Still life: Walking Stick with (real) Moss. At the restaurant at the Lago pool complex.
Children’s pool.
Olympic size (50 meter) pool.
Might just be a cute cup except . . .
. . . this is a cat cafe.
In a court room in City Hall. Coats of Arms of the guilds.
The Bakers’ coat of arms. Present City Hall was erected in 1520 in Gothic and Renaissance style.
Former city hall.
The first of the Broel Towers was built in 1385 to control traffic on the Leie River. The second was built in 1415 and used as an armory. They are all that remain of the medieval wall.
Belfry of Kortrijk (1307), one of the city’s symbols.
St. Martin’s church. Already a worship site in 650 c. e.
St. Martin’s
Our gracious hostess’s car.
At Cologne Central Station
The Koelner Dom
Cologne Station
Belgian landscape, approaching Kortrijk
Market square near our Kortrijk hotel.
First coal mine opened here in 1847. In 1993 the coal and coking plant was closed. This is now a part of the Ruhr Museum with over 6,000 exhibits. The Ruhr area has been transforming itself a modern metropolis, with industry and much outdoor recreation. All religious groups have found acceptance.
One small area of the coal mine.
About thirteen of the 250 coking furnace, which once produced 11,000 tons of coke a day.
A view from the very long escalator.
Industrial cable for raising mined coal to the surface.
A helicopter had landed on the grounds.
In Germany cemetery graves are not maintained in perpetuity so many choose cremation for their loved ones. Placed in biodegradable urns, the ashes may be buried by a memorial tree. Here is one such site. More than one urn may be buried near a particular tree.
The last person named was a dear friend of Ingrid and Peter.
Giant plantain by an almost thousand year old church near Schloss Cappenberg. Note the branch support.
Waiting for traditional four o’clock coffee and cake. If one is a little too late, all the cake will be gone. As our friend paraphrased it, “Life is long, cake is short.”
Stele’s by Marko Pogacnik, born Yugoslavia 1944.
Another of Pogacnik’s steles on the church grounds.
The Thinker.
When Peter wondered aloud if they were at the right track, Ingrid told him, he must put faith in the system. The loud speaker then blared and everyone stood and ran for the staircase. The departure track had been changed from #6 to #2. As soon as Ingrid and Peter arrived at track #2, the loud speaker blared and everyone stood and ran back to track #6. As soon as Ingrid and Peter were seated, a passenger told them they were in the wrong seats. Ingrid confidently showed him their tickets, but they were for a different rail car. With only a few minutes left before departure, the ran to the correct car. All was then well. Peter is now permitted to express concerns regarding the German Railway system.
Wolfsburg. VW’s main factory.
Germany plans to have all green energy by 2038.
America artist Richard Serra’s sculpture Terminal greeted Ingrid and Peter as they exited the train station in Bochum.
7th or 8th century ruins in the Schloss Park, Bochum.
Peter and Ingrid with friends.
Richard Serra’s sculpture comes alive. Situation Kunst Museu. Bochum
Sitting monk. Japaneses. Wood. Kamakura Period 1324 -1439. Realistic without flourishes.
King’s head. Nigeria. Bronze. 500 years old.
American Gothic. 100 years old.
Hamburger station converted into a museum where we Peter, Ingrid, and friends saw the exhibit.
Dunes. 1935
After Nolde was criticized for his abstract religious paintings he began a series about the Vikings. This picture was reproduced from a water color he had done.
Poppies and Red Evening Clouds. 1943
Sea and Dark Clouds. 1936
LIght Dahlias and Sunflowers. After the Nazi’s banned his paintings he abandoned figurative work and focused only on images of flowers.
Although he remained antisemitic, he did undergo the process of de-Nazification.
In 2009 the full story of Nolde’s Nazi membership became widely known as well as his having made money during the ban. He purged his writings of his antisemitic thoughts. This painting, on loan, hung in Angela Merkel’s office (the chancellor’s office) for many years, but had to be returned to the Nolde Foundation when the story came out.
Removing old streetcar rails near Alexander Platz. (But no bear.)
