Picture of The Day

Schwerin Castle

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Gadgets & Gizmos

Germans love technology. You will find the use of technology everywhere and there is a tendency to introduce more and more technologies without keeping in mind that too much of it can complicate things. One of our guests came out of a city toilet (which runs a cleaning program after each visit) in panic that there was a sign that the door can open automatically after a certain time. The time (20 minute) was enough but there was something in the thought that the door is mechanically controlled and can be opened without the visitor's consent.

I was watching a TV program which was showing that sophisticated gadgets like coffee machine, car navigation units and ticket dispensers at Rail stations have become so complicated that almost everybody struggles to use them properly. The fully automatic coffee machine had a function called milk island, which the user could not find from the manual. The touch screen ticket dispensers had complicated code input systems and one user mentioned why don't you make it like the dispensers in Singapore. Every station has a button. You press it, insert money and voila! Your ticket is printed. But in Germany you have to go through many complicated menus.

The navigator had a voice recognition system which was not responding to certain words.

The bottom line is that these technologies have been incorporated without keeping in mind that most of the users are not geeks and are not comfortable with complicated menus.

The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Picture of the day

Staying connected while on a fast train journey (250 kmh)..laptop power, mobile internet, working desk, spacious seats.. somewhere in Germany.

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Guest of the Stauffenbergs

I am attending a conference of international activists in Rißtissen, a small village in Germany. The highlight of the conference was being hosted by the Stauffenberg family in their seventeenth century castle.

Schloss Rißtissen

The Stauffenbergs are an aristocratic Roman Catholic family from Swabia in Germany, whose best known member was Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg - the key figure in the 1944 "20 July plot" to assassinate Adolf Hitler. You can learn more about him in the movie Valkyrie featuring Tom Cruise.

The best part was that this place is a real antic heaven. The family kept this remotely located palace as a summer house and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg also visited here several times. This house remains closed most of the time of the year. The porcelain in which we had our dinner had inscriptions - "Villeroy and Boch 1570". Googling it I found this:

Rouen V&BM, Made in Saar Basin 1570. This Villeroy & Boch mark dates this piece from 1885 to 1895.

There were warnings about handling the furniture and porcelain but I was extra cautious because I felt that these were precious pieces of antic.

Someone was joking whether ghosts live there. I am staying in a hotel in a nearby village. It might have be interesting to be able to live there to see whether there are ghosts for real.

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How twitter breaks the news

Germany was shocked by another shooting incident in a school in Winnenden near Stuttgart. Today morning 17-year-old youth killed 16 people (including 10 pupils and three teachers) in a shooting rampage.

It is interesting to learn how twitter updates of citizen journalists are used by the media. The Observer posts details how journalists of France24, a French TV channel tracked an eyewitness of this incident via twitter updates and broadcast her interview. The Blog of France24 notes:

It's not the first time that Twitter's helped with breaking news (other examples include the Amsterdam plane crash, and the cricket terrorist attack in Pakistan). In the case of this shooting, using the website made the process faster than ever. Just fifty-two minutes between the incident being reported and an account live on the channel. The future of participative journalism looks bright!

Breaking Tweets has more Twitter message roundups.

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Berlin Freeze

'Freeze Berlin' by Flickr user really nothing and used under a creative commons licence.

Last Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 15:00 a flashmob of thousands of people gathered in Berlin Alexanderplatz and stood still for five long minutes.

Readers Edition reported that no official reason was known why people just stopped. Nobody demonstrated or questioned each other. It happened spontaneously as planned by corresponding social networking groups in StudiVZ & Facebook. Perhaps its just replicating the phenomena people are witnessing elsewhere.

Here is a video of the proceedings:

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Picture of the day

The difference of temperature between the two worlds...in and out of the house. Just to remind the readers that in many places in the world people do not have the luxury to live in a warm cocoon and are prone to the natural extremes.

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Berlin!!!! Wishing a peaceful and prosperous 2009 for everyone.

Image by Hyunlab

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Merry Christmas Everyone

Christmas market in Gendarmenmarkt

Christmas lighting in Arkaden, Potsdamer Platz

Sony Center, Potsdamer Platz

Christmas Market, Europa Center

Das Schloss

Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe), Kurfurstendam

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Picture of the Day

The Falling Leaves by Margaret Postgate Cole

Today, as I rode by,
I saw the brown leaves dropping from their tree
In a still afternoon,
When no wind whirled them whistling to the sky,
But thickly, silently,
They fell, like snowflakes wiping out the noon;
And wandered slowly thence
For thinking of a gallant multitude
Which now all withering lay,
Slain by no wind of age or pestilence,
But in their beauty strewed
Like snowflakes falling on the Flemish clay.

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Halloween in Germany

You might wonder what is the connection of a pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead with Germany?

This Spiegel article reveals:

In the mid-1990s, few in Germany had ever heard of Halloween, and even fewer celebrated it. Now, it's a €150 million a year industry.

Dieter Tschorn, a German businessman started promoting the event in 1994 and it took off.

In 2007, 4,600 tons of pumpkins were sold in Germany, says Tschorn. One can buy Halloween bread at the baker's, Halloween sausage at the butcher's, Halloween cocktails at the bar and, of course, Halloween candy in the nation's supermarkets. Tens of thousands of German children now go door-to-door, holding out their bags and saying "sweet or sour," the German version of trick-or-treat.

The Halloween promoter says that the holiday has become an industry worth around €160 million in Germany, in third place behind Christmas and Easter. In 1994, that number was close to zero.

