Graffiti and Zombies

I see enough interesting graffiti art all around KAF to make it blog worthy.

Some unit's decal.

Stop signs are a popular place for graffiti -many of them make reference to something called hammertime - what time is that? Just kidding.

Can't tell if the plane is coming or going.

The place is pretty graffiti conducive with all of the concrete barriers around...

Thundercats! Ho!

I like the cultural references.

This one is both a reference to The Shining and Johnny Carson... get it?

One of my favorites, Ron Burgundy shows up all over KAF.

Most of the graffiti consists of stencils and decals like above, but there are a few that are a bit more impressive like these:

Very impressive.

Wow.

Outside the french PX/cafe.

If this were 40 plus years ago these graffiti pieces would make cartoon wolves go like this.

I pass this collection every day on my way to work.

That last one has a good point. Not because there are hordes of walking dead attempting to eat all of our brains of which we should be wary, but because those hordes wouldn't feel out of place here. Bleak landscape, lots of concrete, place is divided into sectors, large speakers giving us announcements with creepy echo effects, no entrance or exit... I'm told it bears a resemblance to the resident evil series, but I've never seen or played those.

Couple all of this with an active imagination and you get all sorts of fun scenarios running in my head of what would make a good setting or more dramatic post-apocalyptic imagery. Look at this church:

Not scary.

Ok, it's not very scary. You can't really tell that it's the creepiest church I've ever encountered. It's within the perimeter of some eastern European forces' compound and therefore surrounded by fence and barbed wire where clearly there was some bizarre experiment gone awry in which a disease was created that causes the brain to shut down almost entirely except for the motor skills required to seek out brains to eat. Also, you're not looking at it while it's at night:

click the picture to enlarge - it's hard to see.

That picture was taken from about the same angle, and as you can see it's very eerie.
One more, but this time with all the barbed wire.

In the zombie movie that takes place on KAF, there would be a climactic scene involving the church in some way.

Graffiti like this doesn't really help the situation:

Demon trying to escape from the concrete barrier

Or this one:

Clearly sector 3 is where you have to wear your gas mask.

I've grown used to it, and pictures don't really do it justice but here's some more samples of KAF at night, when the things that go bump in the night crawl out of the woodwork.

Creepy - picture taken from the roof of the Education Center.

Creepier.

There you have it. The art scene of KAF condensed into a blog post.

Going to Church

I found out last week that Michael Champion plays in the band for the non-denominational Christian service on Sunday mornings here. I asked if I could come to see it and he said sure! So I did.

That may sound a bit strange, but I'm the sort of person who will attend Mosque in Senegal, Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Bulgaria, Catholic services in Lithuania, Christmas in Bethlehem and so on and so on. I like to see how others worship. When I visit these other types of services I have my little set of rules. I'll sit when they sit and stand where they stand but past that I just observe. No singing or bowing or communion-taking or anything - just watching. Definitely got me a few glares in that Mosque in Senegal, but that's the way I do it.

I arrived to the Fraise Chapel at 1000.. About a hundred people showed up to worship and I was happy for them to have a community of their own that makes them happy and feel like they have a bit of home all the way out here in the middle of nowhere.

The Chapel.

Nobody freak out! I asked permission to take non-flash pictures inside and there plenty of people there taking pictures and videos more obviously than I was.

That's Michael right there haloed by the light from the stained glass.

The service reminded me a lot of the Evangelical church my dad and I went to this past Christmas (now that is a long story involving philosophical discussions between my dad and our auto-mechanic whose church it was that resulted in our attendance). At both there were bands and big screens with the song lyrics displayed and an overall similar air between them.

Sermons anywhere are pretty much about the same thing: be nice to each other, and God is good.

Some aspects of certain churches are strange to me. Interjecting while the speaker takes a very short break with an "amen" or some other statement of agreement simply doesn't happen in my religious background. That one time we invited a couple of black church groups to Park Synagogue and they were interjecting during Rabbi Skoff's sermon sort of threw the rhythm off, not that they meant any harm - just worlds colliding.

