Tag Archives: Germany

Pray For Paris, Pray For The World

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Pray For Paris, Pray For The World

“It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.” Tim O Brian

The justification for terrorist killings is that there are no civilians. The people in a country pay taxes and fund anti terrorism. According to the terrorists, we are all at war. Terrorism is an abstract noun. It is hard to be at war with an abstract noun.

Terrorism happens when one group faces a much more powerful group where they have no chance of winning. Instead they attack other targets in the hopes that will put pressure on the governments. They attack the powerless. They create fear and chaos. They go after people on planes returning from a holiday, people in restaurants, watching a concert, at work or at a soccer match  –  all different ages, races, nationalities and in all different cities. The terrorists convince themselves that their targets are less than human. They use religion, history, past offenses, current offenses and always the bottom line is the pursuit of a more important goal than human life. Is it easier to kill when you don’t call it murder?

The truth is that killing innocent people is always wrong. There is no argument and no excuse that can ever make it right. Terrorism is not part of faith.

We need to stop supporting the countries who fund terrorism. We need to stop our own  secret torturing, killing and cover ups. They don’t seem to be doing any good and give reason to the creation of more terrorists. We do need to defend ourselves.

Turning away refugees, xenophobia and fear of immigration is not an answer either. Didn’t we once return the persecuted back to Germany and Europe? Did we learn anything from closing our borders or putting the Japanese in camps  during World War II? We need to find a way to deal with the threats while honoring our ethical and moral obligations.

There was a surreal feeling in watching the footage of the events in Paris. It wasn’t a movie. People were dying who were just going about the business of life. The blood was not fake. The pregnant woman hanging on the wall saying she couldn’t hold on anymore was not acting. The guy hopping down the street was really shot in the leg.

I have always been fearful. I have the kind of brain that could put together hundreds of worst case scenarios on the way to anywhere. I mourn with the people of France. But fears in hand, I’m still going to Paris in the Spring. I realize that it is important to be aware, but to give in to the fears that random acts of violence create, is to let the terrorists win. #Dontbeterrorized.

Fly safe,
JAZ

The Iran Nuclear Arms Deal Or Why It Is Still Unsafe To Visit Iran

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The Iran Nuclear Arms Deal or Why It is Still Unsafe To Visit Iran

“The only people who should be allowed to govern countries with nuclear weapons are mothers, those who are still breast-feeding their babies.”
Tsutomu Yamaguchi

This is how I feel about the Iran Arms deal. You don’t give nuclear weapons to an unstable country in an unstable part of the world. I don’t care about the political ramifications. I care about the human ones.

Isn’t this the same Iran that when the Ayatollah came into power, he kidnapped the Americans there? Isn’t this the country that thousands of people were forced to evacuate and can never come back? Isn’t this the same Iran that funds terrorists groups? Isn’t this the Iran that is holding American journalist Jason Rezaian and others on trumped-up charges? Will the Mullahs suddenly decide that an international community is the way to go? What happens when a new even more unstable regime takes over? Do they return the weapons to us?

I recently wrote a blog on the ten most dangerous countries not to visit now and there are many more than ten. I was torn based on my research on the tenth one between Iran and North Korea. I ultimately chose North Korea but Iran was a good choice as well. I am confused about why we would give nuclear weapons to a country that is very dangerous for us to go to without the nuclear weapons.

I imagine from a financial point of view it is profitable. If Iran buys nuclear weapons the surrounding countries will need  more weapons to defend themselves. Everyone in the Middle East will be buying more weapons.

We are the self-proclaimed “watchdogs of the world” and giving Iran nuclear weapons is not protecting our world in any way. Is the hope that if we trust them they will behave with integrity? I believe Winston Churchill thought the same about Hitler when he signed the Munich Agreement in 1938 to avoid war. The Munich Agreement has become synonymous with the futility of giving power to totalitarian states.

Hate is irrational and there appears to be a lot of hate in these countries – especially for Jews and Israel. I imagine the Jews who signed a petition in favor of the Nuclear Arms Deal with Iran probably would not have left Nazi Germany in time. Many intelligent wealthy Jews held out hoping that the threat of persecution and death would pass. – that rational, intelligent thought would prevail over the death camps.

Have any of the Jews who signed the petition or people in favor of the Arms Deal with Iran been to the Hiroshima museum in Japan? Every Japanese school child has to go. The motto is No More Hiroshimas. The symbol is the Hiroshima Dome (Genbaku dome), the only building left standing in the area where the bomb exploded. Anyone who has spent time in this museum and listened to the stories and continued health problems would know the only good use for nuclear weapons is to keep people from using them. Ultimately what would be our defense against Nuclear Weapons? Nuclear Weapons.

