Hardenberg Ruins

Today I took a mini-trip with my roommate Elizabeth out to the Hardenberg ruins north of Göttingen about 1.5 hours by bike (in Nörten-Hardenberg).  We heard that some of her friends went there this weekend and got pictures from inside.  Sadly, the only reason they got in was because there was a wedding there.  For us, it was locked and said that it was too dangerous inside in some parts without a guide along.  So we just walked around the outside and took pictures and biked back, stopping to pick up an ice cream on the way.

Since there were no information packets and no tour, I don't have a lot of information on the castle and couldn't even find much online other than a lot of people ran into it when it was closed and just got outside pictures.  Nörten-Hardenberg's tourism part of their website says that it was built in the 11th century and is Baroque-style. The wavy looking rocks you see in some of the pictures are chalk.  The first picture I stole from Wikipedia in my search, but it gives a better overview of the castle than we could take up close.  The rest are mine!  More after Munich this weekend!

A wall lizard (common in Europe, but my first lizard in nature anywhere!) from the chalk rubble. They were everywhere!

Heiß!

The weather has been extremely hot lately. It's been 90's for the last week or so without much breeze or anything. I forgot to tell you that our ICE train from Berlin back to Göttingen had the air conditioning break down in our car.  They were handing us little wet napkins to wipe our sweat with.  Everyone was hot and smelly.  They told us after a good long while to move to other cars because the air conditioning was still functioning in those.  When I was in class yesterday, our teacher was talking about how the majority of ICE trains suffered this problem this weekend, sometimes the whole train, not just one car.  ICE trains are also unable to open windows due to them already being equipped with air conditioning and would have no need to.  Several other regional trains that have air conditioning suffered the same problems as well.

There has been many storms though, constantly changing our weather.  Monday after we got back from the train station a huge thunderstorm broke out and it began hailing slightly with the rain chunks of ice about the size of sea salt.  Last night it started storming around 11 and rained all night long. This morning it has finally been cooler and is again low- to mid-70's.

Classes are beginning to wrap up.  There's school tomorrow, all of next week, and then just Monday and Tuesday the week after that.  Wednesday I'll be on my way to Frankfurt and spending just a little more time in town, possibly with Christian again, and Thursday (exactly two weeks from today, to the hour), I'll be home by now. Everyone has been asking if the time is going fast or slow.  I can't really say it's been either.  It feels just like two months, although my birthday already feels like a very long time ago, and saying goodbye to my friends and family feels extremely long ago.  It will be good to be back home.  Germany is wonderful and beautiful, food is amazing, and the people are (for the most part) very friendly and happy to speak German with you; but I miss seeing the lake.  I haven't seen anything larger than a river since I left Chicago, and I guess that's the first time that's happened in my life.  In Mishicot and Manitowoc, even in Milwaukee, I'm next to the lake and can be there within minutes and at least pass it all the time.  I miss seeing it.

I also miss Wisconsin cheese.  I don't think that can be beat no matter what country you're in.  I'm biased, but still feel like a true Wisconsinite. :)

Attention!

Ok, I just recently figured out how to reduce the number of posts that show up so you don't have huge pages to load if you're using a slower browser. Yay!

Also, I think I have changed it to hopefully allow ANYONE to post a comment, whether you are a Google member or not. So someone should do that and let me know if it didn't work.

Btw - To date, this blog has 81 profile views! Not bad for a month and a half! Thanks!

Post-Berlin

I got back from Berlin yesterday and needed about what felt like 5 hours to shower (it's been 90's here this weekend - the hottest it's been since I got to Germany), and posted my pictures to facebook since that didn't require much typing.

We got to see everything that we wanted to and made it to a couple extras but we only missed one thing we had wanted to see and thought we would have to skip because we forgot about it! Ugh!

Anyway, Saturday we got to see the odds-and-ends of Berlin so we did a lot of running around and using the S-Bahn which is extremely cheap.  A day pass was 6 Euro and three trips were 1.30 Euros.  We first went to see the Reichstag since it was almost immediately by our train station.  The line took about 45 min so we were happy that our train got in earlier than expected.  The Reichstag was opened in 1894 and was used until 1933 when it was set fire by a group of Dutch communists.  Hitler, for all of it's power, glory, and symbolism hardly used it and conducted his meetings at an Opera House.  It underwent some restoration in 1960, but was fully restored after the fall of the Wall and has been in use ever since.  It is the meeting place of the German parliament. 

You might notice that there is a glass dome on top.  This is the main reason anyone comes to see it.  Entrance is free, you just need to wait in line a long time, but then you get to take a giant elevator to the top and you can get an audio guide (free, but we didn't) and you walk the spiral ramp up to the top.  From there you get a lovely panorama of Berlin.  Down below the glass top is a glass window where you can see down into the meetings and watch people below.  It's a really nice way to show that in Germany now people can watch the happenings of their government instead of being secluded from their decisions.  Here are some pictures.

After that, outside of the Reichstag is a small memorial to the 96 politicians that stood up to Hitler and were killed.  It kind of looks like a stone age bike rack, but is very noticeable so it does achieve the attention it deserves.

We saw the Brandenburg Gate of course.

We also stopped by the Memorial to Murdered Jews in Europe.  It is meant for you to walk through and the columns get higher the deeper you go it, making it more disorienting.  It becomes extremely hard to not lose who you are with if they are not directly following you because if they go one row over, they're hard to find again because you only see right in front of you.

We saw the Bundesrat (another important government building) and we saw Checkpoint Charlie of course.

We saw the Topography of Terror which has lots of records of all the persecution of Jews and other groups that Hitler wanted to "cleanse" Germany of.  You could listen to announcements by him and some of the other commanders saying that they want to "cleanse" the German people and that it was for the good of everyone that "these kinds of people" wouldn't reproduce and weaken the population. It was scary to hear someone say all those kinds of horrible things and realize that these orders were carried out.  The Topography of Terror Museum is located on grounds that were once used by the SS and Stasi so it's held an important location for a long time.  Outside of it is a good sized section of the wall. 

The next day we went to Museum Island and saw a number of museums for just €7 for all of them at student pricing! YAY! We saw the National Gallery which had lots of paintings and sculptures. I was surprised to walk into a room and see the famous "The Thinker!" Sadly researching it, I don't think it was the original, it is just a caste. I must have been too excited at the moment to fully read the description.

We saw Pergamon Museum which has whole original sections of temples from all over the Middle east, Greece, and Asia. Beats me how they just walked away with the face of a temple...

We skipped the Bode Museum because it sounded like it had a lot of the same things we were seeing in other museums minus a large coin collection which I just didn't really care if I saw or not. We did get over to the New Museum and Old Museum.  The New Museum has a huge Egyptian display which I loved.  They even had the bust of Nefertiti but they didn't allow pictures of it, so here's one I stole from the internet! She really was gorgeous.

I saw lots of sarcophagi and Egyptian tools.  They had a whole floor to prehistoric man. My favorite part though was the moose skeleton.

There was lots of pottery, large ancient sculptures, beautiful tools and jewelry, but if our feet weren't falling off by then, we walked over to the Berlin Cathedral which was just stunning.  We climbed to the top of the dome to get another gorgeous view of Berlin.

We saw the zoo and aquarium yesterday, but I don't wanna bog you down with pictures! Your browsers might have taken forever to load this page as it was. I think I have like 177 pics on facebook and I also found a way to link my facebook to the blog on the left. Feel free to check it out as always!  Munich on Saturday with Elizabeth!