Here's something else different to me. Hand-raising as a form of worship:

Hey! That little flag on his arm says he's from Ohio!

Overall it was just as informative and interesting as any other non-Jewish religious service I've attended in the past. Maybe I'll meet people here from other backgrounds and visit their religious services. Who knows?

Kramer Textilpflege

This past weekend I traveled around Germany seeing some sights.

The rails... they beckon to me.

On Saturday I and four other CTC colleagues went to Worms for the day. It's a small town (pretty much doable from a tourist's perspective in a few hours). Worms is famous for being the site of Martin Luther's trial after having essentially started the protestant movement from the Catholic Church. There are memorials to him all around.

Martin Luther - total badass.

We also saw some extremely large churches around the center of town. One of the two churches was bombed out in WWII and was rebuilt in a really modern style. When we went in to see the church there was an organ concert going on and it was very nice.

Not too many people were there to enjoy it, but it was a good sermon.

Also not too many people there to enjoy the organ concert, but it was really good!

Then we ate thai food in the central square and went to a GREAT ice cream place right next to that organ-concert church. Seriously it was really great ice cream...

My view from the Thai restaurant

Oh, Devin...

Mary and Becca choosing which flavor they want.

After walking along the river a tiny bit (and seeing a statue of an ancestor of the HR professional here at CTC who plundered the people of Worms of their gold so much that to memorialize him they built a statue of him throwing a lot of gold into the river), we walked back to the old town.

You know who might need this gold? The Rhein River...

Finally we saw the couple of Jewish sites in the city. The Synagogue in Worms is the oldest in Europe (because its foundations are so old - in actuality it was rebuilt in the sixties or something). Rashi studied here before moving back to Troyes and they make a big deal about it with the museum. I was surprised to find out that the Synagogue has a regular service (every other Shabbat, according to the docent).

We also stopped by the Jewish cemetery which had graves dating back almost a thousand years.

Part of the Jewish Cemetery. It's surprisingly well preserved, for 1000 years old...

That night me and another CTC trainee went to see Harry Potter 7 part 2 in Mannheim (it was my second time seeing it). As in Israel, there are assigned seats as though you are going to any other theater performance, but there was no intermission. We had to find a special showing in English because dubbing is really popular here. If the roles were reversed, and German/Czech/whatever language television was really in-demand back in the states, I would prefer subtitles. I like to be able to hear how it's meant to sound... but who cares what I think anyway?

Look at this:

You didn't know that the Kramer family has had a dry cleaners in northern Mannheim since 1851???

The following day, me and the same guy I went to HP with (henceforth to be referred to as Jordan) had a whole long day planned out. We left the Hotel at 7 AM, and took almost 4 hours (because local trains are super cheap) to get to Stuttgart where the Mercedes-Benz and Porche Museums are. I liked the Mercedes museum better because it was bigger and had a lot more history and a lot more cars to see. I'm sure my Dad will be jealous when he sees the pictures because he loves antique cars.

Tell him without ME, there wouldn't BE any Paramount Studio!!!

What was really interesting was that the Mercedes Museum didn't gloss over the WWII period as many  similar museums in Germany do. They are very open (and apologetic) about their involvement with the Nazi regime and use of forced labor. I liked that they were up-front about it.

After seeing those two museums we took a train to Ludwigsberg. This is a tiny little town.... with the LARGEST CASTLE IN ALL OF GERMANY!

Note that I'm as far as the courtyard will permit, but the palace still extends outside the edges of the picture.

Holy crap was it big! We didn't go in. A tour of this place could take all day. We just enjoyed the grounds and the courtyard. They were having some sort of festival so that was enough for us.

He's singing "That's Amore". Weird, right?

I was very enthralled.

Then we took a sort of hike/path through this park on the way to a smaller palace with its own private lake and what seemed to be a private chapel.

It seemed like it was out of a movie. A private chapel on an island in a small lake in the woods.

Finally we took the train/tram back to the hotel and arrived after 11pm. It was a long day.