der Legostein

I was a weird kid when I was younger. I nourished myself almost solely with coca-cola and cake frosting, I refused to wear jeans as I was convinced they were made of metal, at the age of 6 I made napalm, and for a good two years of my childhood, my mother had resigned herself to the idea of having an autistic son. She (tentatively) was later proven wrong. Despite my...erm...idiosyncrasies? one part of my childhood was very normal. I loved to play with Legos. I still have a giant box of them in my room and my various Lego spaceships completely with Lego crew are still docked at my Lego space station.

About three weeks ago, I went to visit my very good friend David in Ulm. The goal was that I would meet his family, throw paper airplanes from the highest church tower in the world, and generally make Ulm a little insecure. We did all that of course, but then David dropped a little surprise in my lap. It turns out that Legoland Deutschland is only a hop, skip, and a jump from Ulm. My tail began to wag at the first mention of Legoland, and I got this dopey grin that I couldn't get ride of when I found out that he and I were going to visit it.

The church tower in Ulm. One of my paper airplanes reached the Danube...another one reached the police station.

See, I've always wanted to visit Legoland. The original one is in Denmark, but it's just slightly to the East of the Middle of Nowhere, Denmark, so a trip there was infeasible, and I had all but given up on the dream. I knew there was a Legoland in Germany, but I had forgotten about that one since I'd been living in northern Germany.

Legoland was awesome. I probably would have gotten a very little bit more out of it had I been an actual child, but that would only have been because I could have ridden more rides. I was beside myself with enjoyment as it was though. There are a couple of roller coasters, but since the median age of Legloand patrons is somewhere between 7 and 11, the coasters aren't too scary. The first thing we did was get on a roller coaster, which also doubled as a haunted house type thing. We all got high-fives from the roller coaster operater as we passed by. My guess is that I wasn't the first conspicuously old person to ride the coaster. Afterwards we hit up another ride themed around “Ninjago, Masters of Spinjitzu.” I have no idea what spinjitzu is, but somehow it lends itself to a bucking carousel ride that resembles a tie fighter. The seats also had wings that you could steer. This gave you just enough rope to hang yourself, so to speak. If you tilted the wings just right, you could make your experience significantly more terrifying than your neighbors'. There was another ride that was some sort of robot arm that tossed you around like a rag doll, I cut in front of easy four 2^nd graders to get the best spot.

The park also has a movie theater, which was kinda lame. Go figure. The show factory was pretty cool to see, though. Ohh wait I just remembered something about that damned factory! Ok, so the tours are in groups and are all started with a short film about Legos. We waited in line, during this wait a child and I played around by jumping back and fourth with one another. Then the doors opened, and our comeradery dissolved as I basically palmed him and two other kids into the pavement to be the first one inside. The door man was handing out souvenir Lego bricks and I stood there expectantly awaiting my Lego brick. The man looked at me and said in a dismissive tone that only the children get the bricks. I thought about arguing but the last thing I wanted was to get thrown out of Legoland over a goddamned Lego brick, so I sighed, conspicuously loud, and went inside. Bullshit. Today's blog title means “Lego brick” by the way.

By far the coolest thing about the park was the miniature world. The imagineers have recreated a handful of cities around the globe in Lego form and the amount of detail is awesome.

This is the Lego version of the Castle Neuschwanstein. To get an idea of the size,  my friend David is standing in the background taking a picture and he is about 6'2". The plants are all real. I managed to corner a gardener in the park and she told me that there are only 20 gardeners who take care of the entire park.

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This is a Lego version of Römerplatz in Frankfurt. It's not totally accurate, but Lego is an imperfect medium. Oh, and my (other) friend David, who is a Frankfurt tourguide, told me a story about a man in the Frankfurt city hall who would spy on important meetings, and on the real city hall in Frankfurt they have a small statue of him, which the Lego designers recreated!!!!

Berlin in Lego form. This is specifically the Berliner Dom and the TV Tower, which I captured in my own travels to Berlin.

The is the German Parliament. I haven't seen this technically, yet, but I will be seeing it next week. The short (Lego) woman in the snazzy jacket can be no one other than Angela Merkel (a fellow Ossi, I might add)

This little gem was found in the recreation of Schwabenland, I had to photograph it since both my aunt and David's mom are named Sonja.

I liked this mostly because I utterly hate pigeons. The woman's book says "Pigeon recipes"

Oh lord. Ok, so hooking is legal in Germany, and the city of Hamburg (recreated here) is famous for  the Reeperbahn, an area dedicated to quite literally hookers and blow. So the Lego imagineers recreated Hamburg, complete with hookers.

No, this isn't New Orleans. This is Venice. The ships in the model really do float and travel along the canals. David (the first one) noticed that the 'Italian' music playing in the background was utter gibberish.

I am no fan of Munich, but even I have to admit that this recreation of Allianz Arena is pretty baller. The whole thing is about 7 feet across, and glows at night. They had to design a special kind of brick that was translucent in oder to get the proper effect.

