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.

die Ordnung und sitzpinkeln

The last time I was in Germany, my best friend Danny came to visit me. Danny got tangled up in a traveling bachelorette party, his brother nearly fought a döner man, and I slept in a trailer. It was a hell of a weekend.

Laura please don't hate me for posting this. Danny didn't know you at the time.

But one thing that stands out about this trip is the moment that Danny showed all the Germans that we were foreign. Danny crossed the street without the proper “grüner Mann” showing. Germans are crazy about Ordnung, “order”, and in Germany you do NOT cross the street unless you have the grüner Mann!

I was in Wernigerode last weekend waiting to cross the street to get to our car, and some chick crossed the street illegally. I thought it was weird, but the Germans thought it was unforgivable. Someone actually shouted at her, “Hey, you can't just cross the street like that. There are children watching you!” Germans don't talk to strangers. Ever. Let me repeat, a woman jay walked, and the passers by felt that it was so out of order for her to do this that they heckled and shamed her for being a poor roll model.

The idea behind it is that societies have order and that goes from the top to the bottom. When you have an autobahn where people can travel (not uncommonly) 135mph, and where unmarked streets mean a speed limit of 80mph, you need to know that someone isn't going to just walk in front of you. So for the Germans it's very important that their kids learn this and learn it quick.

Along the same lines, compared to the US Germany is a sink or swim sort of place. Guardrails: uncommon. Warning labels: few and far between. Speed limits: what? Parental Supervision: laissez-faire. This all relates back to Ordnung. Everyone knows not to wander near cliffs, ergo no guard rails. If you're allergic to peanuts, you clearly can't eat peanut butter, ergo few warning labels. If you drive according to the road conditions, almost any speed can be safe, ergo few speed limits. And so on. Honestly it's kind of nice to see everything function like this. It also saves you from seeing labels like “don't use your blow dryer in the shower.”...Seriously how pressed for time can you be?!

At other times though Ordnung and idiosyncrasy blur together. My favorite example of this is sitzpinkeln, and I've been chomping at the bit to talk about this! I've conducted a straw poll among my male German acquaintances about their bathroom habits. It was a very awkward straw poll. I was astonished to discover that the VAST majority of the guys sit down to pee (sitzpinkeln). I laughed at first, since German humor is notoriously dry and deadpan, and then I realized it wasn't a joke. There are even signs to enure Ordnung in this situation.

"Please sit to pee"

This part of the culture I simply can't internalize. Ordnung says that sitzpinkeln is more accurate than my current method, and vastly superior to my nighttime method of peeing-by-sonar, but every part of me says that boys stand to pee, and some principles are worth fighting for. I'm sort of waiting for my crossing the street moment with sitzpinkeln. I'll be at someone's house and I'll have to use the bathroom. I'll assume my normal stance and get down to business. They will hear the water against water sound of me NOT sitzlpinkln-ing. Ordnung will have to be kept, and I will be heckled and shamed, like the lady that jay walked.

das Schloss

I think one of the first things that comes to mind when one thinks of Germany, other than beer, are the castles. One castle is called a "Schloss" in German. A Schloss is a very elaborate castle that someone used to live in. There is another German word "Burg" and that is more of a fortress, that no one really lived in, but from the outside, they look sort of similar.

This last weekend was a whirlwind of travelling. I went to see Johannes and Julia in Weinheim, and it was nice to catch up with them. I got back to Rad around 10pm and crashed into bed because I had to wake up at 5am to get on a train to see Neuschwanstein!

Actually 10 of us went together. We got a schönes Wochenende ticket, which lets 5 people travel on any of the slower trains in Germany all day. It only costs 39€ total. Since we couldn't use the fast trains, we had to set out early to get to Munich by noon. The trip there was gorgeous. Bavaria is a gorgeous part of Germany. It looks a lot like Kentucky, but the other Germans think of Bavaria like we think of Texas. Basically, the Bavarians are a whole different race of people.

We had to change trains in Lindau, and after spending a few minutes there we all resolved to go back there.

I should mention that this trip took place on a Sunday, which means that Germany was SHUT DOWN. I'm surprised that trains run, actually. If you want food on a Sunday, you are s.o.l. Because of this, Lindau was deserted, and that made it seem like a fairy tail.

After our layover we went further toward Neuschwanstein, and saw more of the beautiful Bavarian countryside.

Upon reaching our destination, we ran into a small snag. Our reservation to tour the castle wasn't showing up on the (purple-haired, 60 year-old) ticket agent's screen. Luckily Joe, was able to sweet talk her into giving us a reservation. It turned out that ours was actually scheduled for October.

While we waited for our reservation we checked out the scenic views in the area.

I have to say that I wasn't that impress with the outside of the castle. I mean, yeah, it's on a mountain, and yeah, it's got a gorgeous view, and yeah, it's old, but I was expecting something more...Disney.

The inside of the castle didn't disappoint. Ludwig II died before it was finished and the people were clearly not eager to continue their labors, so it is largely unfinished. We weren't allowed to photograph the inside of the castle; heaven forbid I decide to decorate my living room with a scene of the 12 apostles and a mosaic of all life on Earth and copy their style...

It was gorgeous, but alas, all good things must end. We decided to get some lunch, weißwurst and dunkel bier, and headed home.

But wait, our fantastic trip did have a snag. Our trains home were late and at a crucial connection our train came in late, but the other trains were waiting for us. Now keep in mind, we have group tickets and it's close to the last train. We get out of the train and the conductor motions (shouts) that we should go to platform three. We looked at platform 8, and it had the train we were supposed to go to. At this point, indecision splits our group and 7 of us go to platform 8 and 3 of us go to platform 3. My group was correct (platform 8), but the other three we stranded in Friedrichshafen without a ticket. It all ended up working out for the best. Two of us stayed behind at the next stop and waited for the other three and we all go home before 1am.