Since my dad has been here for my thanksgiving break and I have been showing him around, I have had the opportunity to make a few observations about father/daughter relationships which I will bring to light.

It’s amazing, that no matter how much older we all get, we still resort to the same old routine and mannerisms that we had with our parents when we were say, 10 years old.

1.  Somehow you still hold on to the belief that your pouty, trembling lower lip will have the same devastating effect on him that it had all of those 11 years ago.  Now it still works, although only sometimes so I have to use it sparingly.  (Oh the joys of being the only female offspring!)

2.  He still gets an inordinate amount of pleasure from embarrassing you in public.  Why else would he throw up his arms as you cross through Checkpoint Charlie from East to West Berlin and shout, with his arms up, “FREE AT LAST!”  The feeling I had at that moment was only slightly less mortified than when he showed up to my sixth grade dance, unmissable with his over 6 foot frame, and proceeded to wade through the little 11 year olds and call my name in order to get me to leave said dance.  It was awhile before I was able to sum up the courage to claim him as my relation.

3.  It’s obviously his fault that you desperately have to go the bathroom for the 123rd time that day while you are trekking through the wilderness of Potsdam (home of the Potsdam Conference of 1945) looking for some castle.  (Hey!  Drinking water is healthy!)  No doubt the freezing cold and occasional downpour was as well.  Subsequently you proceed to list the umpteenth bodypart that is in pain, mind you after at least 2 hrs of hiking, he asks whether or not you still have any that are still in tact you reply with, “Well, my mouth.”  (Thank god so as to notify him of any ailments that should still arise.)

BUT, not to worry, all ill-will is forgotten once we’re both toasty warm and digging into a good italian dinner back on Oranienburgerstrasse.

Die wöchentlichen Meditationskurse beginnen wieder!

Dienstags, 19.30 Uhr in Berlin-Charlottenburg und Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, Mittwochs, 19.30 Uhr in Berlin-Spandau und um 20.00 Uhr in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

New: Meditation class in English in Berlin-Mitte!

Der Kurs findet auch am Kadampa Meditationszentrum (freitags, 19.45 Uhr), in Oranienburg (dienstags, 19.30 Uhr) und in Magdeburg (mittwochs 18.30 Uhr) statt.

Die Kurse laufen bis zum 13. Dezember.

Kursgebühr: 5 Euro pro Abend.

Ein Einstieg ist jederzeit möglich – Sie können einfach ohne Anmeldung vorbeikommen.

In Teilen von Berlin und Brandenburg werden am Montag keine Briefe und Pakete der Deutschen Post zugestellt. Der Grund ist eine Betriebsversammlung der größten Briefniederlassung der Deutschen Post im Berliner Kongresszentrum ICC, wie die Gewerkschaft Verdi mitteilte.

Von dem Ausfall sind die Regionen betroffen, deren Postleitzahl mit den Ziffern 13, 14 und 16 beginnt. Dabei handelt es sich um den Norden und den Südwesten Berlins sowie Potsdam, Rathenow, Luckenwalde, Brandenburg an der Havel, Oranienburg, Eberswalde, Pritzwalk und Schwedt.

(Quelle: dpa – MAZ Online)

Häh? Ausnahmsweise am Montag keine Post? Schon seit Jahren gibts doch Montags keine Post mehr, da wird doch wenn nur etwas Werbung ausgetragen.

Wir waren gespannt, was uns auf der Landesgartenschau in Oranienburg erwarten würde. Also fuhren wir heute, Freitag, hin und kamen mittags dort an.

Die Landesgartenschau ist absolut sehenswert. Sie ist Luise Henriette gewidmet, der ersten Ehefrau des Großen Kurfürsten, die aus den Niederlanden stammt. Das Gelände umfasst den Schlosspark und ein angrenzendes Gelände.

Es gibt sehr viele Blumen und diverse Themengärten. Dazwischen einige Wassergräben, über die zahlreiche Brücken führen. Allerdings ist nur eine, relativ kleine, Blumenhalle vorhanden.