Straßenkunst

Ok Leute, I alluded to making this post earlier, and now I’m finally gonna do it. I’m finally gonna release my cache of street art photos that I’ve been hoarding like an Appalachian farmer hoards his beautiful harem of inbred daughters.

I had a year of art history in high school. I remember it being one of my more challenging classes, since in reality it had very little to do with art. The teacher herself consistently made fun of the course’s content, which was mostly human geography of Europe and naked paintings of virgins, by calling the class “AP Maps and Boobies.” Regardless, I worked like a dog for that class, and as a result it made me sort of hate high art. I mean, I could never achieve something as technically skillful as painting the Mona Lisa, but that doesn’t mean I think it looks good. I’ve always been drawn to sort of lowbrow entertainment: Roller derbies, lewd stand-up comedy, the musical stylings of GirlTalk, and pulp science fiction. So, when I came to Europe and saw the amount of graffiti and sticker campaigns here, I was captivated and starting photographing it.

Graffiti along with these sticker campaigns are to me a mixture of political speech, egoism, vulgarity, art, and advertising. Graffiti can be simple or complex, boring or thought provoking, direct or metaphorical, etc. Anyways, enough of me rambling. I promised pictures and I’m going to deliver.

Berlin. Above "Take what you need!" The options are "Love, Hope,  Faith, Trust, Endurance, Courage, Understanding, Peace, Passion, Beauty, Freedom"

Frankfurt. This is the main character from a fairy tale, Struwwelpeter. Basically the kid misbehaves and is punished (hilariously) by the universe.

Hamburg. This one is part of a political message. I like that it doesn't explain itself well.  I mean the creator of this could have spend pages explaining precisely what she means, but instead I get to consider and find my own meaning.

Karlsruhe. Very often the graffiti is cynical and critical, but  I guess the point of art is to change society not reinforce it.

Krakow. Like I've said, Europeans love their bikes, and there are a ton that are just abandoned all over the place. This one got a knitted cover added to it.

Krakow. Given that Poland is so Catholic, I thought this was an interesting bit of art. My best guess is that the penis was added later...

Krakow. In addition to being cynical, the graffiti is more often than not political. My guess is the Cameron and "shock and awe" weren't randomly added.

Mainz. "Animals free you must" I'm not entirely sure what the Anti-Fa organisations even stand for. Apparently everything.

Neubrandenburg. "Skinheads against Nazis" To answer your question/confusion, there is/can be a difference. But really keeping track of the different subcultures from the 70's is a full time job. Skinheads, Mods, Punks, Antifascists, blah blah blah. It's a very interesting topic, but it's sort of like reading up on conspiracy theories: Interesting but really pointless.

Neubrandenburg...duh. Like I said, a lot of the stickers are simple advertisements. Certainly some group made them and they have a deeper meaning or motivation, but in end effect they are little more than advertisements.

Neubrandenburg. Again with the Antifascists. I really don't understand them, so if someone wants to explain what they are for/ against, other than the obvious, I'd be very appreciative. 

Neubrandenburg. Word.

Neubrandenburg. Haha. What can I say, I like the lowbrow stuff too. It used to say "exit"

Rostock. "It's our right to block Nazi marches.  Don't give an inch to the fascists. Neither in Dresden nor anywhere else." The translation was rough at best, it's more eloquent in German, trust me. Even though East Germany is supposedly more opposed to foreigners, I think they Germans make a bigger deal out of this problem than it really is. At the same time, I don't know how to separate German directness and racism. I mean the word "Neger" is still sort of accepted, and rap music is sold as "black music", which, by and large, it is, but still I find that racist and Germans don't bat an eye.

Rostock. "Choose a path" Another open ended one.

Rostock. Nothing very special about this one, this is just the name of the train station.

Rostock. "War is god's way of teaching Americans geography." I thought this was utter bullshit! Since most Americans still can't find Iraq on a map! This one was written in the picture above.

Rostock. "Just go fuck yourselves. For respect -- Against hatred and homophobia" This message was, of course, brought to you by the Green Party...duh

Rostock. A surprising amount of the graffiti is in English.

Berlin. "I'm from pussy, you Kreuzberg." Ok this one takes some explaining.  First of all, normally it would read with the words pussy and Kreuzberg switched around. Second, Kreuzberg is a part of Berlin. A really shitty part of Berlin. Like don't walk around in Kreuzberg alone or at all if you are a girl. Also, good luck finding an intact piece of glass there. So, the sticker is a play on how offensive/uneducated Kreuzberg is (because they said pussy), and also a joke about how hard Kreuzberg is.

Tübingen? This is from a while ago. Tübingen also had a graffit war between two teams to see who could tag the most with the most slogans. The teams were "Falafal" and "Currywurst". I think Falafal won, but they slogans would pop up out of nowhere.

Tübingen? Not much explaining to do here.

Bratislava. I laughed at this one for literally 5 minutes. In hindsight, it wasn't that funny, but I still like it.

