Priya Barnes

August 12 — 14, 2010. I drove to Munich the last week­end I was there. It was lovely but I’m afraid my Munich mem­o­ries will have to com­pete with my expe­ri­ence of the Ger­man autobahn.

Still, here’s a lit­tle video of the Glock­en­speil at the Town Hall in Marienplatz.

But back to the auto­bahn . . . As I was leav­ing Munich, Free Me from Uriah Heep was play­ing on AFN Eagle.

I had also become fast friends with my GPS nav­i­ga­tor by now. I could almost hear her say­ing, “Nice job, Priya” every time I turned right at her command.

My regret: I wish I could have taken a pic­ture of my speedome­ter hit­ting 220 km/p/h. Only half kidding.

Tchuss!

August 14, 2010. Every time Niko­lai, a stu­dent from Lux­em­bourg, said Hei­del­berg, my Indian brain heard Hyderabad.

“You are going to Hyder­abad?” He would ask in a thick accent.

May be it’s because he would always start the con­ver­sa­tion with a “namaste.”

Hei­del­berg might be pret­tier. It attracts a lot of tourists and it’s easy to see why.

July — August, 2010. Saman­tha col­lected pins from every city she vis­ited. I col­lected pic­tures of doors. I’ve always had a fas­ci­na­tion for doors. They sym­bol­ize grand entrances, and they also promise great exits.

Here’s a gallery of some ornate, some fan­tas­ti­cal, and some unhappy ones I came across in Europe.

August 6, 2010. Berlin makes city plan­ners in Amer­ica look like small thinkers. It’s a sprawl­ing city that also seems at odds with the scale of most other Ger­man cities.

The Berlin Wall did come down in 1989! On the east side of town, por­tions of the wall have been pre­served as a can­vas for the city’s artists. A great use for one of the most unat­trac­tive relics of his­tory. The unadorned wall is seen near the Topogra­phie des Ter­rors, which marks the site of Gestapo and SS HQs.

August 6, 2010. We started the day learn­ing about Germany’s for­eign rela­tions ini­tia­tives from a spokesper­son at the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry. Later, we went on a pri­vate group tour of the Reich­stag, a build­ing with an incred­i­ble his­tory. It is where the Ger­man Par­lia­ment con­venes today. Angela Merkel occu­pies one of the purple-blue seats in the front just below the eagle in the pic­tures of the par­lia­ment cham­ber below.

The Reich­stag is eas­ily one of the world’s most stun­ning build­ings, both sym­bol­i­cally and archi­tec­turally. Its inte­rior had to be com­pletely rebuilt after the country’s reuni­fi­ca­tion. Art from many coun­tries, includ­ing Amer­ica and France, com­mem­o­rate both dark and pros­per­ous peri­ods in it’s his­tory. A new, large glass dome atop the Reich­stag pro­vides vis­i­tors with excel­lent views of the city in all directions.

Dur­ing the day, we took a walk­ing tour cour­tesy of the free iPhone app, City Walks. It took us from Bebelplatz and the Deutscher Dom to the Museum of Ter­ror and Check­point Char­lie. On the way, we also took in the Jüdis­ches Museum for a few hours. We all won­dered about the mean­ing of the Super­man sculp­ture by the entrance.

Nightlife in Alexan­der­platz: Edited to avoid bore­dom. We did walk about 15 zil­lion miles that day.

August 2 — 5, 2010. Prof. Ed Fal­lone taught Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Law. He’s also a well-read blog­ger on Marquette’s fac­ulty law blog. Read his lat­est blog post about the top ten rea­sons for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Giessen study abroad pro­gram here.

Prof. Louis Kotzé from South Africa co-taught Inter­na­tional Envi­ron­men­tal Law with Prof. Marauhn from Ger­many. Both are emi­nent schol­ars in the field. Prof. Kotzé also had great tips on vis­it­ing Hei­del­berg and Munich.

Prof. Shubha Ghosh from UW Madi­son taught Inter­na­tional Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty. He had great tips on vis­it­ing the Murano glass blow­ers’ island in Venice.

July 31 — August 1, 2010. A two-hour jour­ney on the Thalys from Brus­sels to Paris con­tin­ued to deepen my fas­ci­na­tion with Euro­pean pub­lic transport.

Here, the mun­dane drone of the Paris metro is pepped up by a trav­el­ing crooner.

We wan­dered around in Mont­martre and Le Marais, got chased off the foot­path out­side Pres­i­dent Sarkozy’s res­i­dence, and hung out at cafés. But the most mag­i­cal was the Eif­fel Tower sparkling on the hour.

Check out a snip­pet of a phi­los­o­phy debate in progress as we wan­dered by Bastille Place.

Some still of Le Marais and, and finally, exhausted but thrilled in the din­ing car of the train back to Giessen from Paris via Stras­bourg, Karl­sruhe and Frankfurt.

July 30–31, 2010. We had our first group tour to Brus­sels, where we took in a tour of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment (video) and Com­mis­sion in Brussels.

Two experts gave us deeper insights into how the EU func­tions and its his­tor­i­cal con­text. Appro­pri­ately, it par­al­lels the for­ma­tion of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in the United States dur­ing the time when the Arti­cles of Con­fed­er­a­tion were in force.

July 29, 2010. One evening on the train back to Giessen, we met a young Belaru­sian who shared his thoughts on Obama, Amer­ica, 9/11, the CIA, Britain, MI6. He stud­ies sports and nutri­tion in Giessen. This video is an edited eight min­utes from the orig­i­nal 30+. The first seg­ment in the clip is about Obama.

I’m going to have to see if the Berlin Wall really did come down with my own eyes. That’ll be a new post soon.

July 29, 2010. . . . to Giessen what Chicago is to Mil­wau­kee. A bustling and excit­ing city to its south in mid­dle Ger­many. Saman­tha is still in search of the bull and bear in front of its stock exchange.

In the mean­time, we man­aged to get in some amaz­ing jew­elry shop­ping, take in a few sites, hang­out at a shisha bar, and have din­ner with a Saudi sheikh and his wife at a Lebanese restau­rant. That Saman­tha, she’s so friendly.