I recently went to the The Erlebnisshof Klaistow about 50km away from Berlin where a pumpkin festival was held. You can see all the innovative sculptures people can do with pumpkins here. The best pumpkin of the region weighs 260 kilos:

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Festival of lights

The Berlin Festival of lights is closing in a couple of days. Look at these pictures in Flickr which looks more impressive than what you see being there in person.

Here are more night scenes from Berlin and around the world.

(Image: Gendarmenmarkt by leonwpp used under a creative commons license)

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Today's links

• Bangladesh: Jamaat's charter in clash with country's constitution


• Bangladeshi journalist says govt should conduct checks for workers


• Train travel in Bangladesh


• Bangladesh's Yunus says global financial meltdown to hit poor


• Take industries out of Dhaka


• China to help fund Burma-Bangladesh friendship road


• Why school shootings happen in affluent cultures?


• Islam, Democracy And Violence


• Berlin announces plans for world's largest community electric car infrastructure

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Image of the day

An apple tree in a private garden in Reichenau Island with no one to harvest.

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Schwäbische Alb

Yesterday we had some great time in the Swabian Alb. From Wikipedia:

"The Swabian Alb (German: Schwäbische Alb) is a low mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, extending 220 km from southwest to northeast and 40 to 70 km in width. It is named after the region of Swabia.

The Swabian Alb occupies the region bounded by the Danube in the southeast and the upper Neckar in the northwest. In the southwest it rises to the higher mountains of the Black Forest. The highest mountain of the Swabian Alb is the Lemberg (1015 m). The Alb's profile resembles a high plateau, which slowly falls away to the southeast." (Wikipedia)

With magnificent landscapes and numerous castles this is a popular tourist destination. Here are some pictures>

Burg Hohenzollerndam

A church in Burg Hohenzollerndam

Landscape view from Burg Hohenzollerndam

No its not a castle, its a restaurant

In these parts the castles are from fairy tales. View of Lichtenstein Castle.

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Image of the day

Living close to nature: A house in Bernburg

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Bielefeld-Bonn-Cologne

I was traveling the last four days. There is a lot to tell but time is the enemy. So let pictures speak:

Sparrenburg Castle, Bielefeld

Hermannsdenkmal in the Teutoburg Forest near Detmold

The Externsteine in the Teutoburg Forest near Detmold

View of a castle during a boat ride on the Rhine river.

The famous Federal Guest House on Petersberg mountain (One of the seven mountains in Bonn).

Kölner Dom

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Hitler in today's Germany

During my stay in Germany I have visited in many museums, memorials and a concentration camp, one thing is missing in these deliberately is the prominent display of Hitler's image. I haven't seen any statue or portrait anywhere. Hitler's real bunker was discovered years ago but it has not been converted to any museum for public display.

What I have heard that there are two concerns. One is that the Germans have a sort of collective guilt for what he did during the second world war (including the holocaust) and the other one is that he is also revered by the neo-nazis. Germany is one place where you can get prosecuted for carrying any sort of Nazi symbol (I know of a report which said an Indian women got into trouble for carrying Swastika like Hindu religious emblem in her locket). So any impersonation of Hitler is generally avoided.

When Madam Tussauds announced that they will be including Hitler's wax figure in their new branch in Berlin it created much debate. According to Der Spiegel:

Michael Braun, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) told the Thursday edition of the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel it was "distasteful beyond comparison." Green politician Alice Ströver called the Hitler wax figure "tasteless, disgusting and in bad style."

And the inevitable had to happen:

On Saturday morning, just seconds after the new branch of Madame Tussauds wax museum opened its doors for the first time, a visitor brushed aside two security guards, jumped over the desk at which Hitler was sitting, and tore the Führer's head off.

The man, a 41-year-old from the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin, was just the second visitor to enter the museum. "Never again war!" the man yelled as he attacked the wax figure.
(Der Spiegel)

That explains a lot about the public sentiments.

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Embassy warning

A German Football fan reacts:

We find it really good that you warn your citizens who are currently in Germany before the football game between Germany and Turkey and that you tell them to stay away from areas where fans could maybe celebrate the game. That way, we can all avoid having to explain fellow Americans that football is not the game with the strange pille (pills) where some boring Weicheier (extra sensitive morons) are dressed in complete Schutzanzügen (protection dress) and run against each other for two seconds just to stop again and beratschlagen (consult) for half an hour what they should do next. Thank you.(Translation mine)

Well this is not new. A mere elephant can trigger such warnings from an US Embassy and I did not know football is also elephant's favorite.

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Arrest of a 88 year old Nazi War Criminal in India

"Nazi war criminal held on Goa border" -this is the kind of story that make you raise your eyebrow.

A German intelligence wing succeeded in nabbing Johann Bach – who was responsible for World War II genocide of Jews – in the jungles of Khanapura on the border of Goa and Karnataka (India).

...The 88-year-old Bach was posted as a senior adjutant at the Marsha Tikash Whanaab concentration camp in East Berlin and was responsible for the genocide of more than 12,000 Jews in World War II.

Perus Narkp, the intelligence wing received a lead which informed about an old foreigner wanting to sell an antique, priceless 18th century piano. A similar piano had been reported missing from an East Berlin museum (in close proximity of Marsha Tikash Whanaab concentration camp) after World War II.

If a war criminal can be prosecuted after 64 years then I see nothing wrong in demanding the trial of collaborators war criminals of the liberation war in Bangladesh.

Update: It turns out to be a prank. Perus Narkp is an anagram of super prank and it got the whole Indian media.

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