Nach zwei Stunden, in denen wir viel geschaut und fotografiert haben sowie eine Rast in einer der wenigen gastronomischen Einrichtungen einlegten, gelangten wir wieder zum Ausgang. Die Gastronomie fanden wir ziemlich teuer. Durchschnittliches Futter zu happigen Preisen. Bockwurst mit Brötchen für EUR 2,50; der Milchkaffee kostete EUR 3,–. Weitere Speisen waren teurer; Preis nach oben hin offen.

Der Normaleintrittspreis für Erwachsene beträgt EUR 12. Ganz schön saftig. Da wir im Besitz von Jahreskarten für den Britzer Garten sind, haben wir EUR 9 pro Karte bezahlt. Es gibt verschiedene Ermäßigungen. Einzelheiten s. Website.

Man erhält auf die Eintrittskarte für die Landesgartenschau diverse Ermäßigungen, z.B. freien Eintritt in das Schloss Oranienburg, Ermäßigung für den Botanischen Garten Berlin, in Zoo und Tierpark Berlin und weiteres. Die Ermäßigungen werden für die Dauer der Landesgartenschau bis zum 11. Oktober gewährt.

Der offizielle Parkplatz befindet sich ein Stück vom Gelände entfernt. Per Shuttlebus, der alle 20 min fährt, kommt man zum Eingang. Wir fanden gegenüber dem Schloss, ganz in der Nähe des Eingangs, einen gebührenpflichtigen Parkplatz, auf dem man bis zu drei Stunden parken kann. Das reichte uns völlig. Die EUR 1,50 für’s Parken fanden wir akzeptabel.

Die Landesgartenschau ist einen Besuch wert. Preiswert ist es nicht.

Weitere Informationen gibt es hier:

www.laga-oranienburg2009.de

Olá!

Hoje resolvi escrever sobre os lugares que já conheci aqui na Alemanha.

Eu já estive aqui outra vez, antes de vir estudar e tal. Foi em setembro de 2007, fiquei o mês todo aqui, e neste mês conheci muitos lugares aqui: Berlin, Potsdam (Sanssouci), Oranienburg (o campo de concentração) Leipzig, Dresden, Füssen e região Allgäu-Alpes (mas não escalei motanhas – ainda), Lindau, München (Munique), Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Esslingen e passei a fronteira da Alemanha com a Austria (só num parque, mas já encheu os olhos com lindas paisagens).

Agora desde que cheguei, como tem muitas aulas e não tenho tido tempo não fui em tantos lugares. Fui em Ulm, num castelo em Ludwigsburg chamado Blühendes Barock (mas vou voltar lá pois não entrei no castelo), Löwenstein, Heilbronn e Breitenauer See que já falei num outro post. E claro, Waiblingen (onde moro) e Stuttgart (onde estudo e perto daqui).

Se eu fosse escrever um post sobre cada cidade daria um texto enorme. Então resolvi apenas colocar fotos das coisas que mais gostei de ver em cada lugar.

Se bem que Berlin e Dresden mereciam um post gigante, mas fui lá em 2007, muitos detalhes vou acabar esquecendo. Então só tenho a dizer: pra quem puder não deixem de visitar essas duas cidades.

Berlin é magnífica. É andar na história o tempo todo, totalmente cultural, mas também moderna. Ótimos lugares pra sair a noite  e de dia. Dava vontade de nunca dormir lá pra sugar tudo. Foram dias “the best” lá.

Castelos, museus (amei o egípcio), ruas (não só a principal, Unter den Linden), lojas, monumentos, partes do muro, uma infinidade de coisas que só estando lá pra sentir e ver. E duas cidades próximas a Berlin valem a pena visitar.

Uma é Postdam, uma gracinha e conta com o castelo Sanssouci, lindoooooooo. Outra é Oranienburg que conta com um ernome campo de concetração-museu, aberto a visitações, se não me engano não pagava pra visitar…pagava 3 euros pelo aquele “bagulhinho” que conta a história do lugar e tal, pra ti ir andando e ouvindo sobre aquele local. Vale a pena.

E Dresden…. Dresden é lindíssima. Uma cidade que foi totalmente arrasada na 2ª guerra mundial, e reerguida com as pedras que restaram. Literalmente. Tu pode ver isso nas igrejas e prédios, umas pedras são totalmente pretas (por causa do fogo) e outras novinhas. Uma cidade incrível. Fiz um passeio de barco lá lindo, o nome do passeio era “caminho dos castelos” algo assim, ai o barco faz uma trajetória por lindos castelos, muito bom. (E tinha um chocolate quente M-A-R-A).

