I wanted to visit Schloss Charlottenburg during the Christmas holidays. I picked yesterday for several reasons. I thought that being the coldest day of the year (certainly the coldest for years), the tourists would stay away, preferring the warmth of their hotel lounges. Wrong! They turned up in their droves. Another, more pecuniary reason, was that the entrance fee goes up 2 Euros on 1 January (perhaps that's why so many tourists were there).
I won't bore you with a history lesson about the palace's origins; the official 'Prussian Palaces' website has full details and better pictures than mine.
The building and the exhibits inside were breathtaking. Each room was unique and quite often the ceilings were works of art in themselves. They were better than the walls and furniture. The highlight for me was the labyrinth of rooms displaying silver tableware, crystal and porcelain dinner sets. There's a small selection of pictures on Flickr that gives you an idea of what there is to see.
Photographs displayed in some rooms show just how much serious damage was inflicted during the second World War. The restorers' skills in bringing the palace back to its original condition, equals, if not surpasses, the skills of the first builders and artists.
It was also bitterly cold inside the palace: rooms were air conditioned (!) to maintain the correct humidity and temperature, in order to preserve furnishings and artefacts. Despite this, and the crowds, the visit was well worth it. I'm definitely going to visit a second time, when the weather warms up: there was a lot that I didn't get round to seeing the first time, having lost my way a little!
If you get the chance to visit the palace, don't miss it!
I've been using Twitter for a while now and like to follow the "Trends" listed for Germany, seeing how I live here.
This evening I was astounded to see among the top 10 a hash for 'last school day' and I took a peek to see what they were saying. Of course it's not surprising that teenagers are excited about finishing school for the holidays. What did surprise me was that they were writing tweets about it so late at night! At midnight! Don't the parents know what their own children are doing so late at night? Do they care? Are they even in the house?
Yes, I plead guilty to being old fashioned, regressive, conservative, and somewhat advanced in the aging process. But a little more parental guidance (I won't say 'discipline') wouldn't do any harm.
This is the view in my apartment building's courtyard. Judging by the quantity of snow on the saddles, these bikes haven't been anywhere in days. Their riders will have to wait around in the freezing cold like the rest of us for the tram to get into town to do their last minute Christmas shopping. Having said this, however, one sees exactly the same view in August when there is no snow. It's a good job I don't own a bicycle: I wouldn't have anywhere to store it outdoors. I wonder why these people own bicycles they rarely use?
One good thing has come out of this. As a mere pedestrian, I am (for the time being, at least) not in mortal danger from cyclists who speed at breakneck speed along the pavements, in blatant contravention of the law. They expect, nay demand, that pedestrians get out of their way immediately, as if they have exclusive use of the pavement. In this weather, walking speed is once again the norm on Berlin's pavements. End of rant.
The U1 underground runs on viaducts above the main road. Here at Prinzen Straße the track is level with the first floor of the surrounding apartment buildings.
What they lack in size they more than compensate for with their belligerence, shameless insolence, and sheer hunger.
Berlin sparrows demonstrate a complete indifference to human presence where food is concerned.
When walking through a square, be prepared to move around a feeding bird on the ground: it won't fly away in fright and you wouldn't want to step on it, would you? If you see a morsel of hamburger carelessly strewn on the flagstones, give it a wide berth, or else duck low. Your head will be no obstacle for a diving sparrow on the approach runway.
We could all learn some lessons from these pesky rubbish disposal agents, namely:
Discontent is simmering in the halls of Academe around Europe. Some students seem to take umbrage at the Bologne process that is trying to unify all of Europe’s university degrees. One of them is Ben Stotz of Freie Universität, Berlin (member of the Federal Governing Board of the Sozialistischer-Demokratischer Studierendenverband Die Linke.SDS). He gave an interview to Humboldt’s monthly newspaper (Issue 8 - 2009/2010). Here’s a short question and answer:
Q. The subject of the third dispute was “Who is allowed to study?” Who is being excluded from university education and how can that be changed?
