Category Archives: Germany

Photo Of The Day: Former Russian Soldiers Making A Living

Peruvian pan pipe music wafting through an open air mall in Australia or Europe? Classical music being played by soloists in the subways, tubes, and metros worldwide? Flamenco guitarists or Celtic musicians at weekend markets? Jazz musicians in New Orleans or Chicago? We’ve seen them all in various places around the globe.

But we had not expected to see former soldiers from the USSR making a living by busking — singing for donations — and selling their self-recorded music cds of Russian military and folk music. That truly was a first!

The picture below is of those singers in the huge plaza in front of the Frauenkirche Cathedral in Dresden, Germany. It was interesting and yes, I tossed a few euro into their hat since I was taking photos. But I don’t think it was a set of music I would have wanted to take home.
 

Former Russian Military Singers Busking in Dresden, Germany


 

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Bombs Are Still A Serious Business in Germany

Today’s Washington Post contains an article stating that 45,000 residents of Koblenz are being evacuated from their homes as bomb disposal squads disarm one massive unexploded bomb lying alongside another, smaller unexploded bomb. Both of these war time relics were recently discovered wedged in the banks of the Rhine River when the waterline fell to a record low level.

Several months ago, we were walking through suburban Hannover when we spotted this van in the street. Since Germany was so heavily bombed by the allies during World War II, bomb inspection units still need to be called when any excavation is planned for utilities such as water lines or gas lines. And one friend in Germany told us that the basements of houses in Germany are never built until the area has been certified bomb free.
 

Munition van on the streets of Hannover. Germany searching for unexploded WW II bombs


 

I’ve mentioned in past articles that World War II is still a living, breathing fact-of-life here in Europe and friends have frequently had their own episodes of discovering remnants of that war in their own back gardens or in the walls of their homes as they began renovations. Today’s Washington Post article just reminds us yet again that the actions of our predecessors generations ago still echo solidly through our contemporary time period. Although we might be temporarily inconvenienced, it is barely fathomable in our present mindset to even try and imagine what it would be like to live a day to day life with bombs dropping on our heads.

Our parents’ and grandparents’ generations would have known those sensations of impermanence quite intimately.

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Working Our Way Around The World as Ad Lib Artisans

I’m proud to announce that the new website for our around-the-world building, decoration, and renovation company, AD LIB ARTISANS, is now live at http://www.adlibartisans.com

Please enjoy the FIVE galleries which are full of pictures of our work on various projects in England, France, Scotland, Germany, and Australia.
 

Mark enameling custom cabinetry that he built in a period home in London


 
In a future post I will explain how this work has allowed us to work our way across the world over the last 10 and 1/2 months!
 
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A Lingering Vibe of Sadness in Eastern Germany

It caught me by surprise — that lingering sense of sadness, hopelessness, and anguish. But I was too busy trying to catch up on editing photos to focus on tuning into the first wave of the vibe. I certainly hadn’t intended to know the history of that place since all I thought we were doing was ‘parking’ ourselves for a week after our wonderful month in Berlin. But it happened nonetheless, washed over me, and it has taken me months to feel like writing about it.

Ferienpark Dresden main building with self-contained apartments upstairs

The biergarten (beer garden & exterior dining area) at Ferienpark Dresden

We had been enjoying our time in a self-contained apartment in the small town of Ortrand outside of Dresden. We were at the Ferienpark Dresden campground with holiday apartments that were surrounded by thick forests on one side and flat farmland stocked with dairy cattle on the other side. We could cook for ourselves or eat in the charming little restaurant downstairs. And the biergarten served such yummy dark German beer! The setting was lovely, all was well, and there was no reason for my psychic senses to go all twitchy.

But as we took a long walk one afternoon to put some movement into my laptop-obsessed-and-inactive-body, I spontaneously blurted out to Mark as we walked, “I wouldn’t want to ask any of the local people about what went on here during World War II.” Mark was accustomed to this sort of out-of-the-blue sensing from me, so he just looked at me and didn’t query my reactions as I continued to talk.

“I get the oddest vibe here — as if there was a concentration camp or a work camp or something even more dire related to the Nazis. It’s hanging around in the atmosphere all of these years later. And it would make the current occupants uncomfortable about what their parents and grandparents might have been up to 70 years ago. I’d never want to make any of these nice people feel ill at ease.”

Every single person that we had met thus far had been completely charming and both common sense and common courtesy meant that I knew that the German people were quite sensitive and aware of what an aberration those 1930s and 1940s years were under the Nazi regime. I read the English translation of the German newspaper online and I knew that both the government and the general populace were determined to never have a return to that kind of chaotic violence. But it was a hurtful period to reflect on for many of them, so I wanted to practice the utmost courtesy and simply not ask.

