A Renaissance Festival is fun for the whole family and every year around Easter, the knights are back in town. With fire-eaters, blacksmiths, knights, jugglers and jesters everything you need to feel like you are back in Medieval Times.

All over the place you can smell the scent of freshly baked bread, cold beer and roasted sausages. A minnesinger is playing his lute and somewhere you can here the sounds of jousting knights.

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1. Narrentag 2010 – Part 01 – The Beginning

On my way through the western part of Germany I discovered an abandoned British military airbase in Weeze, a village in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Part of it is now used as a civilian airport and you can see the old military buildings if you drive the road from the big “Welcome” sign to the airfield. The old British RAF Laarbruch military base, was well placed along the Netherlands border into which the Soldier could flee if something unexpected happened.

Even some old military weapons were placed as a reminder for the Cold War days, or they were just forgotten, who knows!

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The Funkturm or Radio Tower is a transmitting tower in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district in Berlin. The 150 m high Tower which was built between 1924 and 1926 is part of the Berlin trade fair ground and a protected monument.

At night, the Tower shines in a wonderful white or sometimes in orange, during the Festival of Lights, he was also covered with red bulbs.

View Funkturm in a larger map

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1. Festival of Lights, Berlin in a different Light

Halloween is over, but Thanksgiving (Erntedankfest) is near, time to sell the remains of the big Pumpkin Harvest. Never seen so much different Pumpkins together.

Thanksgiving in German Europe has a long tradition, but one that is different in many ways from that in North America. First of all, the Germanic Erntedankfest (“harvest festival of thanks”) is primarily a rural and a religious celebration. When it is celebrated in larger cities, it is usually part of a church service and not anything like the big traditional family holiday in North America.

Although it is celebrated locally and regionally, none of the German-speaking countries observes an official national Thanksgiving holiday on a particular day, as in Canada or the U.S.

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1. Berlin Pumpkin Art

Postdamer Platz and Leipziger Patz, both near the U- and S-Bahnhof Potsdamer Platz, are the most blatant expression of how the Wall put a stop to Berlin’s urban development. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, new densely-populated quarters rose phoenix-like from the ashes of the old border wasteland.

Today, several Wall fragments and a single watchtower survived in Erna-Berger-Straße, where the new Ministry for the Environment has been established in the old Prussian Agricultural Ministry building once integrated in the hinterland wall. The lobby of the new building extension incorporates these remaining Wall fragments in their original position, thus making them accessible to the public.

Postdamer Platz 1972

Postdamer Platz 2008

View Postdamer Platz in a larger map

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As I mentioned yesterday, today was Berlin’s 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Many World leaders and dignitaries were invited.

Chancellor Merkel said some Words in front of the Brandenburg Gate, she herself grew up in East Germany and was one of thousands to cross into the West on Nov, 9, 1989 – “Today marks a truly happy moment of the German and the European history,” She said. “Twenty years ago the door to freedom opened up and a seemingly invincible wall that divided a people and an entire continent suddenly became permeable. For me, it was one of the happiest moments of my life.”

The Main Event was a symbolic Fall of the Wall in form of 1,000 dominoes to symbolize fall of the communist regimes and iron curtain in Eastern Europe. The first stone was pushed by the former Polish politician Lech Wałęsa.

Video: tagesanzeiger.ch

The 1,000 Stones,  2,5m high, all hand-painted, were lined a 1,6km long portion of the route once occupied by the wall. I took a couple of pictures from some very interesting Stones.

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1. East Side Gallery, walking alongside the Berlin Wall
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Tomorrow is a big day, the City of Berlin will celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

For that reason, the big East Side Gallery was repaired and repainted. The Berlin Wall East Side Gallery is a 1.3km-long section of the wall near the center of Berlin. Approximately 106 paintings by artists from all over the world cover this memorial for freedom and make it the largest open air gallery in the world.

The Gallery tells with its pictures the story of Berlin and Germany’s history. Many artists were invited to repaint their pictures which were created about twenty years ago. The paintings and the wall were in an extremely deteriorated condition through weather, air pollution, vandalistic collectors, and simply time.

The East Side Gallery is located near the Ostbahnhof.

Comparisons:

Related posts:

1. The Berlin Domino Wall – Thousand Pieces of Art
2. Postdamer Platz, Berlin Wall Memorial
3. A Giant’s Tale, Riesen in Berlin – Day 1