Germany beat England 4 to 1 and everything was fine. Immediately after the game all the young people jumped into the cars(me included) and drove around the city waiving and yell with pride to everybody that Deutschland had won!!! We must have driven around for 30 minutes screaming and yelling until i went hoarse. After this unfortunately i had to catch the train back home and tell this new city and family goodbye and head back to Berlin...




a typical German back yard of a townhouse..

Stuttgart

OK. Just to get an idea of Stuttgart our hotel and the Porsche factory are in the industrial section so there was a lack of food and drink around, we got into Stuttgart at like 10:30 when the grocery stores were closed and we made a mad dash around to try and find a Döner or something before they closed. We found a guy that told us to get off at the next subway stop and there will be food but we didn't want to pay for the subway so we decided to walk… bad idea! We must have walked down the road and subway tracks for a good 2 miles before we found anything that resembled light and civilization! But while crossing the S-bahn line Jeff sees off in the distance a flashing blue open sign so we run to the stand… When we get there the owner has already taken the meat off the spinner and only saved enough meat for one Döner, but he made us up some French fries and we all shared in the small feast! When we are almost finished the owner comes out to ask us where we were staying... we tell him and he asks us if are going to take the train back... and of course we say yes. He then informs us that i will come in 1 minute!!! So we throw our chairs back into there stack and clean off the table and start sprinting back to the S-bahn stop and we realize that we need the train on the otherside of the station as its just pulling up... So again we sprint up the stairs and over a foot bridge about two stories high and run for the train! I make it to the very last step and trip, falling on the knees and hip skidding about 7-10 feet on my knees and jump up and still make it on the train, however Jeff wasnt that lucky and just as he was about to stick his arm through the door, they slam shut and he is left there waiting 30 minutes for the next train, so this is just to let you get the same feeling of Stuttgart that we had the first 3 hours we were there!



But on the cars!!! I, of course, liked the Porsche museum better due to the fact that its VW’S first cousin and both were made by the same man. And yes the museum had an old vw beetle in it just to show the connection between the two cars and the man, Ferdinand Porsche. I thought that all the cars were very interesting and they had some super early rare Porsche there, many being the same ones that Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche drove, which was really cool.










Then we were off to the Mercedes museum which was a beautiful building set on a little hill so that it stood up higher than the surrounding buildings, and it was a neat double helix design that was fun to walk through. It also had a smoke removal system that was really cool and i think the first building to ever have something like it. This double helix design basically looked like a cam shaft with two sets of lobes being offset like on a camshaft of a four stroke engine.

Well we finally finished our long bus excursion around south Germany. It was fast paced and we saw a lot of new cities and visited a lot of cool places. My favorite perhaps was the huge castle we visited on top of a small mountain. This was the last kings family castle and was only for show... the Hohenzollern's never stayed a night in the castle it was to show their wealth and also a fortress for them if they had to flee from a war... It is not a palace like most of the castles here. it has a mote and cannons for fortification in case of a battle. Anyway it is a beautiful castle and the view from the top and around the grounds is amazing!

Bauhaus

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Bauhaus: I consider this the end of the traditional style of architecture dating to pre 1920's... I understand the ideas and wants of Walter Gropius, he needed to build housing for the post war German cities and he also designed furniture that was comfortable, cheaper, and lighter better materials. I think this was the end of the huge wooden houses, peaked roofs, and that good old homily feel. Anyway this is just my two cents on the development of architecture and just like everything else it needed to be changed and redesigned... it was evolved with type of building by Gropius.

My Palace and Castle

Just to start off i can see why the royalty of Germany has always had their summer homes here! This is by far the most beautiful place Ive been! EVER! I was awestruck by the first palace and grounds there... It was truly amazing and grand and huge!

There is nothing to talk about here, you just have to come here and walk the grounds to experience everything! Sanssouci Schloß was the summer get away for the royal Hohenzollern family for many years. I can't explain everything this place does for your body and mind... I would like to live here for the rest of my life... thats all there is to it.
















































After that amazing place we went to one of my favorite buildings, a small castle!!! I have never been to one but this one caught my eye on the inside! I was actually half unrestored and mostly original on the outside, it had that old feel of castle that somehow invited you into it. It was small enough to be charming and not to extravagant like Sanssouci was. This place had a hell of a grounds too! We got off on the wrong bus stop and ended up walking up and down these bike trails twisting and winding through the woods and catching a glimpse of the castle tower from a far many times, and each time we saw it is was in a new direction, giving us the feeling that we weren't any closer than before. But when we got there i think it was worth the hike to get there!