I've been off of here for about a week. I've been gone for the past 6 days roaming southern Germany with the class. So, I'll have to summarize real quick to tell you where we are in my blog.
Wednesday the 16th we went to the TierGarten it was quite nice. In our history lesson we found out that this was the actual direction that Napoleon took when he invaded Berlin. Shortly after that we went across the street to a Soviet War Memorial. Interesting thing about this is that it was build on the west side of the gate. Why? Because it was built when Russia "liberated" Berlin during WWII. It was built out of Hitler's mansion or a house at a level there of. Then we went to the Victory Column, however it was being renovated or something of that sort. so we got to see the top part of it. Thursday we went to a Bauhaus museum. It talked about his works as a architect and his works on chairs and modern designs. I believe he got popular because the designs that were present became popular about the time in America when people had less room to build houses during suburban development thus causing need for efficiency, some disagree, but who knows. Then we went past the Mexican Embassy, uh, it had slanted concrete next to each window, could have done better. Then we went to the Nordic Embassy, yeah, a little different. The Nordic Embassy is actually five embassies in one, each representing the different countries in the Nordic. I enjoyed how they symbolized each country that they represented by the material they used. However, it did take up a whole bunch of space, and some of the material was just way over the top to not be showed off. For example a slab of stone was brought and it's view was blocked the main embassy's wall. Also I believe in function over form so, ja. Had lunch in the public Café of the Embassy. It was quite nice. I sat down with a local Berliner, she talked about how she was retired, and she came to eat there for lunch about twice a week, because it was so economical. She said that she had worked in Berlin before she retired since 2002 after the wall fell, and showed up before in the 90's and said that was where she was going to retire. She planned to go to the Southern part of the US as soon, as the economy recovered. Later the class left to go to the Berlin Dome. It was amazing. It was a protestant church built to counteract the Vatican in Rome. However, sadly it was partly destroyed during the war. I am however amazed that it was rebuilt so nicely. Friday began our trip to southern Germany. We first went to Dassau and then to Bauhaus which was originally a school before the Nazi Regime. It was built to give students the chance to express modern art, in an environment that suggested work. The school was constructed on a basis of modernism by Bauhaus. I didn't really like the work all that well. I noticed the building for what it is, but over all the building seemed inefficient. Later we went to the BMW Plant in Leipzig. I loved how in this building form did meet with function because there was a conveyor belt built across the plant, and a lot of the space inside the building was being used. I didn't, however, like how there the people in the café were forced to view the cars go by or how they were pretty much told what to eat based on a color code system red bad green good kind of thing. I think they should be able to escape work sometime during their working hours. More Later. I'm not even done with week two and we're starting on week three right now.
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