Friedrich II, or Friedrich the Great, Kaiser from 1740 -1786. Porcelain bust, but no bear.
The non-Jewish women of the Rosenstrasse neighborhood, married to or related to Jewish men, who were arrested or targeted for deportation, initiated and sustained a protest until the men were released. This was the only mass public demonstration by German’s in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews. Wikipedia.
Our visitors finally found the souvenir they wanted. Since 1280 the bear has been a symbol of Berlin.
Another visit to the Pergamon Panorama, by Asisi. Close-up of people entering a stadium.
foundation to a palace from the Halaf site in Syria. Circa 9th century b.c.e. Pergamon Museum.
Lions before the Ishtar Gate.
The processional way through the Ishtar gate into the city. Glazed bricks. Originally 240 meters long. The museum has thirty meters of the original.
The Ishtar gate, the eighth to the inner city of Babylon. Made by Nebuchadnezzar II. (the one who threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace.) Look for the song on YouTube.
Portion of the gate of Ishtar.
This building, The Guardhouse or die Neue Wache, houses Kathe Kollwitz’s statue, the Pieta. It is one German’s memorials to the victims of war and brutality. The plaque specifically mentions the Jews, the Sinti, homosexuals, the ill, the disabled, and the millions of innocents who lost their lives.
You can just make out the statue through the central two columns.
A view of Humboldt University from Bebel Platz, one site of the May 10, 1933 book burning by the Nazi’s.
Ninety-two degrees.
The oldest beer garden in Berlin (1837) is a short walk from our apartment. This couple has had too much to drink and spent the night here.
Hotel Oderberger used to be a public bathhouse, built 1902. It has a large indoor pool.
A coop not far from us. “Generosity towards all people. Dismissiveness and deportation are deadly.”
A local courtyard. Note the relatively new glass elevator, which has been added to the outside of the building. So many of Berlin’s houses were built before elevators were common (or even existed.)
Although in Seattle we don’t sort glass by color, we have a “clean green” bin for garden and vegetable kitchen waste.
Dating from the 1850s, these buildings are Prenzlauer Berg’s oldest. This is their courtyard.
Although the temperature was 85 F. , the streets, shaded by Linden and Chestnut trees, were inviting. This tower is on a hill—highest point in Berlin—covering a series of water reservoirs.
The Rykestrasse Synagogue is recessed from the street, as are many others so as to be inconspicuous. Note the stubby gray poles in front, protecting the building. Some can be lowered to allow entrance off a vehicle. Similar retractable poles surround the American Embassy.
“Kollwitz, a printer and sculptor, showed the suffering of people of her era.
Ridiculous tourist futilely trying to pump water. (Or just mugging for the camera)
The Schultheiss Brewery was one of the largest int he world. Turned into a factory during WW II, now a cultural center.
On the old brewery grounds.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a minister, moved to this then poor neighborhood to be closer to his flock. He was a critic of the Nazi’s. Hitler personally ordered his arrest and imprisonment. He was put to death on April 9th, 1945, less than a month before the war’s end.
He lived around the corner from where we are staying now. This was his residence.
Our neighborhood throws a street party once a year, beginning at 2pm and ending at 11pm. There is street food, live music, games, diversions for children (of which there are many)and a flea market. These boys sold us hand-made sweets. Ingrid insists that you learn that the trays are called Bauchladen. (belly shops).
One vanilla. One hazelnut.
This peaceful, unified city has much to thank Gorbachev for. And it was he who began nuclear disarmament talks by announcing he would meet anywhere with Reagan to begin negotiations. (First meeting in Iceland) Werner Herzog interviews Gorbachev in this fascinating movie.
Today we skimmed German history from 500 c. e. to the present in four hours. Portrait of Charlemagne (Karl the Great) around 800. By Albrecht Duerer.
Mars and Venus. Common allegorical idea that love could tame militancy, especially in relation to the thirty years war. artist unknown. First half of 17th century.
Frederick Wilhelm the 1st, the soldier king, sent out scouts to recruit tall soldiers. Here is one them: Grenadier Schwerid Rediwanoff from Moscow.