A. A large proportion of the population. In no other country does academic success depend so much on the parental house as in Germany. 19% of students come from the working class. That’s why we are fighting for a general openness of tertiary education. Everyone should be able to study, regardless of his economic position, who his parents are, or his school leaving qualifications. In addition, there shouldn’t be any restrictions on places for Masters studies. Many students are worried that after a Bachelor’s degree, they will end up as cheap labour.
Valid points, and noble. How nice it would be if we could all go to university and get ourselves a degree (even if we do have to cram in the knowledge in three short years). Everyone would leave school at 18 and go straight into tertiary education; whether they can manage to keep up or not is neither here nor there. There’s only one country on earth that operates this system – Utopia.
Here are some thoughts for Herr Stotz to ponder on.
How many working-class children are actively encouraged by their families to continue their education, even if they are academically gifted? If money was no object, I still believe few children from such backgrounds would go on to study.
If there are no restrictions on places for Masters studies (e.g. by number available, or students’ grades) then what would be the difference between Bachelors and Masters? There would be no concept of progress or an increasing degree of difficulty in studies pursued.
Someone has to drive the city’s trams and someone has to prepare the food in the Mensa cafeterias. You don’t need a degree to perform these jobs. But if we push everyone into higher education, then a graduate might end up doing these jobs and, quite justifiably, protest that he is being exploited.
Just how many lawyers, architects, chemists, philosophers, translators, etc. etc. does a country need? Don’t we also need street cleaners, shop assistants, and bakers? Who will do these jobs?
Another reason why graduates might end up as cheap labour is because there is a lack of ‘real’ jobs for them to do. Might it not be more prudent to secure workplaces first, rather than educating students for jobs that don’t (yet) exist?
We need to provide education and training for a whole gamut of occupations and lifestyles. While a university degree has many things going for it (freedom to grow as an individual, personal development, and such like), it is not necessarily the best option for every single school leaver.
Yesterday’s papers were full of snippets about the handful of couples (and some singles hoping to get lucky) who had nothing better to do than stand in front of the Brandenburg Gate in freezing temperatures and snog away in public view. Maybe they were hoping for their fifteen (or even thirty seconds would do) minutes of fame on the box. I don’t know if they succeeded: I don’t have a television so I’ll never know.
What was their motive? A protest against the commercialisation of Valentine’s Day. Well lo and behold! Since when has 14th February been anything but a huge commercial funfair? The only reason everyone is bombarded with commercial messages in February is to get them hyped up and buying cards, chocolates, flowers and naff looking pieces of useless, fluffy kitsch articles remotely resembling members of the animal kingdom, which are manufactured somewhere most definitely not in Europe.
If Valentine’s Day was not made into a huge commercial event, then how on earth could retailers shift all this useless junk every year?
Incidentally, the above holds true for all the other annual pseudo/quasi-religious (or otherwise) happenings. Examples could include – Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Halloween, Carnival – I’m sure you can supply your own local traditions.
If these lovey-dovey couples really wanted to protest against the gross commercialisation of Valentine’s Day (or any other commercialisation) then there is only one effective measure which strikes right at the heart of the problem – BOYCOTT!
There’s a battle raging out there: between e-books and paper books, between online sources and dusty old tomes languishing on dark shelves. Which one will prevail? Probably the one that makes the biggest profit for the most people.
The other day at my local library, I came across a book entitled The Web Address Book for Germany 2009 (m.w. Verlag) which contains 6,000 of the most important Internet addresses. Naturally I borrowed the book. The sites contained therein were considered the most popular/useful but do not show up automatically at the top of any list of search results. Of course, with Google et al. you have to ask the right question and use the right words to get the answer you’re looking for. Inevitably, Number 1 on any list is always Wikipedia. And to find a ‘good’ site you have to sift through no end of c**p. It’s gentler on the nerves to leaf through a book. Which is what I did.
By the way (or “BTW” for those who are fluent only in chat room lingo), there was a whole aisle of shelves in the library positively groaning with manuals on how to use Windows, Linux, PowerPoint, Excel etc.
After much perambulation, let me get to the point. Even today, you still need a book to show you the ins and outs of a computer and the Internet.
