Sundays in Germany are generally quiet affairs. The shops are all closed and, from what we can gather, Germans spend the day either out walking or inside quietly reading Goethe, as we seldom hear anything from our neighbors. Occasionally, though, towns will have Sunday markets. A few weeks ago, our little town of Speicher and the much larger nearby town of Wittlich, each had Sunday markets.
Most of them are pretty similar--you have a number of food stalls and a number of people selling various wares set up in the town square. The difference between such a market Sunday and a festival Sunday, is that the stores will also be open. We went over to Wittlich to their market first. It was a nice walk around and we poked our heads into a few of the stores, including a small mall.
We saw a few great items, first these organ grinders, who played some fun music.
And then, something that I have never seen, remote control semis. I wonder if you can use these to practice for your NETTTS courses.
The following weekend there was yet another festival. This was a more traditional festival and included a lot of farm equipment. I got to see a milking machine! I haven't seen one of those since the last Hopkinton Fair I attended. This festival was in Bitburg, home of Bitburger beer, so there was certainly beer to be had. (For you X-Men fans, it was the beer Magnito ordered in Argentina in X-Men: First Class.) It was a chilly afternoon, so we only had the one, before working our way home.
Once home, Jason realized it was time for the St. Patrick's Day parade in Southie. And, after a quick search, he found out he could watch it streaming on the web. With commercials! I have to say, after being away from the northeast for the past year and hearing mostly Southern (on-base) and German (coworkers) accents, it was a bit jarring to hear those broad As and missing Rs. My, you folks talk funny. :)
Jason, enjoying the Parade as St. Patrick intended: with a beer
As the weather improves, we are getting more excited about getting out and about. With all the castles we have seen in the past year, one may think that we are running low on options--you would be wrong! We decided to take a drive out to the Rhine, and check out some of the castles in the vicinity.
One of the great things about driving on the back roads here in Germany is that we'll be driving along and one of us will go "Woh! Look at that castle!" And on this trip out, we had just such an experience in Kastellaun. Jason, who was driving, was the one who noticed the ruined castle up on the hillside. We stopped, parked and then walked up the hill to the castle.
As with many of the castles in Germany, this one was a ruin and had only a couple walls and a turret remaining. While we were up on the hill admiring the castle remains, we ran into a wedding that was happening in the restaurant near the castle. We even got to see a Champagne cork fly and shared a smile with the opener of the bottle. Unfortunately, we were not invited to the festivities (nor were we really dressed for them), so we walked back into town and enjoyed some Kaffee und Kuechen (coffee and cake) before heading back out on the road.
Kastellaun Castle Ruin
Wedding Party
Our ultimate destination was St. Goar and Burg Rheinfels, the largest castle overlooking the Rhine. The castle was also a ruin, but still had many of its walls and a substantial number of buildings left. It was very cool, with lots of rooms and areas to walk through and even some tunnels that we got to explore with a candle. It would be a great place to go back to in the summer with a picnic.
Jason and Burg Rheinfels
Instead of heading straight home from Burg Rheinfels, we drove up to Koblenz. I have spent a lot of time at the Koblenz Hauptbahnhof (main train station), as the train line I take to get to other parts of Germany for work generally requires that I change there. But, I have not seen anything else of Koblenz. Jason suggested the stop, thinking there would be a park/monument or something else interesting at the intersection of the Rhein and Mosel rivers in Koblenz. And boy, was he right.
The intersection of these rivers is known as the Deutsches Eck (German corner). Located there is an enormous statue. ENORMOUS. The statue is of German Emperor William I. I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia page I linked to above, as it gives the history of the statue and the monument. The statue that is there now is a replacement of the version that was destroyed during WWII and the Wikipedia page includes some photos of the statue that was there before and what it looked like after being destroyed.
Statue of William I at the Deutsches Eck
To give you some idea of scale, the picture below shows Jason standing next to a carved eagle which takes up only the lower half of the lower wall between the stairs in the picture above. The only other thing I can think of that impressed me so much by its size might be the Lincoln Memorial, but this monument may be a bit more impressive, as there is nothing else even close to its size anywhere nearby.
Jason, providing scale
We walked around the park by the monument a bit before working our way back home along the Mosel. We stopped in Cochem (star of at least one previous blog post) for dinner, enjoyed a good German meal and went on our way.
A note to all US readers! The images and videos below do not take place in your culture! And thereby do not carry the cultural baggage associated with such images in the US.
We are starting to see the beginnings of spring here in central Europe and one indication of this was Buergbrennen, a festival in Luxembourg City to mark the first Sunday in Lent and the coming of spring. The festival consists of a torchlight procession from the cliffs where most of the city sits to the valley below. In the valley is a large cross which contains, what looks like, dry Christmas trees. After a bit of ceremony, the members of the procession toss their torches into the pile of hay at the base of the cross and the whole thing goes up in a big ball of flame.