Everyone’s favorite?
Armored Knight and horse. Around 1200.
Martin Luther and his wife, Katharina von Bora. 1529. She bore him six children.
Felix Nussbaum painted this while in hiding, but was discovered and sent on the last train to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Bruno Apitz, a communist incarcerated in Buchenwald from 1937 to 1944, found a piece of Goethe oak, sculpting The Last Face, hoping to restore the dignity of the concentration camp victims.
Social democratic election poster. “Mothers, your voices decide our future. Vote list 1. Social democrats” 1933
“Fight with us. Vote Communist. List 4.”
“These two (the communist and the Nazi) are to blame that the gentleman’s club reigns and that the lives of the German working class worsen daily. The 6th of November should be their judgment day. Vote Social democrat.“ (Bernie Sanders?)
A canister of Zyklon B . Exposed to air it becomes cyanide gas.
The people of Wakersdorf protested so vehemently against a plutonium enrichment plant, that construction was halted. 1986
They got to see “Rebel Without a Cause” in West Germany, but not in East Germany.
Pergamon (300 bc), a Greek city, was situated in today’s northwest Turkey, now called Bergama. A confederation of German Museums worked with the permission of the Ottoman empire, to bring the ruins of the temple of Athena to Berlin.
These scenes were created by Yadegar Asisi. They are projected on a 360 degree screen, which is four stories high. One climbs a column and looks down on a 3d city.
Twice life-sized bust of Hercules.
KIng Attalos and friend.
An assembly of goddesses.
The altar of Athena.
Green mail.
Where the wall ran.
Framed and behind glass at a Berlin Wall memorial.
A way to memorialize the wall and give access to No Man’s Land where about 80 people died trying to cross into West German between 1961 -1989 .
The site of the wall’s memorial. Next picture.
The memorial. Note the guard tower, upper left. The empty space is between two walls, so-called No Man’s Land.
A memorial to those who died trying to flee East Germany
From December 1936.
The museum displayed mainly lithographs. No oil paintings, which was disappointing. This piece is called Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Fight Against the Threat: The Nuclear Windmill.
One display was of an animation of some of Dali’s paintings. Guess who did the animation? (Hint: the man on the right liked mice.)
An accompanying film by Bunuel and Dali was a dazzler of surrealism.
Ingrid and Peter liked this unnamed lithograph.
One of many similar, unnamed etchings.
An enameled bronze statue, somewhat modified by the staff of Scarab magazine (1977)
Butterfly.
None of Dali’s better known pieces and none of his oil paintings were here, a disappointment. Many of the pieces appeared to be studies, not meant for public presentation.
“People of the world—look at Berlin, where a wall fell, a continent unified itself, and the course of history proved that no challenge is too great for a world that stands together” Barack Obama. Bronze plaque in the floor of the Mall of Berlin, in the Potsdamer Platz. Other plaques were quotations by Merkel, Kennedy, Einstein, and Gandhi.
The museum presented the preoccupation with espionage beginning in ancient times. Above is a picture of Rose O’Neal Greenhow who spied for the Confederacy during the American Civil War., 1861, helping the Confederate Army to victory in the first Battle of Bull Run.
This Navaho code talker was interviewed on video. In all of Japan only one person spoke Navaho, but he or she was ill.
Poster from WW I. Take care in conversation. The enemy is listening. (Ain’t it the truth.)
One of the original 40,000 Enigma machines used by the Germans in WW II. The code was broken by Alan Turing, who was later tried as a homosexual and driven to suicide.
Part of a model of the Glienicke Bridge (the Spy Bridge), site of exchanges of spies between East and West. On February 10, 1962, “Colonel Rudolph Abel, the Soviet master spy was exchanged for U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers who was shot down while flying a covert spy mission over the Soviet Union” Berlin and Potsdam Global Guide.
The Glienicke Bridge (model).
An assassination pistol, which was hidden under a glove.
Georgi Markov, a dissident writer, “was assassinated on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin, fired into his leg from an umbrella wielded by someone associated with the Bulgarian Secret Service. It has been speculated that they asked the KGB for help.[2]” Wikipedia. Minuscule amount of ricin kill the victim in around four days.
