on my way back from berggießhübel, i visited pirna a bit, where i found the monumentum of the grey busses, reminding of the aktion t4 by the nazis in order to murder mentally ill and otherwise handicapped people. this monumentum exists in two copies, one of them being stationary and one moving. the one in pirna is the moving one. here are a few picturs:
yesterday, i travelled to berggießhübel, near to dresden, to visit the marie louise stolln, an old ore mine which was turned into a show mine and opened for public in 2006. tours are very cheap (just five euros) and approximately one hour long. here are some impressions from the tour. (i wish i would have had more time for the photos, in particular having a tripod and no need to hurry, and no one running in my view. these photos are taken with iso 3200 and maximal aperture of my wideangle zoom, which is between f/3.5 and f/4.5 – i guess this explains the crappy quality…)
one word on reaching the show mine: the official website as well as the flyer only mention going there by car. but obviously you can also reach it by means of public transport. namely, you can use the vvo page to find a trip to the station “kurhaus” in berggießhübel. from that stop, the mine is just a few minutes walk away. note that the bus back to pirna only goes once per hour, or even less, so make sure to check the connections for your way back so you won’t miss the bus by less than one minute as i did today.
and, in case you’re claustrophobic: just don’t go. it’s really tight down there.
today, i saw a remark on netzpolitik.org about a reportage by frontal21 titled der grosse bluff (direct video link here, will be online only the next few days). it covers the currently investigated extension of operation life span of nuclear power plants in germany, including the never-ending dicussion of ultimate waste storage in gorleben, and what is going on politically. in my opinion, its a real good reportage and you should watch it if you understand german (and it hasn’t been deleted).
another interesting link on this topic is the wikipedia article on deep geological repositories, in particular its list of such repositories and the following paragraph on safety and feasibility assessments.
future is sometimes really depressing.
last week, we visit the borsberg artificial ruin in pillnitz, dresden. we were lucky, the weather was mostly good, and we managed to return just before a thunderstorm went off. here are some impressions:
in case you’re more interested in the ruin, and understand german, you might want to read this article.
a few days ago, we happened to be in berlin for a few hours. we did a small touristy tour and visited some famous places. here are some impressions.
we started at the central railway station, crossed the spree and walked up to the german chancellery and the reichstag, and continued to the holocaust memorial.
after that, we continued into the direction of the tiergarten and found the global stone project.
we continued through the tiergarten, were we saw, among a lot of beautiful nature, a memorial for beethoven, haydn and mozart and the soviet war memorial.
besides beautiful nature, the tiergarten also features: trash. both “real” trash, as well as intellectual trash (see the bench’s inscriptions).
our trip ended at the memorial church, which was bombed during the second world war and not rebuild. unfortunately, they build a modern version of the church right next to it, which blocks the view on the old one and, in my opionion, is not exactly beautiful.
it is also possible to enter the ground floor of the ruins of the old church.
for new year’s eve, we traveled to oldenburg. on the way back and forth, we saw some interesting things in osnabrück. finally, on the way to dresden, we saw a historic train of the deutsche reichsbahn in leipzig. here are some impressions.
on christmas, my girlfriend and i visited lüdinghausen, my home town. we visited two castles, burg lüdinghausen and burg vischering, and my old school, the st. antonius gymnasium. here are some impressions.
they are all located relatively near to each other, as the map here shows.
in case you wonder: the right photo in the second row depicts a pranger. one can actually try out this one :)
last year, some days before christmas, we attended a concert by swallow the sun in leipzig, germany, with support by insomnium and omnium gatherum. it was the last concert of the new moon tour. (no vampire shit, though ;-) ) you might know that swallow the sun is one of my favorite bands. they played in a small youth club, conne island, which wasn’t the easiest to find. but eventually, we found it. fortunately, nobody complained that i took my favorite toy with me; so this time, i managed to make some good photos.
i think that this concert was the best one i attended in 2009. ok, i have to admit there haven’t been many concerts in 2009 anyway. but nonetheless, this one was very good. the bands played great music and obviously had fun. (and: they played the giant, one of my favorite songs, in the encore!) unfortunately, the audience didn’t manage to sing “we want more” in finnish, so most sang a few times “zugabe” and then stopped doing anything at all, resulting in an awkward half-silence. but the band fortunately still came back.
now have fun watching some of the photos. if you want to know more about the concert, read someone else’s report ;-)
during the concert of insomnium, members of the other bands showed up on the stage, and equiped insomnium‘s singer niilo with a funny hat and a sign saying “korpiklaani”. he eventually removed the hat by banging his head:
during swallow the sun‘s performance, members of the other bands had fun installing a pink dildo first at the keyboard and then, later, at the singer’s microphone:
as opposed to the korpiklaani “hat”, the dildo stayed there for the rest of the concert.
i spend the last 1 1/2 weeks in dresden, visiting my girlfriend. here are some impressions from the city; unfortunately, the weather wasn’t the best and my small camera is not the best replacement for my good one (which is being repaired now, btw).
the first picture shows a part of spiel_ort, a project at the tu dresden to build a playground with fiber reinforced concrete. the fifth picture shows some fibres similar to the ones used. the last pictures were taken on the flight from ottawa to calgary.