Torchlight Procession
Cross prior to Flames
Cross in full Flaming Mode
Of course, since this is central Europe, you can get a waffle or two, a beer and even soup from the stands brought in for such festivities. We found out about the festival through the ex-pat group in Luxembourg and had the chance to meet some Americans and other non-natives in the area. Despite the knowledge that this is a traditional festival for this region, I have to say, we still felt a little uncomfortable gathering around and watching a cross burn--it is amazing how deep-seated cultural identifications can be.
We had a long weekend for President's Day and decided to spend it visiting some friends in Berlin. A good friend of mine from undergrad is currently in Berlin with her husband who is a visiting researcher at the Max Plank Institute. He is spending the time working on his book, while my friend is working on finishing up her PhD. Both are history of science people with science undergrad degrees, so it made for a nice weekend of low-key occasional nerding out.
Berlin is a bit of a trek from our location in Germany. We did some investigation into plane fares, flight times and other options and decided on taking the City Night Line to get to Berlin. We had, a number of years ago, done a trip on the West Coast of the US where we booked a sleeping compartment on Amtrak for our leg from Portland to Sacramento. It was reasonably comfortable, and we figured that if it was okay on the American rails, the German version would be quite nice.
We were not disappointed. The City Night Line had a similar layout as Amtrak, with a two-story car and bunk beds, with the rooms just big enough for the two beds. Frankly, that didn't matter so much, as we had a 6 hour ride, boarding the train at 1am and arriving in Berlin at 7:30am. We were only worried about sleeping, which, I am happy to report, we did quite well.
One thing about life in Europe, is that striking can occasionally interrupt, even in a very business friendly country as Germany. We arrived in Berlin and there was a transit strike on one of the main train lines. We had been warned ahead of time, so it wasn't a big deal and we were able to quickly find a cab to take us to our friends' apartment. They were just getting up as we arrived, so we joined them in some breakfast and coffee, chatted and caught up, before figuring out what we would do for the day.
After some investigation in the guidebook, we decided on a walk around the city and visit the Dali Museum. In our walk from our friends' apartment, we walked up past a Soviet War Memorial (that statue is just as huge as it seems) and to the Brandenburg Gate. This was our first trip to Berlin, so we didn't have a very good sense yet of the historic layout of the city, but, as we found out in later museums and from reading, the Brandenburg Gate was right on the edge of the Eastern and Western sections of the city.
Brandenburg Gate
After passing through the gate, Jason found a bit of Boston, right next to the Museum: The Kennedys.
Jason contemplates ordering a "Regulah"
From the Brandenburg Gate, we walked to Potsdamer Platz, which was, 22 years ago, a no-man's land between East and West Berlin. Now it is a rather open area, with a number of buildings and an underground train terminal. It was here we found the Dali Museum. The exhibits mostly contained collections of drawings with a few sculpture pieces and the experimental film Un Chien Andalou. You can click below to watch the film yourself--a couple notes, it is silent and does not have a plot as such. Oh, and there is an eye slicing scene. Not a movie for everyone, but I enjoyed it.
The next day we spent some time at the Berlin Wall Memorial. The subway station near the memorial had a great display on the way the subway worked in the divided city of Berlin, including the various escape attempts and "ghost" stations. From what we read, it was pretty amazing, with the subway being split into two and trains being operated by the East, but through the West. As soon as the East realized that people were escaping through the tunnels, they bricked them up, where possible, and put armed guards where it wasn't.
The memorial itself was very interesting. Our guide book noted that it was the longest length of the Berlin Wall that was still standing. They also had a section that recreated the wall and the no-man's land between the East and the West. From the top of a tower, you could look down into this area and see what it would have looked like 22 years ago. Man, what a crazy time.
Recreated Section of No-Man's Land Between East and West Berlin
In the evening we went with our friends to see a movie that was part of the Berlin Film Festival. They had a selection of movies that were representative of Soviet film making. We ended up deciding on Gibel Sensazii (Loss of Sensation), which is a bizarre movie about how engineers are doomed in the evil capitalist countries. It included robots that were controlled by a saxophone. Yes. You read that right. With a saxophone. Unfortunately, I cannot find any videos to link to that show that. You'll have to keep an eye out for yourself!
On our third day in Berlin, our friends had to go into the office, as they work German schedules and did not get President's Day off. Jason and I went and did a bit of exploring, stopping by first Alexanderplatz, which was firmly in the East before reunification. Alexanderplatz was to some extent a Soviet show case, so there is some of that fantastic 1960s looking futuristic architecture that you see in Tomorrowland at Disney World. Except here, people lived and worked in it.