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Fly safe,
JAZ

Countries That I Used To Know

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Countries That I Used To Know

‘Be the change that you wish to see in the world”. – Mahatma Gandhi

If you are looking for missing countries from the maps of your school days, here is a list of all the names. Countries have split apart, gotten back together, gained/lost independence or just didn’t like their names. How do we understand our place in the world if we don’t know about other places? Americans typically score very low in geographic literacy. What happens in the world is connected to where it happens in the world. We are supposed to be a “global village.” We should know the correct name of our neighbors and be interested in why they changed them.

. Used to Be                                                    Now

Burma                                                             Myanmar

Ceylon                                                            Sri Lanka

Czechoslovakia                                               Czech Republic, Slovakia

Rhodesia                                                         Zimbabwe

Southwest Africa                                              Namibia

French Somaliland                                           Djibouti

Tanganyika and Zanzibar                                 Tanzania

French Sudan                                                  Mali.

Basutoland                                                     Lesotho

Zaire                                                              Democratic Republic of Congo

The Gold Coast                                             Ghana

Dutch Guiana                                                Surinam

East Pakistan                                               Bangladesh

Western Samoa                                            Samoa

East Germany and West Germany               Germany

North Yemen and South Yemen                  Yemen

North Viet Nam and South Viet Nam           Viet Nam

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)       Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan

Yugoslavia                                                  Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia                                       and Montenegro, and Slovenia

Tibet                                                          Xizang Autonomous Region Of China

We can’t afford not to pay attention to the world anymore. We have to change the story.

Fly safe,

JAZ

Food Rules I Have Learned While Traveling

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Food  Rules I Have Learned While Traveling.

“Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.’  ~Mason Cooley

You can eat sushi with your hands.

Sashimi is always eaten as a first course before sushi. You can’t eat sashimi with your hands.

Don’t eat anything with your hands in Chile.

You can eat with your hands in Burma (Myanmar). People eat food with their hands in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. People eat with their hands in other countries in Africa and Asia also.

Always keep your hands above the table in Mexico.

Eat only with your right hand in Egypt. (This is true for many Middle Eastern countries) Salting your food is a huge insult.

In Germany, eat your meat with a fork. Use a knife only if it is necessary. If you eat meat with a fork, it lets the cook know the meat is tender.

Pad Thai is always eaten with a fork and a spoon. Thai people eat most of their food with a spoon in their dominant hand and a fork in the other. Chopsticks are only served for soup.

Mezze (small plates) come before a meal.

Pasta is not a main course.

In Uganda, eat fried grasshoppers with your hands like chips. In Mexico eat them on a taco with guacamole and cheese. In Thailand eat them on a stick. In Burma, peel off the head and wings and gulp.

In Burma, they say that anything that walks on the ground can be eaten.

Margherita Pizza is really the only thing Italians consider pizza and should  be eaten with a knife a fork.  The pies are usually served unsliced. It is not a hard and fast role like never cut your spaghetti with a knife and fork.

In Mexico, never eat tacos with a knife and fork.

In France, don’t eat the bread before the meal.

Never turn down vodka in Russia or tea in Turkey.

In France, eat frogs legs like you would eat fried chicken –with your hands in a casual setting, with a knife and fork in a formal restaurant.

In Kenya drinking cows blood mixed with milk is a special treat.

Chinese people do not eat fortune cookies for dessert but oranges for good luck.  It is illegal to eat an orange in a bathtub in California.

In China you are expected to leave a small amount of food uneaten on your plate. If you finish everything, you are sending the insulting message that not enough food was served to you.

It is rude to burp at a table in Japan. It is not rude to burp at a table in China.

In Singapore gum chewing is illegal.

In Mexico Men make toasts, women do not.

In Russia, Do not drink until a toast has been made.

In Armenia, if you empty a bottle into someone’s glass, it obliges them to buy the next bottle.

In restaurants in Portugal don’t ask for salt and pepper if it is not already on the table. Asking for any kind of seasoning or condiment is to cast aspersions on the cook. Cooks are highly respected people in Portugal.

Eating from individual plates strikes most people in Ethiopia as hilarious, bizarre, and wasteful. Food is always shared from a single plate without the use of cutlery.

In Japan it is acceptable to loudly slurp noodles and similar foods. In fact, it is considered flattering to do so, because it indicates that you are enjoying the food.

