far away places

Ice

2007-04-10T14:19:00.000-07:00

The Plaza fountains were turned on Monday when it hit 80 degrees, but it quickly sank into the twenties.

2007-04-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

Puppetry Arts Institute

2006-10-11T18:16:00.000-07:00

My "Popular Arts and Vernacular Aesthetics" class took a trip to the Puppetry Arts institute in Independence, Missouri. Puppetry is actually a very serious art form that we commonly neglect. The japanese commonly use 3 people to work a puppet. One will spend years just learning to work the legs on a marionette, then they move on to the right arm, and finally the left arm and head.

They had a showcase of Australian puppets, including the "Bushranger" and a couple Roos. Apologize for the cell phone pics. =)

Harry Truman, former president of the US, from Independence.

Driving around

2006-08-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

Rain and Sunshine in Kansas City

2006-08-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

Raining in Sunshine

My new room

Kaaansas City

2006-07-31T16:23:00.000-07:00

We started a party with the traditional American Bud Light 30 pack, and several more showed up. Billy has the most surreal house ever. His parents fashioned an old time Saloon and store fronts in his Back yard. Just to hang out and drink in.

Its hot, we needed a big fan. But we weren't supposed to touch it because of possible electriculion.

Kansas City Strip Steaks. They don't have cattle in New York.

I AMsterdam

2006-07-22T01:52:00.001-07:00

They used to tax people based on the width of their house. The result is a lot of thin, tall houses. It can be a bit claustrophobic at times.

Become an Exchange Student

2006-07-22T00:34:00.000-07:00

Mario created this video to encourage students in Poland to come here to Schwaebisch Hall. It outlines the jist of what there is to do here. Enjoy.

Die Gotten Diana

2006-07-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

I was recently part of a play performance of "The Goddess Diana" by Heinrich Heine. The play had never really been performed before. Our version of the script contained live actors playing Heine and His Wife, who both tell the story as he is on his deathbed. The story is only in German so I didnt understand all of it. But there is a Knight trying to serve the Goddess Diana. It is a romantic and fantasy work.

We were in charge of creating visuals to be displayed on 3 large screens during the performance. We used a program called arkaos which arranges video clips on your keyboard so you can mix them live. Its considered the next evolution of the DJ, the VJ, Video Jockey.

Photos from Mario, I was working. =)

Exchange Exhibition

2006-07-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

Tung put together a photogallery from our end of Semester Exhibition Here.

Random Prague

2006-06-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

Prague's Astronomical Clock

Alphonse Mucha is the most famous artist to come out of the Czech Republic. He even designed their currency when Czech became a free country.

Kostnice Ossuary (Bone Church)

2006-06-03T14:36:00.000-07:00

Kostnice was a normal cemetary until the Plague hit. It was then innendated with bodies, about 15,000 of them. For reasons unknown, a half-blind monk started making these elaborate sculptures out of their bones. It is a pretty incredible sight.

This chandelier contains every bone in the human body.

Heidelberg

2006-05-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

Mario and I went to Heidelberg this weekend. It is a very famous tourist city here in Germany. It has many high hills and old houses. It is also a big univerisity city, featuring Germany's oldest college.

We took a historic tram up one of the hills and found a great view of the city.

Predator

The Altstadt - Heidelberg

Very Large Baguette

Heidelberg Castle

GMYP Plays at the U-Bar

2006-05-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

U-Bar here in town is our favorite drinking spot. Its short for Unverzicht-Bar which means something like "Unavoidable" in english. German bars often play with the english word "Bar", because it is a suffix like "-able" or "-ful" in German. The word "Wunderbar" for istance is Wonderful.

Our friend Guenther from school played here with his band the other night. It is a very small bar, but it is the student favorite so everyone packs in there (or sits outside in the Beer garden until 11 when they make us go inside).

Christo and Jean-Claude

2006-05-14T11:48:00.001-07:00

Christo and Jean-Claude spoke here in Schwaebisch Hall. They are a very famous artist couple. They have created projects such as wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin, and thousands of Umbrellas that were placed along the highway in southern California.

The wrapped Berlin Reichstag. This project was rejected three times by the German government. It was almost 10 years after the 1st proposal that they received permission.

A Wrapped Bridge in Paris.

Over the River Project, Christo and Jean-Claude are currently working on suspending slightly transparent pieces of fabric over the Arkansas River in Colorado.