The iconic item in Alexanderplatz is the Fersehturm (television tower). We didn't get a chance to go up for a view, but did get a good look at it against the (mostly) blue winter sky. It is quite a sight.
Me and the Fernsehturm
Our last sight to see in Berlin was the Neues Museum. The museum was heavily damaged during the Second World War and was generally left to decay by the East until the mid-60s, when they started some restoration. The restoration stopped at reunification, but was started again a while after, with the museum finally reopening in 2009. The most notable display there is the bust of Nefertiti, which was pretty amazing to see in person. This, like the Elgin Marbles I discussed in my last post, has controversy surrounding its presence in Germany. The Egyptians would like it back and have been asking for a number of years for it. The Germans like it and want to keep it. Much like the case with the Elgin Marbles and Greece, it is unlikely it will happen any time soon, if only due to other pressing matters that are occupying the leaders of Egypt.
We had decided a month or so ago to take a trip to London for Jason's birthday. This idea was precipitated by hearing that one of the comics on a podcast we listen to regularly, was doing a set of shows in London which overlapped with Jason's 34th birthday. We decided to make it a long weekend and flew into London from Luxembourg on Friday.
After finding our apartment--booked through AirBandB, though this time not over a yoga studio--we dropped our stuff and went out for a walk around the city. Our first stop was at the Handle House Museum, as it was in the general direction of our evening activities and was open a bit later than some of the other museums. Handle was born in Germany, but lived for about 30 years in London, where he did a fair amount of composing. The museum was small, but had a number of nice touches, including a actual harpsichordist practicing in Handle's practice room. We were informed by the docent that she would be playing in Bucharest the following weekend. Ah, the life of an international harpsichordist!
That evening, after a fantastic dinner at a Malaysian restaurant, we saw the comic who spurred our trip: Andy Zaltzman. And I even got in a heckle (frankly, he should have known better, he asked how much we paid for the tickets and I yelled out "too much"), which resulted in a short conversation with him from our seat during the show. After the show, he hung around and we shook his hand and chatted a bit...no hard feelings that we could tell!
On Saturday morning, we spent some time walking around the city, following a walk suggested in our Lonely Planet guide through the "Square Mile"--the oldest part of London, which was the location of the first Roman settlement. The walk started near St. Paul's Cathedral, who's font yard is the location of an Occupy encampment. An interesting item regarding this encampment: the cannon chancellor of St. Paul's Cathedral had resigned late last fall because he refused to be involved in any actions to remove the protesters, saying that to evict protesters would lead to "violence in the name of the Church".
Occupy London encampment in front of St. Paul's
We did take a step inside the cathedral, but the admission price was a bit steep, so we decided to enjoy the view from the outside. Our walk continued to the Monument to the Great Fire of London, which you can climb to the top of and see some great views of the city, including St. Paul's. The fire had started in a bakery--a royal bakery, nonetheless--close by to the location of the Monument. The view from the top was quite good--we had clear weather as you can see--though hazy.
The Monument to the Great Fire of London
View of London toward St.Paul's from the top of the Monument
The remainder of the walk took us through a number of market areas (unfortunately, not open at the time of our walk) and at the end we found ourselves in Whitechapel, home to Jack the Ripper's murders. For the afternoon, we headed over to the British Museum. When we were last in London a few years ago, we had really wanted to see the Lindow Man, a body found in a bog in England back in the mid-80s. Unfortunately at the time, his area of the museum was under renovations, so we were unable to see it. This time we were more fortunate, and made our way straight to the exhibit. And it was pretty cool--the body is about 2000 years.
Bog Man!
We also visited the Elgin Marbles, which are part of a set of marbles that were formerly part of the Parthenon in Greece. They were taken (with permission of the Ottomans) from Athens by the British ambassador around the year 1800 and given to the British Museum for display. There has been an on-going debate between the UK and Greece on where these sculptures should be, with each side saying, "we deserve to have them". The British Museum has a little pamphlet describing their position, which is available for reading in the gallery where the marbles are displayed--I personally think their claims of displaying them in context with the history (supported by other plundered artifacts) of the rest of the world are a bit dubious, but due to Greece's current financial status, the return of the marbles does not seem likely in the near future.
Elgin Marbles
We needed to kill a bit of time before our evening activity and dinner, so we stopped by the National Gallery, and looked through their collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings. Highlights include the forth version of Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Manet's Execution of Maximilian, which had been cut up into pieces (partially by Manet, for unexplained reasons) and then reassembled later by Degas. For you Bostonians, I just found in searching for the link above, that another version of this painting is on display at the MFA.