We had stopped to stare at a waterway and the cows in the field as we continued on into the town. Then I told Mark that I was going to do a web search when we got back to the apartment. I knew that we were in an area that had been in East Germany until the reunification in the late 1980s, but it didn’t feel like a Communist time period vibe — it felt like a 1940s vibe.

On we walked into the spotlessly clean and orderly Ortrand, looking around slowly, and we began to spot things that we had never seen when we had arrived three days earlier from the other direction and gone straight into the campground complex. Watch towers — we saw watch towers looming over two different places. And then we walked by the fences, fences that were quite a lot taller than I am, fences that spanned both sides of one of the roads on the outskirts — and my entire stomach just went all icky.

 

Fences with a lingering 'vibe' in Ortrand near Dresden in eastern Germany

 

“Why are those fences shaped like that?” I asked Mark. And he told me that they were bent at the top to keep things in, not keep intruders out. I didn’t have a camera with me and we had to return there a few days later as we were departing, but I thought I would share what we saw and what I discovered.

There were large concrete tanks and platforms and crumbling buildings behind those fences and I was just preparing to photograph those when the hair on the back of my neck began to stand up. I turned to see a man who appeared to be in his early to mid-90s who was absolutely glaring at me with an extremely hostile expression when he spotted my camera. We departed quickly.

Ortrand had been the site of a work camp — one of the “Arbeitskommandos (Work Camps) supplied from Stalag IV-D” in Torgau according to the website run by a man named Graham Johnson. His extensive research was done to honour the memory of his father who was a prisoner in one of these camps. If you scroll down that extensive list, you will find that Ortrand used British servicemen from Stalag IV-D to make cement for the German army. That certainly explained all of those moldering buildings behind the fencing which were grown over and only partially visible.

This Iron Cross and Eagle monument, pictured below, stands in the middle of a traffic round-about in front of the train station which is currently full of workmen and undergoing renovation. So yes, the past is still visible in several places around the village.

 

Iron Cross and Eagle on monument in front of train station under restoration

 

This is Ortrand today — a very peaceful, pretty, and tidy village full of pastel coloured buildings. Any feelings of discomfort that I may have had several days previously were dispelled by an afternoon of walking around, taking photographs, eating ice cream, and drinking a wonderfully strong expresso at a local cafe.

 

The main square in Ortrand near Dresden in eastern Germany

 

Pastel buildings in Ortrand near Dresden in eastern Germany

 

View down Bahnhoffstrasse from train station towards the village

 

Barista in Ortrand making a splendid expresso!

 

I am quite aware that most people aren’t as sensitive to lingering historical vibrations as I am, but it was an episode that I felt was worth sharing.

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Spruikers With A Scottish Twist

Spruiker — a word I had never heard before I moved to Australia in the mid-1990s. And many of you may be as clueless to what that word means as I was! The Dictionary.com interpretation of spruiker says that it is indeed based on Australian slang, and the verb spruik means “archaic , slang ( Austral ) to speak in public (used esp of a showman or salesman).”

Most of us will have passed a shopping district at some point in our life and heard the annoying sound of someone with a microphone trying to talk you into coming in and checking out the sale at the store that they are standing in front of. And that’s exactly what these incongruously clad gentlemen were doing on this particular day in Dresden, Germany.

The blaring soundtrack on their portable stereo was playing a mind-boggling mix of Scottish tunes and 1950s rock-n-roll. And dressed though they might have been in Scottish kilts and hats, they were indeed German through and through.

They did accomplish one of their goals even if I never went inside the discount shoe store — they made me stop and look!

Spruikers in Scottish garb on a shopping street in Dresden, Germany.

 

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Picture Of The Day: Taking Home The Groceries Via Bike

So what do you do if you live in a small town near Dresden in eastern Germany — Ortrand to be specific — and you either don’t have an automobile or you choose not to use it? How do you take your groceries home?

This man rode his bike past the pretty, pastel buildings after I watched him filling the cart up with plants from the garden shop and groceries from the greengrocer. No traffic stress, no petrol bills, a nice bit of exercise, and definitely a way to live more lightly on the planet!

Taking home the groceries via bike in Ortrand, Germany

 

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Picture Of The Day: Get That Thing Away From Me!

The Luftwaffe Museum in Berlin, Germany has been profiled by me in previous posts. But this is a one-off funny shot taken by Mark when we were walking amongst the vintage jet fighters outside of Hanger 3, my favourite part of the vast aviation complex.

That was a r-e-a-l-l-y pointy needle-tip at the front of that jet!

Get that thing away from me!

 

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