Their projects sometimes cost upwards of 20 million dollars. Christo creates sketches and plans for the pieces that he sells to raise money.

It was a very nice event, they gave us free food and wine afterwards. The Kunsthalle Wurth put on the event. It is a very nice museum for such a small town.

Keine Idee

2006-04-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

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Muenchen

2006-04-17T11:31:00.000-07:00

We left for Muenchen (Munich) at about 8:50 Saturday morning. There was a soccer match going on there, so a lot of people were headed into town. We stayed at an Australian hostel called Wombat. It had an atrium in the center.

Then we went to the Pinakothek die Moderne. Its a museum that only opened a few years ago, but it already aquired many masterpieces. I had seen many of the pieces in art history class. They had several Picassos, two Dalis, masterpieces by modern German artists like Kirchner and Heckel. They were also holding a large exhibition of design from modern times back to the 50s and so on.

Design exhibition with BMW bikes and, well, I don't know exactly what that is. But it sure is interesting.

On Sunday morning, we took a trip out to Schloss Nymphenburg, which was a summer home for Bavarian rulers. It was a massive palace; an addition to it made it big enough to wrap almost 360 degrees around a huge courtyard.

The Rathaus or town hall, a magnificent gothic building.

Hofbrau beer

Castle Schwaebisch Hall

2006-04-09T05:33:00.000-07:00

We recovered some bikes from the basement of the school. They were all in various states of disrepair. You have to break very early and inflate the tires every half hour. I took one of the through the park here in town and to a castle outside of town. It is a quite beatiful castle on a high hill.

Castle seen from the park

I was happy to be able to walk right into this castle after paying 14 pounds to go into the Tower of London. There wasn't any historical information, but the castle is just as beautiful.

They were doing some repairs on the church towers, so I couldn't get the shots that I wanted. It looks like they might be opening it to the public some day.

Schwaebisch Hall seen from the castle. There are actually pieces of castles all over Schwaebisch Hall, but the town has had several major fires. So now they are mostly integrated with the houses. This hilltop castle is the best preserved.

Berliner

2006-04-06T03:26:00.000-07:00

The Brandenberg Tur

Standing Above Hitlers bunker. There is nothing to mark the area and most of the bunker is destroyed and buried. Two of its former entrances are today a Chinese restuarant and a gay sauna.

The Berlin Wall

Kirche (Church)

The Nazis book burning took place in this square.

Kathe Kollwitz Memorial to the Victims of War.

The soviets tore down a beautiful baroque palace in East Berlin to build this "dazzling" piece of architecture.

The Fehenseher Tower in the back is being decorated like a soccer ball, though the Europeans insist that I call it a football. All the world cup games are in Germany this summer.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

2006-04-06T03:13:00.000-07:00

It looks like a bunch of blocks from the outside. The architect got his idea from an old Jewish cemetery, where the graves were packed together and sinking into the ground on angles. He also stated that he didn't think one memorial could commemorate something like the holocaust, so this is more of an experience.

As you walk into it, the ground begins to drop away. The slabs become higher and surround you, 15 or 20 feet tall. Everything is silent as you walk through it and it seems to go on infinitely.

Berlin is probably the most heavily graffitied city in the world. And the government decided they didn't want swastikas showing up on these stones. So they hired a company to treat the stones with anti-graffiti coating. To the governments embarassment, they later learned that the same company had supplied zyclon b, toxic gas, to the Nazis.

Spring in Schwaebisch Hall

2006-04-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

It has finally warmed up here. But it tends to rain almost every day. You can still see the colors starting to change all around.

Gelbinger Gasse

High on a Hilltop

2006-03-27T06:30:00.000-08:00

Tung and I hiked up into the hills surrounding Schwaebisch Hall today. We came to a spot that had a beautiful view of the town and surrounding farmlands.

I live two houses to the right of the clocktower

Majestic Schwaebisch Hall

Tung weilding his Fightin'/Walkin' Stick

Carola's Birthday Party

2006-03-26T10:15:00.000-08:00

Strange, Strange Drink

Meet Schwaebisch Hall

2006-03-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

Schwaebish Hall City Archive

2006-03-24T04:31:00.000-08:00

St.Michaels Church, 850 years old

City Archives

The West Coast of America did not exist in this edition. California is an island.