Outra cidade que eu recomendo, no mês de setembro mesmo, não sei a data exata, é Rothenburg. Lá eu fui quando estava acontecendo um festival medieval. Gente muito legal de ver. A cidade é fofa!

Ah e claro em outubro não deixem de ir em Munique conhecer a Oktoberfest! Já aviso que é uma coisa de louco!

Na verdade eu amei todas as cidades que eu vi até agora. Füssen não posso deixar de citar também, por que além de ser uma cidade linda, tem um dos castelos que vi aqui que mais amei, Neuschwanstein. Fora as paisagens da região, que são de tirar o fôlego – belíssimas.

Então algumas fotinhos em formato de postais.

Pra ver minhas fotos só acessar a página ‘minhas fotos‘ lá tem o link que te leva a todos meus álbuns.

Hoy toca historia…

Hay muchos que somos de la opinión, que los recuerdos son sólo bagaje (y como están las cosas, mejor no pagar un cargo por extra de equipaje), que hay que dejar las cosas atrás y que el pasado es hoy… pero… si hablamos de historia, muchos estarán de acuerdo, que hay cosas que es mejor no olvidar, no se pueden o simplemente no se deben.

Cuando pensamos en un campo de concentración, a muchos nos viene a la cabeza el nombre de “Auschwitz”, quizás por ser uno de los campos más nombrados o uno de los cuales del que más filmografía y libros hay.

Sin embargo, ahora está de actualidad la película “Los falsificadores (Die Fälscher)”. Este largometraje trata de la segunda guerra mundial y está basado en las memorias de Adolf Burguer, que tuvo que sobrevivir falsificando billetes de libras esterlinas para los nazis, en el campo de concentración Sachsenhausen. Así que puede que este nombre ahora también os suene.

En el pueblo de Oranienburg (Brandenburgo-Alemania) está dicho campo, Sachsenhausen.

Hace un par de años, visitamos este lugar. Pasamos unos días en Berlín y nos recomendaron la visita. Desde el centro de la ciudad, se puede coger un tren que va hasta Oranienburg (aprox. una hora de trayecto), una vez en la estación de Oranienburg un bus hace un recorrido con parada en la puerta de Sachsenhausen.

La entrada al campo, convertido hoy en día en museo, es gratuita. Se pueden visitar las torres de vigilancia, los hornos, barracones, zonas de fusilamiento, las celdas de castigo, la enfermeria / zona de experimentos médicos, etc.

Una gran mayoría puede que haya leído algún libro sobre el nazismo y campos de concentración, pero realmente, cuando entras en uno te sorprenden muchas cosas, y eso contando que se han convertido en museos, es decir, que están dentro de lo que cabe en buen estado y arregladitos.

Personalmente me soprendió la olor que aún desprendían los barracones, la estrechez de sus “habitaciones”, el frío que hacía en pleno agosto en la enfermería, leer las historias de algunos de los prisioneros y, ver sus objetos personales, algunos como pequeñas cajitas donde guardaban pequeñas dosis de azúcar para sobrevivir. Pasé un rato sentada en la zona del comedor… viendo los escritos de los prisioneros sobre las mesas de madera.

Entre tanta tristeza, también contar, que dentro de lo malo… cuando recordamos la visita al campo, hubo una pequeña anécdota “graciosa”.

A ver… el campo era muy grande, y claro, íbamos solos visitándolo según nos parecía y nadie se dio cuenta que había llegado la hora de cerrar el museo. Nos metimos en la enfermería, justo dónde hacían los experimentos medicos y hacía un frío…. (es subterránea). Pues nada, ahí estábamos escudriñando, cuando de repente se apagan las luces… encontramos un interruptor y las encendemos, se vuelven a apagar…. y empezamos a oír gente chillando en alemán (a mi me encanta el idioma alemán, pero cuando te chillan en alemán, parece que te chillen más, no?).. pues nada, todos con un susto que para que contar… ya nos veíamos encerrados en la enfermería. Una del grupo, muy decidida, subió las escalera para ver qué pasaba y de repente, se encontró con dos alemanes, más grandes que un armario, los cuales se dirigieron a ella en alemán, y ella sin enterarse de nada empezó a chillar, corriendo escaleras abajo, buscándonos y metiendo unos berridos impresionantes.. (no sabemos que película se montó… o mejor no la escribimos hoy ). En fin, simplemente eran los vigilantes del museo explicándole que era la hora de cierre… ahí terminó nuestra visita.