For our evening entertainment, we saw Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, the longest running stage play, with over 24,500 performances. It was a good show--and a thing to see when in London. Due to tradition, I can't tell you who-done-it, but it is in the Wikipedia article I linked to above, so, for those of you who wish not to know--Spoiler Alert!
Jason was headed out on Sunday, while I was headed north in England for work. We decided to get dim sum for brunch in London's Chinatown--and it was rather fantastic. I had not eaten such good Chinese since I was last in Boston.
Since we had some some adventures the preceding week and more to come in following weekends, we decided to spend a weekend home to relax. This was during the cold snap here in Europe. Our winter had been incredibly mild for a couple of New Englanders up to that point--then familiar icy grip of winter set in. We didn't get much in the way of snow, but we did have about two weeks of the low-to-mid teens (degrees F) and I had to start wearing my ski jacket around instead of my normal wool outer layer.
Due to the cold, we spent much of our weekend inside, catching up on laundry, lounging and otherwise relaxing. Of course, one does get cabin fever after being inside for a number of days, so we ventured out for a walk in the cold late in the day on Sunday. We took our usual walk through the fields near our apartment. There were no cows out, but we did pass at least two or three people out walking their dogs. Fun fact: you must play with your dog in Germany at least two times a day for at least one hour each time. (I see our downstairs neighbor doing this in the form of a walk at least twice a day. They have a cute little beagle named Joe.)
Jason doing his best to keep warm--check out our long shadows
The sun was setting as we came back from our walk. Though it was nice to get out and stretch our legs for a bit in the cold, it was even nicer to come back inside, warm those legs up and hunker down on the couch for the remainder of the evening. Luckily, it has warmed up, though it was nice to get a reminder--in retrospect--that it is indeed winter.
We spent the last weekend in January in Munich. I was in the area for work for the end of the week, then headed out to Austria on Sunday late in the day, so it was a convenient trip. Jason flew down from the Luxembourg airport (he, like me, is now converted to flying Luxair--you get a sandwich, a real, good, sandwich, and a drink on a one hour flight in economy--the only way to fly!) and we met up at the apartment that we rented through AirBnB (if you aren't familiar with AirBnB, it is a site where people can put their extra rooms or even their whole apartment up for rent for a day or a month--we've used it a number of times here in Europe and it is pretty great). The apartment happened to be over a yoga studio. This was our second apartment rented through AirBnB that was over a yoga studio...the lasts one being in France. I wonder if that is a hint from the universe...
For our first evening, we walked around Munich near the Marienplatz and came across a rather good group of street musicians. More of a street quintet. It is hard to see in the video but the flute player appeared to have a broken finger. Talk about suffering for art. After we watched the group for a bit, we found some food that is hard for us to find in our hinterland: Japanese noodle soup. It was good and hit the spot on the chilly night.
The next day we walked over to the Bavarian National Museum, which is one of my favorite types of museums: those with rambling halls and a wide variety of a stuff that is well curated. We spent about 3 hours checking our the wide variety of stuff: from a Tiffany lamp to the statue of Death shown in the photo below. Death, here, is from a clock tower and the bone in his right hand rang the bell. I kinda want this in my living room.
Death Rings for his Supper
We took a walk from the museum to the downtown area, passing by one of Munich's larger parks. I had remembered reading briefly in our guidebook about the fact that you could go surfing at one of the parks. They have an artificial wave built up on one of the streams, and people grab their little surfboards and go at it. I was not expecting, though, for anyone to be out this time of year, especially in the 20-25 degree F weather that Munich was seeing that weekend. Well, as you can see in the video below, my expectations were wrong. These guys were out in their full-body wet suits, many with hoods, to surf in weather that was only borderline-good for being outdoors.
We spent a couple hours on Sunday at the Deutsches Museum, which is another museum of my ilk, with a huge amount of exhibit space and well curated collections. I was reminded of the Henry Ford Museum, which Jason and I had visited about a year ago in Dearborn, MI, but the Deutsches Museum was organized far better than the Henry Ford and did not have a vague smell of hot dogs from the Wienermobile permeating all the exhibits.
For those of you who are a fan of the Theater of Electricity at the Museum of Science in Boston, the Deutsches Museum had a bit of a smaller venue, but a similar show. We walked in in the middle, just as the host was getting his last shock in his Faraday cage (the ball on the left in the linked photo). Don't worry folks! He was fine--the Faraday cage protects you from the shocks. Once the host climbed out of the cage, there were a series of high voltage demos, that went as follows:
Host: "Achtung!"
Crowd: (Covers ears)
Electricity: "ZAP! POP!"
Displayed Item that was Just Hit by the Electricity: (Catches on fire)
