Sea-Life

I admit it, I love aquariums. I know, I know, it's cruel to the fish or whatever, but come on, they're soo cool looking.
Anyway, when I have the chance to visit an aquarium that also has a mission of environmental protection to help sooth my guilt you'd better believe I'm all over that.
The SeaLife aquarium in Konstanz is such a place. Run by Greenpeace, it's a theme aquarium through-and-through (have I mentioned yet how much I love things with unnecessary themes?), it not only tries to have an environmental message but also follows a kind of path from the start of the Rhine in the Alps all the way to the North Sea. This is a recreation of the caveman from which it springs.
At first the Rhine doesn't have much stuff in it, mainly jellyfish I surmise. I don't remember much (besides it being awesome), so I'm going to have the order of my pictures and some colorful exposition do most of the story telling.
The there were fish. This tank seriously has like a million fish in it. I think at this point we're in the part of the rhine that flows into Lake Konstanz. These guys also live in the lake right outside this building. The ones inside are lucky, they have free heating- see how environmentally sensative?We're at the a port city from which the Rhine flows into the sea now. Notice the plague rat? This place has a sence of humor, big rubber things all over the place.

Here we're getting close to the sea I think maybe? Oh, I remember, this is a ship wreck. It was cool, they recreated a tide with a wave machine. The fish were being pushed all over the place, not ideal for you and me but that's their thing, whatever floats your boat I guess (haha).
This is the shark and ray tank and now we're officially in the North Sea. Check out these awesome youtube videos of sharks, rays, and octopi.
Octopus
Rays 1
Rays 2
And this guy is just chillin, I took a picture of him cause he's so silly lookin'. Keep on keepin' it real my man. Sometimes I feel just like him, you know?
I don't know where this is in our little journey, but he's a pretty small guy. I guess he lives in the ocean too?
Oh, now I remember, these guys all live by the bottom in reefs and stuff.
They had this big glass tunnel that you could walk through and there were huge fish and eels and sharks and stuff. I am like 8.
And now, some coral, so that people don't get over-excited I guess.
They also had some kind of ice age fossil exhibition (represented by this awesome guy) but it cost like 2 extra euro. Extra? For skeletons when I just saw living sea creatures? No Thank You!

Where Dead People Live

If you like bland, inoffensive 'funny things that children say' quotations I'm sure you love this title.
These are pictures of a cemetery I went to in Konstanz
Notable, I think, because there's a big section dedicated to jews. Yeah, that kind of thing is a little rare in Germany.
Something to love about Germany- the variety. Nothing is homogenized here- not the cafes, not the houses, not the tombstones. No rows upon rows of identical stuff here.
Although, admittedly, they look like they'd be more painful to fall on this way.
Here's something you don't see every day, Hebrew transliterated into German- how far we've come~

...hey listen, sometimes I just have some pictures to post, ok? Not every day is going to be a entertainment roller-coaster, just look at the nice cemetery.

Art Border!

Well, at least it keeps the philistines out.
Remember how I mentioned that Germany borders Switzerland in Konstanz?
This is what the actual border, the part that isn't in the lake, looks like.
It's the worlds only art border (I think) and it's made of sculptures inspired by the major arcana of the Tarot
They don't even have armed guards! Crazy Europeans, what're they thinking?
The downside is, unfortunately, that I never got a Swiss stamp in my passport, they just let me through every time. The terrorists win.

Velcome to Baden-Virtenberg

My adopted state for the last 2ish months.
Yeah, that's right, Germany has states. And I totally knew that before I got here. Baden Wirtenberg is Germany's southernmost, it's in the west. Bavaria is our neighbor to the east and to the north is some places no one's ever heard of.
The first place you're going to see and the first place I lived is Konstanz (or Constance).
It's right on the Swiss border and it's interesting for a few reasons, one of which is just that, the enormous eponymous lake which has a border in Austria, Switzerland, and of course good old Deutchland.
Of course it's got Alps surrounding it. On a clear day you can see them. This happened maybe twice and I guess I didn't have my camera. And it was fall while I was living here, that means pretty leaves even in dreary old Europe.

The other thing it has going for it is an interesting history and a few famous people that are from there, but I'll get to that later. The building below is from 1349 for example, older than all of America (except for native people which nobody counts anyway for some reason).
Let's face it, it's not berlin, got to maximize the blog entries I'm gonna get out of this place.
Welcome to Konstanz!

HAHA Fooled You Guys!

I'm NOT done with all the holocaust stuff.
This delightful architecture is Berlin's Holocaust memorial. It's positively enormous. I went there months ago but I guess I'm getting around to it now.
There's a museum attached but there was a 'no-pictures' policy. At the museum they had a searchable database of those who died, I actually found some of my relatives. The Germans have always been good at classifying and organizing, as we can see above.
This is, I think, the largest memorial in the world. Don't quote me on that, but it is REALLY big. It feels completely cold walking between these stone columns even when it's warm out. Compared to other memorials, it is really good at creating a feeling. There is no thinking, no interpretation involved, just sensation. Really interesting.
The columns themselves are interesting too, the ground they're on is never even and they're all different sizes with slightly varying amounts of space between them. They are kind of reminiscent of coffins or tombstones. Kind of like a cross between those two things.
This is also the day I went to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the border crossing points between east and west Berlin. I don't know why I didn't mention this earlier, but here's the last Soviet flag, lookin pretty stylish.

We'll get back to the present soon, I promise, just want to make sure I don't forget this stuff.

Just Some Pictures

I have too many good pictures that don't fit into any real blog update so I'm going to do a couple of these random picture things every once in a while. No explanation, no narration, enjoy. Maybe some will have some narration, maybe. We'll see how this works out.







Oh, and anyone who can guess where these are from (besides V) get's instant BlogCred (BC).

That Place with the Musicians

I don't know how or why I forgot about this but I guess I did
I went to Bremen, quite a while ago now
Actually I went to Bremen twice, funny story. I thought I had booked the flight to Scotland for the 18th but I actually booked it for the 19th. Found out when I arrived at the airport.
However, this turned out to be a lucky enormous error because I had also forgotten my passport in Berlin.
So what I did was rented a car and drove back and forth in one day and caught my flight the next.
I plan on doing a whole update about driving here some time so I'll save my comments on the autobahn for then.
Bremen, by the way and in case you can't tell by the pictures, is a great city. Up until then I had only been in Berlin and Bremen was a lot quainter, prettier, and European city while still maintaining all the conveniences of a metropol.
Of all the cities i've been to in Germany I think Bremen is the one I'd most like to live in and that's a pretty big statement.
So why not give Bremen a try? This blog post paid for by the Bremen Association for Getting People to Come to Bremen.