Hemos querido escribir este post de uno de nuestros viajes, con todo el respeto que merece y tenemos sobre este tema , y porque a veces, sólo a veces, no hay que olvidar.

Cerramos este post con un hasta pronto por nuestra parte…

Os dejamos un link (en inglés y alemán) del museo y otro de alojamientos en Berlín.

Museo

Alojamiento / Apartamentos en Berlín

Hoteles Berlín

Vuelos

Der erste Tag oder besser noch die erste Nacht in Berlin Mitte.

Die Oranienburgerstraße ist schon sehr stark von Touristen und Prostituierten bevölkert.

Mitten drin das Kunsthaus Tacheles, eine sehr abgefahrene Lokalität und das um reiht von ziemlich viel Snob-Läden.

Wir drei hatten einen tierischen Hunger und stürzten uns ins nächste Restaurant nach unserer 25 minütigen S-Bahnfahrt.

Die Steaks waren lecker und wirklich preiswert, aber die Biere zu einem Stückpreis von 4,50 nicht.

Berliner Pilsener ist nicht wirklich mein Ding.

Ok, wir lernen ja schnell und so zogen wir los in´s Tacheles und bestaunten diese Subkultur.

Wir hatten das große Glück einen spanischen Künstler etwas kennen lernen zu dürfen und in den nächsten 45 Minuten erfuhren wir das Grundgerüst der Geschichte des Tacheles und der hier ansässigen  Künstlerszene.

In den verschiedenen Ateliers zuckten der Beb und ich unsere Digicams und fingen sehr viele schöne Impressionen ein.

Später auf dem Weg zur Spree sprachen wir mit ein paar Prostituierten und fragten nach einem gemütlichen Ort zum Bier trinken.

Die meisten sagten eigentlich nur das sie sich hier im Stadtteil nicht aus kennen und nur hier “arbeiten”.

Mit ihren Outfits kann ich mich gar nicht anfreunden, Plateaustiefel in schwarz oder weiß und dazu diese Korsettes, hmmm.

Lustig war auf alle Fälle und heute ziehen wir wohl eher nach Friedrichshain oder eine Reise an den Prenzlauerberg.

Grüße von den Reisenden & dem Gastgeber.

Kai – Beb und Carol

(foto: Bologna 2004)

Il mio nuovo libro esce presto

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You know about Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald. This place was the model for all them.

Sachsenhausen lies just north of Berlin in the town of Oranienburg. When it opened in 1936, it was the first Nazi facility purpose-designed and built as a concentration camp, a test bed for controlling the maximum number of inmates with the minimum number of guards.

The SS soldiers who would make places like Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen infamous were trained here. The insidious, mocking motto “Arbeit Macht Frei” — Work Makes You Free — first appeared on Sachsenhausen’s main gate. The entire concentration camp system was administered from Oranienburg.

If Evil ever had a headquarters, this may have been it.

In the Nazi system, Sachsenhausen was considered a concentration camp rather than a death camp. I wonder if those who perished here appreciated the difference, because when it came to institutionalized murder, there is nothing that happened at any Nazi death camp that didn’t happen here first.

DECEPTIVE BEAUTY
If you take the route that Heinrich Himmler and his driver might’ve taken, the trip from Berlin to Sachsenhausen will take you a little under an hour. The route is lined with cool green forests and picturesque, square country homes of two and three stories, with steeply angled tile roofs to shed the rain and snow. The camp itself lies at the end of a short residential street.

None of the peaceful beauty you see along that route prepares you for what lies at the end of that street.

A sprawling triangular complex covering about a thousand acres, Sachsenhausen is defined by a perimeter wall interspersed with guard towers. At its height, there were 68 long, one-story barracks laid out in a fan pattern.