Maria Anna Muller is such a remarkable individual that Die Zeit has dedicated a whole article to her (http://www.zeit.de/karriere/beruf/2010-02/frauen-fuehrungsposition-flughafen). Why? She is Germany’s sole female airport manager (at Rostock-Laage). The real purpose of the article was to look at the airport’s weak financial position and to see how it could be turned around. This being so, why then does the article mention as its first sentence the fact that the manager is a woman? The insinuation (to my cynical thought processes) is inevitable: woman boss – failing company. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
It helps, of course, if Mummy and Daddy are loaded and can afford to send their progeny to Oxford’s residential courses. (We all know, as well, that a good education is something highly cherished and jealously guarded by the Great and the Good). Then there’s the cramming … um, sorry … ‘revision’ courses providing reinforcement where necessary. A snip at ₤350 per subject. If the young one is a bit bashful about displaying his/her intellectual prowess in front of peers, then a private tutor could be brought in (₤25-₤50 an hour – now there’s an idea for an interesting sideline).
After the hard slog, the candidate will need lots of frequent breaks, plenty of amusing diversions and treats as rewards for good work done i.e. pizza and a video.
I’m sorry to say that the Telegraph’s Top Ten Revision “Tips” should be renamed “Top Ten Revision Hard Sells”: my computer screen turned blue with links from all the “educational” institutes who are falling over themselves to help this year’s batch of sprogs get through exams (without resorting to cheating).
In my day, things were a lot simpler. Not having the benefit of a privileged background (nor come to that, revision nannies, Internet, Oxbridge residential courses, private tutelage), my elders and betters could offer me only one sound piece of advice when it came to preparing for important exams: GET YOUR BOOKS OUT AND START READING!
Whoever said that adherents to YouTube were uncultered? Behold a dialogue among aficionados of one particular rock star:
Lenny Rock God! Only Yahweh is God! There is no God at all!
These three individuals managed to run the whole gamut of theological debate in a succinct, Hegelian-dialectic style discourse of only fourteen words. I defy any Doctor of Theology to do likewise!
“Women are dramatically under-represented in the boardrooms of major corporations in Germany and need state-imposed quotas to achieve parity.”
(http://www.thelocal.de/money/20100127-24863.html) Well, I never! What a revelation – you could have knocked me down with a feather! Did it take them many months of investigation and research to come up with this earth shaking conclusion? Were many man/woman-hours expended in reaching this outcome? (Far be it for me to criticise or state the obvious, but this august institute need look no further than its own internal hierarchy to come up with exactly the same answer.) Why didn’t they just come and ask me? I could have told them exactly the same thing, for free, and on the spot. I’m sure a lot of other ordinary people in the street could have told them the same piece of information as well. One need not look further than one’s own local discount supermarket: even in these humble business establishments, you can bet your bottom Euro that the manager will be a man. Ditto in any other retail outlets, be they department stores, electrical stores or what have you. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve walked into a big store and been confronted by a wall of mug shots of employees serving at that particular branch. A mixture of men and women at the bottom of the pile, but as you get higher up the hierarchy, the women disappear.
If women can’t get to be supermarket managers, then how do you expect them to get the key to the boardroom washroom?
The Institute for Economic Research (http://www.diw.de/de) did well to interrogate gender imbalances in areas of vital importance to society. What everyone needs to do now, however, is ask why these imbalances exist in the first place. Once we have found out the answer to that particular thorny question, we must then ask ourselves how we can correct the imbalance.
Laura Liswood has also looked at the issue of women at the top (http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,675620,00.html - ‘Men Who Have Daughters Tend to See Better’). Much more needs to be done than merely imposing quotas on parliaments and boards. Perhaps it is a lot more difficult than we imagine to change centuries of deeply entrenched prejudices and mindsets.
Incidentally, some may see this issue as a “work-life balance” issue. But why should someone have to choose between either work or life? Work is a part of life; life encompasses everything and everyone. If work does not belong to that vast category called ‘life’ then where does it belong?