Ich decke dich

We're right past the halfway point of my year in Germany, and to prove it, last week we had our midyear seminar in Frankfurt.

A pretty unique skyline for Germany

Luckily the week before last, all of my classes ended. In fairness I only had 3 classes and 2 half classes, so it wasn't like the end of classes gave me that much more free time than I normally had. However, I decided to take this opportunity to drop by Berlin and Karlsruhe again before I headed into Frankfurt a day early.

I've already discussed Berlin ad nauseum, so I'll skip a long-winded explanation of how much I love that city. On Saturday I bought my ticket from Berlin to Frankfurt...via Karlsruhe. If you're not familiar with German geography, this is like driving from Kansas City to Chicago by way of Denver. Every ticket checker I encountered was confused as hell.

Anyway I eventually get to Frankfurt a day early, having booked an extra night at our hostel. I was checked in by a very nice guy from Kenya. His German wasn't fantastic, but neither is mine as you'll soon see. There was a lull in the check in process where something was printing off, and to fill this lull he decides to banter with me. At this point I notice that his hat has some sort of bible verse on it, and his T shirt is similarly decorated. He then asks me “Sind Sie...Christ?” Now I'm an atheist, so I never really focused on learning religious words in German, which means that I didn't know that “Christ” in German doesn't mean “Jesus Christ”, it means “christian”. So I was very confused for a hot second, because of course I'm not Christ, not by a long shot. Then I realized he was asking my religion, so I was relieved to see that he hadn't mistaken me for his savior, but also concerned that I'd be drawn into a debate about born-again Christianity, during which I'm not certain I would have stayed polite. So I very excitedly informed him that I love Jesus and that, yes, my family is Christian. So, I technically avoided lying depending on how you define my family and if by love I meant respect. Welcome to Frankfurt!

That night I met a guy named David, who is a history student at the University of Frankfurt and who is also learning to be a tour guide of the city. He showed me around Frankfurt and explained the history of the city and the traditions, and he even spoke some Hessisch, which is the local dialect. He paid special attention during the tour to mention anywhere that JFK stayed at, spoke from, ate in, sat on, or even so much as glanced at during his time in Frankfurt. Later in the week, we also met his friend Samuel and all of us got lunch together at the University (Fun Fact: the University used to be the headquarters of the Supreme Allied Command after the war.) This particular building on the campus doesn't have normal elevators, but instead has paternosters. They're cool as hell. It looks like an elevator, but it never stops running and has cabins all along the elevator cable. There is an upward side and a downward side. So instead of pressing a button and waiting you just step into a cabin as it comes by and wait until you hit the right floor! It was wild!

At this point, I suppose I should explain the title of the post. I often say sentences in German that make no sense to anyone except me. Usually people just say they don't understand and ask me to rephrase it, but last week was different. I have two examples. During the first example, I was standing in front of the Goethe Haus with David and Samuel, and we were planning what to do next. I said that I would probably catch a train back home and not stay another night (I was getting a sore throat). Then I added an apology for being a party pooper. I wanted to say something funny like “don't get mad and hit me.” and I said “bitte mich nicht abhauen.” And Samuel asked me to repeat it, so I did. Then David asked me to repeat it, and I did, and then they both laughed. They said it was a very pretty phrase, but made absolutely no sense at all. It was worse than a grammar mistake and more like a collection of random German words strung together. I ended up saying “ please me no scram.” After four years of German, that was humbling to say the least.

The other, and by far funnier, mess up that I made happened on Sunday. Christoph and I were going to meet my friend Kevin for lunch. Christoph didn't have any cash, but time was short. So I wanted to tell Christoph that I would just pay for his lunch. I tried to say, “I'll cover you.” In German, things to do with covering usually have the word stem “deck” in them. Decke = blanket, abdecken = conceal, entdecken = discover, Deckel = lid. It seemed logical to me that covering the cost of a meal would also involve this word. I very casually said to him, “ich decke dich”. And he suddenly stopped walking. Then he realized that I (probably) didn't actually mean what I had just said, and he started to laugh. He then politely informed me that I just said I was going to impregnate him, ostensibly in the restaurant.

Other than my (hilariously) poor German turns of phrase, the week was a blast. The first night most of the 75 of us decided to go to a bar near the hostel. It being a Monday night, they weren't expecting 40 people to show up at once, but the bartender made bank on us. We also got to see the The Who's Tommy. At my mom's behest, I'd seen the movie version when I was about 15 or so, and I loved it. But I was the only one who'd heard of Tommy. Trying to explain the plot of Tommy goes over about as well as explaining the plot of Rocky Horror Picture Show: There's this kid who sees a murder, and then he is struck deaf, dumb, and blind...for some reason. So Tina Turner tries to cure him with LSD. Oh and then (still blind) he gets really good at pinball and defeats...Elton John. Then he founds a cult. My friends were less than enthused, but after the first half I think they were all converted.

Anyway, I'm halfway done, and I'll be writing more soon.