Do not eat fugu from  an unlicensed chef. The Japanese pufferfish, or fugu, is a delicacy in Japan. It’s also potentially one of the most poisonous foods in the world, with no known antidote.  Japanese chefs train for years to remove the deadly portion of the fish before serving it, though generally the goal is not to fully remove it, but to leave just enough of a trace to generate a tingling sensation in the mouth, so the customer knows how close he came to the edge.  This was one of my best meals in Japan and I have lived to write this.

At this moment,  someone is making a food etiquette mistake.

Fly safe,

JAZ

Going To Neuschwanstein

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“When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal; that is when the ideas flow best and most abundantly.”   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Going To Neuschwanstein

It is raining again  in Munich.   Lisa and I are going to Neuschwantstein Castle. It was commissioned by Ludwig the Second and is the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. It is in Hohenschwangau, Germany in southwest Bavaria.

It takes about two hours by train to get to Schwangau from Munich.  I find a day tour on the internet ( Viator.com) and we meet at the train station. I buy a thick salty hot pretzel for the journey to add to what we have already taken from the breakfast buffet at the hotel. Train rides make me hungry.  I need carbs.

There are no more seats in the car  with the tour guide that are facing  forward . We go in the next car by ourselves. As we are traveling, the scenery flashing by is getting whiter and whiter. It is starting to look alot like the weather reports from the ski slopes in the Bavarian Alps that I watched on TV this morning.  I check to make sure the tour guide is still on the train.   All the pictures I have seen of Neuschwanstein,  show it as   sunny and very green. I thought we had missed  the sunny and green stop.     I didnt know that southwest Bavaria meant the Alps or that November meant winter.   I have lived in California for too long.

We  finally get off the train and we are  in a scene from Dr Zhivago.  It is snowing and there is a white out . We are standing at the train tracks and can see nothing.    The tour guide is very flustered and ushers us into the train station to figure what to do. There are two problems. One is that the restaurant that we are supposed to eat in is closed because of the snowstorm and two,  the bus running up to the castle is not in service due to the steepness of the road and the inclement weather. (funny how she just found this out) It is five kilometers up to the castle and is a 25 -40 minute walk depending on which route you take. You can also go up by horse and carriage. It is interesting that the horses were able to go up the  mountain in this weather but the buses were not.

We find an open restaurant .They are thrilled to have the business in the blizzard  and give the tour guide a free meal. I taste my first weisswurst breakfast ( white sausages and pretzel). It is the perfect meal to climb a mountain in the snow.

Now as I told you, it is raining in Munich.  I am wearing an Ed Hardy leather jacket, Los Angeles faux boots ( Miu Miu and made of canvas –luckily they are almost flat).  I have one of those Peruvian/Estonian winter hats  (I bought them in both places).  They are so in fashion now for anyone under 30.   I’m wearing it for warmth.   Lisa on the hand, is perfectly dressed for shopping on Fifth Avenue or an afternoon in Munich. . She is in head to toe Burberry wearing beautiful knee length slim fitting leather boots with a small thin heel  and a camel coat.  We did not get the memo to wear our ski clothes or hiking boots.

Since the buses are not running, there are too many people waiting for the horse and carriage.  It has stopped snowing so we decide to walk up.  Every time I turn around and see Lisa dressed for an outing in the city, walking up a mountain in the snow, I can’t stop laughing.  My feet are sopping wet when we finally get up to the castle.  Canvas is not good in the snow.  Lisa has made it up the steep, icy road  in heeled boots.  She has not fallen.    Her feet are dry. Bravo Lisa.

Now one of the best things to do at Neuschwantstein is to go across the Marienbruke (Marien Bridge)  a bridge than goes across a river valley. It is a scenic place to take photos of the castle. The bridge was closed because of the snow storm . We couldn’t even see it or the beautiful scenery and views.  We did see a lot of snow.  Schwangau Lake is visible behind the castle . No, we couldn’t see that either.  I was too cold to take my hands out  of my gloves to take many photos anyway.

I usually do these European castles  in the summer where everything is beautiful and easy. But doing them in the winter gives you a much more realistic picture of life at the Palace. It is cold and dark and damp. King Ludwig had one of the first toilets with running water in Europe as well as a hallway cave. He was a big fan of Wagner and scenes from his operas make up the murals throughout the building. (“mad” King Ludwig’s obsession)The only place you are allowed to take pictures in the castle is the kitchen.( and why would I do that?)