Most of the barracks are gone now. A handful — including the two where medical experiments were conducted on inmates –have been restored, along with the “execution trench” and a portion of the inner perimeter death strip that includes coils of barbed wire and what had been an electrified fence.

In front of the fence and the barbed wire coils was a single strand of straight, unadorned wire, running about six inches above the ground. In prison parlance, this is a “dead man’s line” and its meaning is clear:

Step over this wire and you will be shot. No questions, no warnings, no exceptions.

In reality, though, you didn’t have to step over the wire. Death could come calling from anywhere on these grounds at any moment. Inmates could be beaten or shot simply for not moving fast enough when given an order. Starved and brutalized, they sometimes collapsed in roll call and died where they fell.

GALLOWS AND GALLOWS HUMOR
Two holes in the middle of the compound served as mounts for a simple gallows. It didn’t work with the typical German efficiency. The condemned were left to slowly strangle in their nooses.

In December, the scaffold mount held a Christmas tree.

They injected Jewish children as young as 11 with bacteria to experiment with hepatitis C, a disease for which there is no cure. They stitched moldy hay and straw into the flesh of healthy prisoners to see how gangrene worked.

At one point, they tested mustard gas on 30 inmates. No record remains of what happened to them, or even who they were.

Periodically, a Nazi psychologist visited Sachsenhausen to select inmates to send to the death camps, a task he pursued as calmly and cheerfully as if he were the local milkman.

The cruelty wasn’t limited to physical brutality or sadism in the name of science. The SS officers, who lived just outside the camp, treated themselves to lavish banquets, which they pointedly had served to them by their starving prisoners. They habitually told new arrivals that their only path to freedom ran through the chimneys of the camp’s “special” ovens.

The guards seemed to think that was funny.

SECRET SHAME, SILENT SCREAMS
In April 1945, with the Red Army closing in, the Sachsenhausen guards tried to march 33,000 inmates away from potential rescue. Those too weak or sick to keep up were beaten or shot to death. Exhaustion killed still others before the guards could get around to them.

The exact number who survived the death march is unknown. Most did not.

When the Red Army finally overran the camp, they found 3,000 inmates, barely alive. They also found nearly 13,000 bodies. That should’ve closed the book on Sachsenhausen.

It didn’t.

The Soviet NKVD transformed Sachenhausen into one of their “special camps,” in which they imprisoned Nazis, Red Army deserters and anyone else Josef Stalin didn’t like.

Soviet soldiers who contracted venereal diseases from women in occupied Germany wound up here rather than in hospitals.

Unlike the previous landlords, the NKVD wasn’t into experimenting on folks. Their camps were Soviet-style old school — starvation, beatings, generic brutality. By the time the place closed for good in 1950, another 12,000 people — at least 12,000 — had died here, hidden from the world behind the Soviet Union’s “Iron Curtain.”

Overall, no one knows for sure how many died in Sachsenhausen. The best guesses range from 30,000 to as many as 100,000 — not counting those who perished on the death march. Many of the camp’s victims are still here, buried in mass graves just inside the perimeter.

In place of the horror that once filled that perimeter is now a vast emptiness. The wind that sweeps across the vast grounds — and the murmuring of tour groups — are the only sounds here.

In Sachsenhausen, silence is a scream that never ends.

Work Will Set You Free

Just got back from Berlin. Spent two weeks there. Everywhere around the city are memorials to Holocaust victims. No one place has the power to see the terror upon which one human puts on another than at a concentration camp. I visited Sachsenhausen about an hour’s subway ride from Berlin.

Even though it was over 65 years ago, the air is filled with a grisly sense of death. After you get off at the last station of the Berlin S1 line, you can walk about 35 minutes from downtown Oranienburg to the death camp. The walk is a must as you see a false normalcy in a town, which, I believe, shouldn’t be there today. Cute residences lie in the path to the  camp, summer flowers abound.

Once you get there you find a vast emptiness, empty buildings, watchtowers and a striking modern memorial. Up and down walls are stories of the Jews who died there. Read one after another and your heart sinks in sadness.

Capturing the theme of the place–Work Will Set You Free–on an iron gate at the camp’s entrance spells out the harrowing era of Hilter.

First class lady.

I heart real black and white.