Posted by Martin Orr on
Sunday, 23 July 2006 at 16:43
Leipzig did not strike me as a very tourist city. The main basis of its economy is international trade fairs, which continued even in the Communist period. According to the guidebook it has two record-holding stations: the Hauptbahnhof where I arrived is the largest dead-end station in the world, and the Bayerischer Bahnhof is the oldest still-functioning station. However when I saw it it was definitely not functioning, closed for an underground station to be added.
There are two noteworthy churches. The Nikolaikirche was the venue for weekly peace prayer meetings during the 1980s and in 1989 was the centre of peaceful protests in the run-up to the fall of Communism in East Germany. J. S. Bach was choirmaster at the Thomaskirche for 27 years. I went to a service there this morning, although it was a choir-off Sunday.
Lutheran churches here are not as austere as you might expect (or as the one in Cambridge). They are decorated with paintings of Biblical scenes, churchmen or local mayors. Those which started out as Catholic churches missed the Vatican II reform of moving the altar forward from the wall, so the priest has to saz part of the service with his back to the congregation.
Now in: Nürnberg
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Martin
Tags
churches, germany, holiday, lutheran
Posted by Martin Orr on
Friday, 21 July 2006 at 19:21
Wittenberg is a small, quiet town whose claim to fame is as the centre of the Reformation in the 15th century. A few streets of the old town have been preserved as a cobbled pedestrian zone, although there seemed to be a lot of resurfacing going on.
Near one end is the house where Luther lived, now a museum. From starting as a monk, he seems to have become comfortably well-off and certainly well-known and influential. Appearing before the Holy Roman Emperor in his twenties and refusing to recant his beliefs must have been a pretty daunting experience.
At the other end of the street is the Schlosskirche, to whose door Luther pinned his 95 Theses in 1517. The door itself was destroyed in the Seven Years War and has been replaced by a pair of bronze doors with the Latin text of the theses engraved on them. The church was attached to the Saxon Elector's palace, little of which has survived. Its building does however contain the youth hostel, at the top of a dramatic spiral staircase.
Now in: Leipzig
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Martin
Tags
germany, holiday, luther
Posted by Martin Orr on
Thursday, 20 July 2006 at 17:36
Since Saturday I have been on holiday in Berlin with my family. Much of the centre of the city is a building site or full of new skyscrapers, following the fall of the Wall. Certainly the square Soviet apartment blocks are not terribly attractive. Apart from a few 18th-19th century cathedrals and museums, the history that you see is very much dominated by the Cold War. Evidence of the Nazis has largely been swept away, such as the completely unmarked car park which now stands above the bunker where Hitler shot himself. Nearby is the new, and somewhat peculiar, Jewish Memorial, a large square covered in concrete blocks which range from 50cm to 5m high.
The line where the Wall ran, back and forth across the middle of the city, is usually not obvious; it ran close past then-existing buildings as well as new ones. We saw one piece which has been preserved as well as a museum about the Wall, escape attempts and non-violent protest.
On Tuesday we went to Potsdam just outside Berlin, where the Prussian emperors lived. The Park Sanssouci is huge, but I was surprised by how small the palaces were: only one storey tall and one room deep.
The rest of the family flew home today; until 14th August I am Interrailing in Germany and Italy. Tonight I am in Wittenberg.
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Martin
Tags
germany, holiday
Posted by Martin Orr on
Tuesday, 20 June 2006 at 15:40
This week is May Week, which is full of post-exam parties. In particular, a number of colleges hold May Balls which are absolutely massive; last night was Trinity May Ball (£205 for a double ticket). It rained lightly during the fireworks near the beginning but fortunately it was only a little, and the weather was otherwise good. We queued from 7pm but this was worth it as we got in very quickly after it started at 9pm, and stayed until 4.15am (it goes on until 6am, when it ends with a survivors' photograph).
As for things to do, there were so many it was impossible to keep track of them. There was a main stage with rock/pop bands, a jazz tent, a classical music room, swing/salsa/ceilidh dancing in the Great Hall and a cabaret tent, each with six or seven different acts over the course of the night. There was also a fairground, a synthetic ice rink and an endless supply of food and champagne.
During the fireworks, the Cam was totally blocked by punts who had come to watch - there might have been forty of them, plus some canoes. A few people came in punts in black tie and made an attempt to run up the bank and enter the Ball; these may have been just symbolic and certainly had little chance of success, there being a security guard every few metres.
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, mayweek, trinity
Posted by Martin Orr on
Monday, 05 June 2006 at 08:36
I am now half way through my exams - two gone and two to go. The first did not go as well as I had hoped - the questions just took a long time. The second one, which I had expected to be the hardest, turned out to be easy and I completed it in just over two hours (out of three). There are two more today and tomorrow. There are some strange things like the fact that the invigilators wear gowns (although in Oxford the students have to wear academical dress, at least while entering and leaving the exam hall), and they began by addressing us as "ladies and gentlemen".
I was reading that the prime minister, shortly after taking office, has to prepare secret instructions which are carried on the UK's nuclear-missile submarines; should they be unable to detect any sign of life from the UK for several days, the captain of the submarine on patrol will open the instructions and carry them out (although it's hard to see who the missiles would be targetted at post-Cold War). Anyway this makes me wonder: politicians probably give little thought to this area of responsibility until suddenly it hits them when they become prime minister, and certainly the electorate don't consider who they would trust to make such decisions when voting. So I suppose the question is what makes the prime minister better qualified than anyone else to make such decisions, and to have them carried out even after the country has been completely destroyed? I remember a science fiction book which contained a planet who left decisions about whether to go to war up to their military commanders and were astonished at the idea of giving politicians a say.
Tags
cambridge, exams, nukes, tripos