King Ludwig was found dead in the lake three days after he was declared legally insane. Did he drown or was it murder? Was he really mad or just “different” or ‘special”? Was he perhaps gay in a world and social strata where that was impossible?  You will find none of these answers at the castle.

Lisa has decided to  wait for the horse and carriage. I chose to walk down. No one else has made this choice and I am alone on this beautiful snowy road. I  fall a few times where it was steep and slippery .  I was trying to get down before it got dark. It was peaceful and quiet and I missed skiing.

The tourist village at the bottom is supposedly very charming.  They were right it looked like a Christmas card covered in snow.  I was  glad to find an open store to warm up in, while I waited for Lisa. She had to  wait a long time in the horse and carriage line.  The horses were walking very slowly down the slippery road.

We get into the train   and we are joined by a group of German Punk Goth drinking, rowdy teenagers.  We wisely decide not to say anything and we move.  We start planning where we will have a late dinner back in Munich.

It is  your mistakes that often make up the adventures. It is the adventures that lead to the stories. It is the stories that you remember.

Also See Things I’ve Learned In Munich

https://havefunflysafe.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/things-i-have-learned-in-munich/

Haben Einen Sicheren Flug

JAZ

Things I Have Learned In Munich

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“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer”
- Frank Zappa

Things I Have Learned In Munich

Pedestrian crossings in Munich often have a sign saying “Set an example to children”  Something we should all remember to do.

Seen in German fashion magazine.  “.the new recessionista, crunch chic.”

“Dachau is a lovely town in Munich which happens to have the first concentration camp located there. But this was not an extermination camp and the largest number of people were not killed there. “ (quote from a guide book)

Birds never sang in Dachau even though there are many trees, because birds do not like the smell of death.

Brausebad is the old German word for shower. It was written outside the door of the “shower” in the camps. After WW2 they were not allowed to use that word anymore and it became douche instead.

Nazis are big business in Germany. You can take a third Reich tour in Berlin and Munich. You can visit Dachau outside of Munich or Sachenhausen outside of Berlin. In the tourist bookstores you can buy Hitlers Favorite Places in Munich, Famous Nazi’s of Munich, and Hitler’s Berlin or Hiltler’s Munich..

“The Neo Nazis aren’t the bad Nazis.” (quote heard at Dachau)

The Irish backed the Germans in World WarTwo. (anything to go against the English)

Soccer is a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen. Rugby is a gentlemen’s game played by hooligans.

I was in Munich in November and missed Oktoberfest.  I didnt have to bring my lederhosen and dirndl and missed the overindulgence of beer and pretzels , beer and weisswursts,  beer with sauerbraten , beer with potatoes and beer with beer.

Haidhausen is the place to be in Munich if you are a schiki miki (club going Bavarian Hippie), or Eidel chic or one of the Mueslis (European granola types)

Weisswurst breakfast which consists of boiled white sausages in milk  that you eat by sucking  out of the casing, with a fresh baked pretzel and mustard is surprisingly delicious.

A sign seen in a Munich store window “Wurst Fuchs”.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer means the Pope’s beer. Every year the Pope comes to Munich to bless the hops

If you want to see hordes of tourist getting ridiculously drunk with huge steins of beer, go to Hofbrau House in Munich (Hitler’s fav)

The German New Wave Goth Punk teenagers are not people you want to share a train car with.

Neuschwanstein castle  in the Bavarian Alps (the sleeping beauty castle) is probably best visited when it isn’t snowing.

After returning from Germany, I was watching a documentary  entitled, The Rape of Europa.  It was about  European art stolen by the Nazis . I  saw a castle that looked familiar.  I was there in a snowstorm so I didn’t recognize it right away.  The first art recovered from the Nazis( that had been  stolen from the French) was stored in Neuschwanstein castle. There were many rooms filled with stolen art  and it was a fact they left out when I took the guided tour of “the Sleeping Beauty Castle. “

On the program at the ballet in the Bavarian State Opera House, they list the minutes of each act and each  intermission and the starting and ending times. German attention to detail put to good use! (and Mia was great! )

Munich being closer to Milan than it is to Berlin has amazing Italian food and great pizza.

Whenever you are in a coed sauna (especially if it says naked area)  in eastern Europe and Germany just know that it will be inhabited by fat, old, naked men.

