germany
VISITING THE HOME OF GRIMMS FAIRY TALES
13/05/12 09:33
This is Kassel, Germany. It’s not close to Berlin, Hamburg or Munchen. It’s actually in the middle of Germany, about an hour north of Frankfurt. This is the home of the Grimms Brothers. This is where they wrote and collected most of their stories. The first edition was 86 stories that were published in 1812. By the seventh edition, there’were a total of 211 stories. All editions were extensively illustrated. First by Philipp Grot Johann and after his death, the work continued by Robert Leinweber. Snow White and Hansel and Gretel were among the very first stories to make the first edition. And there was plenty of criticism on its suitability for children. After all, in Rapunzel, she asks why her dress is getting so tight around her belly after visits from the prince. Oops, that had to be re-edited on subsequent publishings. I offered to take Conor into the forest for a hike but he refused. He saw smoke in the woods and didn’t want anything to do with the cannibalistic witch.
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COWBOY CONOR RIDES THE WILD WEST OF KASSEL, GERMANY
12/05/12 09:39
Today is our first day in Kassel, Germany with Conor. It’s also his first day ever going to a neighborhood park. The slides, swings and bouncy animals are all different than in America. The slides are metal pipe slides and the swings were in a sort of pit and you would climb to the top of the artificial hill and swing into the bottom of the valley or pit and then swing up and out again. It was really fun. Later, we went to a baptism where Valerie was the godmother of her good friend, Britt’s son, Nikolaus. But for Conor, riding the German horse with his cowboy hat was much more exciting.
JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF PORSCHE
29/04/12 17:18
Today is Sunday in Stuttgart and the Mercedes Museum was so much fun yesterday that my colleagues and I decided to visit the Porsche Museum today. It was very cool but very different from the Mercedes Museum. While the Mercedes Museum was about the history of Mercedes with no holds barred. Meaning that during WWII, while Mercedes became an armament factory and had to use forced labor to build the Third Reich’s ammunitions, they owned up to it and spoke matter-of-factly about it. They pointed out the error of their ways and how the Allied Forces bombed the factories to smithereens. The museum was as much a timeline of world history as it was a museum about cars. Porsche, on the other hand, glossed over all the bad times and focused purely on its successes. And all of those successes stemmed from the design flair of curvy fenders and fast engines. Porsche has never strayed from the iconic shape and it was awesome to see the history of the brand all under one roof. The picture here is the stainless steel ceiling at the museum. Since we all know the iconic shape of Porsche, I concentrated on the mosaic-type ceiling that shows a reflection of our world as an abstract painting; broken yet whole.
When my son is old enough, I’d like to take him here. And show him which of the Porsche’s I’d like him to buy me for my 70th birthday.