The museum illustrated many vicious assassinations or attempts during our times. Agents included VX (Novichok nerve gas) used against Segei and Yullia Skripal (both of who survived) and polonium 210 against Alexander Litvinenko.
Litvinenko, a British naturalized Russian defector, dying from radiation poisoning.
Exhibit of Germany’s ambitious plans to eliminate all nuclear and all coal and oil power plants by 2038. Berlinische Museum of modern art.
Valeska Gert, dancer, actor, cabaret performer, bar owner (lower right). 1920’s. Kurt Tucholsky, Bertolt Brecht, and Sergei Eisenstein were fans. Even in old age she inspired young people in their revolts against confining life styles and art.
Herbert Tobias portrait of Valseka Gert, 1976.
Ivan Puni. Still Life with Bottle. 1922. Jewish artist fled to N. Y.
El Lissitsky. Three dimensional design from the electromechanical show, Victory of the Sun. 1923
On the evening of the museum visit, Ingrid and Peter, invited by friend attended the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s presentation of three works by Beethoven The director was Daniel Barenboim. He and Edward Said began this orchestra in 1999 with “a group of young musicians from Israel, Palestine, and other countries of the Middle East and North Africa.” The aim is to foster peace. This was the 20th anniversary of the orchestra.
Michael Barenboim, Daniel’s son, the soloist in Concert for Violine and Orchestra D Major, Op. 61
On the way home from the concert celebrating peace.
The next day was Open Door at the German Chancery. Peter and Ingrid just missed Angela Merkel.
From our seats at an outdoor table during a downpour.
As Peter and Ingrid walked to the Brandenberg Gate, they saw these African dignitaries leave their hotel. They were accompanied by a long procession of police cars and motorcycles.
Three Trabants in a self-described Trabi procession, passed by.
On the east side of the Brandenburg Gate.
The Goddess Quadriga facing east.
In the guest book Ingrid wrote that there should be a mirror at the exit with the inscription, “What would you have done?”
The above-ground memorial consists of more than 2,700 massive, rectangular, coffin-like concrete steles. The underground exhibit is simple and somber, with pictures of the victims and reproductions of their writings (letters, etc.). Though millions died, very few photographs survived.
Most concentration camps were in Eastern Europe. Note some in North Africa.
The Warsaw Ghetto boy in the well-known photo during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. SS-Rottenfuehrer Josef Blosche points a submachine gun in his direction.
In 1933, 160,00 Jews lived in Berlin. Ninety thousand emigrated; fifty-five thousand were killed.; seven thousand committed suicide; eight thousand survived.
A month before the end of the war the SS attempted to move concentration camp prisoner, hiding them below deck on the Cap Arcona. the British strafed the ship, sinking it. More than 7,000 people died.
Ingrid and Peter left in a somber mood. They walked slowly across Potsdammer Platz and noticed people staring at the top of a tall building. (What follows this video is not of our making. )
View across the Spree River at the Old Museum.
Seated figure of the steward Nemti-hotep. Nineteenth century b.c. (Not wearing plaid shirt.)
Psammetic , a scribe, and his family. Approx. 7th century b.c.
Offering processional.
Portrait of Otto Uuuuuuh in Sunday go-to-meeting clothes.
View from the third floor.
On one of four floors in the New Museum
Standing figure of a female offering bearer. 20th century b. c.
Dorothea Viehmann. What is she doing here among these ancient Egyptians. An exhibit described the development of story telling among the Germans, Egyptians, and Arabs. Frau Viehman was a major source for the brothers Grimm.
Skull and reconstruction of head and face of an eleven-year-old Neanderthal, found in a grave, illustrating that the Neanderthal’s buried their dead.
Gold hat found 1835. from 1400 - 1300 b.c. Worn by priests. Only part of the hat is shown here so that some of the detail can be seen.
Bronze sidewalk plaques. (Stolpersteine) The Aronsbach family was sent to Riga in 1942 and murdered. Manfred was six.
