Blogs from Germany, Europe - page 952

it's my last day here today. i leave for dresden tomorrow. i have decided that i don't really like berlin. not that it's done anything bad to me but it's just not that pretty. it's all pretty new and is still really just one big construction site. not all that aesthetically appealing!!!! i have had a very interesting few days here though. i've decided the germans are all nuts!!! well i don't know if they always are but with this Turnfest that's going on at the moment, i've seen some interesting things. the first night i arrived, the concert was part of the turnfest as well. the next day i did the walking tour of berlin. i'm so glad i did. massive information overload but i learnt lots of things. i don't know how much i'll ... read more

Hey, guys… good news! One of my Resopal design competition entries placed second! Besides being newly rich and world renowned, I will be published in an upcoming issues of “mt international” magazine, and my design has the possibility of going into production. Because I’m not sure everyone understands, lemme explain… The Resopal company is a subsidiary of the American company Wilsonart, and makes laminate surface materials (just like Formica does). They approached FH-Coburg’s Innenarchitektur department (that’d be my school) about having the students design a basic pattern that incorporates their logo, and that could be used in one of 3 applications: as an overlay to an existing color or pattern on the finish (front) side of the installed laminate, as a design on the ... read more

Yesterday was a lot of fun biking in the Alps albeit once again, quite dangerous flying down gravel paths. Pretty much anything fun here involves danger but it was a good time, canyoning was my favorite sport that I did here. But after 4 days I was once again ready to head off somewhere new, and less expensive. Switzerland was ridiculously expensive, no seriously really really expenisive. We got up at 6am this morning after not going to sleep until around 2am after passing around a bottle of Jager with some of the other people at the hostel but i wanted to make the 7am train to Munich. Actually it was pretty sweet because we just slept at the hostel without paying last night because theres no room keys or anything and so many people work ... read more

We said goodbye to Paris, on the 13th, and boarded a comfortable, second class French carriage on a train heading for Munich. In Germany, at Mannheim, we had to change to another train. We noted that this train left precisely on time - give or take 10 seconds or so. Unfortunately, our faith in German efficiency was soon to be destroyed. Our train broke down and we had to disembark and wait for the next train, at a small station 10 minutes outside of Stuttgart. The next train was overcrowded and we could not get on. We did manage to board the one after that, but had to endure 2 hours sitting on our bags next to the toilet. Thankfully a German Theology student took us under her wing. We could not understand any of the ... read more

We have all spent much of the past several weeks -- actually starting at the beginning of the year, as the front reached Bavaria early in 1945 with the extension of the aerial bombing campaign -- remembering the end of the German Grab at Global Dominion (sometimes referred to as the First and Second World Wars). Setting out from Munich, the trip to each event was shorter than the one before, as the front moved south during those weeks. The remembrances reached a kind of crescendo in the end of April with the commemorations of the liberations of Bavaria's two concentration camps, Dachau and Flossenbuerg, and Bavaria's major cities, and then concluded with three different observations of the end of the war on May 8. Throughout this process, mainstream politicians and commentators have been generally responsible ... read more