In the 1960’s and 70’s the next generation of Germans were horrified when they learned what their parents have done.  I had this feeling in Munich and Berlin. Dachau, the Resistance Museum , the Jewish memorials and the Jewish museum were filled with  school children on class trips.

gute reise and fly safe

JAZ

Things I Have Learned In Berlin

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Many small people, who in many small places, can alter the face of the world.”    A quote from the  Berlin Wall

Things I Have Learned In Berlin

Checkpoint Charlie is the Cold War Security point between East and West Berlin. This is not the original one  in Berlin. The original one is fourty kilometers away. This is the one they set up for the tourists because it is closer to the wall.  There doesn’t seem to be anyone who knows who  the American soldier is, in the very large photograph in front of Checkpoint Charlie.

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In 1996 Berlin became  the center of Germany’s commercial and underground art movement. The galleries quickly moved from West to East Berlin forming the East Berlin Art Mile on Auguststrasse in Mitte.

If you are a fan of “form follows function” (as I am)  visit the Neue Nationalgalerie designed by Mies Van Der Rohe (twentieth century paintings)  and the Bauhaus museum designed by Water Gropius ( they used his building plans) The Bauhaus school  was closed in 1933 because the new National Socialist government was afraid of their “subversive ideas and degenerative art.”

Kandinsky had a problem with the color green when teaching at the Bauhaus.

The German born artist Joseph Beuys had a big exhibit at the Hamburger Bahnhof –(old train station) Museum of Contemporary Art.  I love contemporary art but I have never gotten him or his fascination with fat and felt.

Fredrik the Great of Prussia ordered that potatoes and cucumbers  be the staple of the German diet because it was cheap.The portions are usually large and filling. Berlin has the largest immigrant population of any German city so there are may types of food –most common are Russian, Turkish, Vietnamese and Dutch.

“Berlin has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to the treatment of its Jews but anti-Semitism was around long before Germany” (from the Scottish tour guide)

The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin occupies a large outdoor space near Hitler’s bunker and the Brandenburger Gate. It is made up of 2,711 gray stone slabs of different heights and shapes. They have no markings such as names or dates.

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The Adlon Kempinski Hotel in Berlin has had Presidents, royalty and most recently Obama staying there, but it is most famous for being the place where Michael Jackson put his baby out the window.

Bebelplatz (where they burned the books in 1933) in East Berlin, is now the location of one of the most beautiful hotels I have ever stayed in (Hotel de Rome  was originally the Dresdner bank building. They kept a lot of the building intact.  ).

There is a parking lot over Hitler’s bunker because they don’t want it to become a neo Nazi shrine.

The Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament, is one of Berlin’s most historic landmarks. It is close to  the Brandenburger gate and was located right next  to the Berlin wall. You have seen it in many movies.

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I should explain the Brandenburger Gate since I keep mentioning it. It is the only remaining gate to the city, rebuilt in the eighteenth century and again after World War 2.  It is one of the landmarks of  Germany. It is the entry to Unter den Linden –the boulevard of Linden Trees . King Frederick of Prussia had the trees planted as a sign of peace leading up to his palace. It was on the East Berlin side of the wall and inaccessible to the west until the wall fell.

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World War Two has had more books and papers written about it than any other period in history.

Kaiser Wilhelm the Second said, “More enemies, more honor”.

There is as much security at the Jewish Museum in Berlin as there is at the airport (except for the pictures of Terrorists of the week at Passport control)  The new section designed by David Leibskind is based on an exploding Star Of David. The spaces disappear into angles. It  is more about space  than what is in it.

The Resistance museum is housed in the building where the attempt was made on Hitler’s life by his generals.

It is illegal to have a swastika out in the open in Germany (except for historical purposes)

The Berlin Wall was built after WW2 to keep the East Germans from escaping to the west. It was a symbol of the “cold war.”  Most of the wall has been taken down in 1989 but some places still  stand. The East Side gallery which has 106 graffiti paintings painted in 1990 as a memorial to freedom is the most interesting.

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East Berlin is now the trendy part of Berlin – first the artists, then the galleries,then the gays, followed by trendy restaurants, bars, boutiques and hotels, and then the yuppies.

In 1870, Rosa Strauss left Germany with her young son Levi.  He teamed up with a tailor to make a kind of  material that would be good for the men going to the gold rush.

Berlin has no famous industry except culture.(and now its history – sorry, I loved Berlin but  between the Nazis and the Communists it was hard to make jokes. )

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Also see Things I’ve Learned In Munich

https://havefunflysafe.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/things-i-have-learned-in-munich/

Going To Neuschwenstein

https://havefunflysafe.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/going-to-neuschwanstein/

Haben Einen Sicheren Flug

JAZ