The Love is Back

Well after finishing up with the World Cup I only had one more assignment in Berlin , to take photographs of the Love Parade.

The motto of the parade was: The Love is Back. It had been two years since the previous event happened. The Love Parade is a huge party, where over thirty dj's teams drive around the Tiergarten of Berlin on these huge floats throwing down dance music beats from all over. Its a crazy insane time.

For the couple days before that I tried to relax and recover from the World Cup. I went one day to Luterstadt where Martin Luther started his teachings, and there was a cool museum showing how life was for people who lived in the GDR (East Germany)

I went and checked out the nightlife in Berlin. It a city where if you want you can never stop partying. I made my way to a bunch of different venues and really enjoyed all the music I could hear.

But the big event was the Love Parade. over 1 million people were there. It was crazy fun, and an event. They say a pictue is worth a thousand words, so hopefully my pics say a little bit about what I saw.

Love Parade Photographs

World Cup Finale

World Cup Finale

Finale….ohh.ooohhh. …Finale…ohhh.ohohhooohhh
Finale….ohhohhoooohohhh
Finale!
Finale!
Finale in Berlin!!

Its coming home
Its coming home
Football is coming home!


So the World Cup ends. Its been quite a ride the past month. I didn’t know what to expect with the World Cup in Germany, but it was quite different and yet similar to the World Cup in Korea in 2002.

The Germans were great and it was fun to explore the county and talk with the German people and watch my misconceptions fall down. Germany is a great county full of really nice people. From Erfurt, to Munich and to Berlin, its hard to stereotype the Germans as it would seem.

The ride for me this time around was not as crazy as it was in 2002, for two main reasons: (1) My team (USA!!) did not do nearly as well this time around and if your team doesn’t do well the World Cup is in definition not as great. 2002 was like a dream come true. 2006 was reality butting in. But I guess, like some say, that is the beauty of soccer: you never know what ride the game is going to take you on. (2) I was working this World Cup where the last cup I was more of a fan. It was great to work photographing the cup, and I think from now on I will always come back as a photographer to the cup, but there were time when after a game that I had to think about getting my photos sent in and such that it got in the way of celebrating a bit. But of course if the USA had gone anywhere I am sure that I would have partied a fair bit ;)

Italy were the winners. Can’t say I was too excited about that, considering the flopped their way through their first four games before coming together to win the cup. But they are the undisputed World Champions so there isn’t much you can say about that.

As for me, the World Cup ends just in time. I’m beat up. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. Its been a whirlwind of memories and experiences that I will never forget, and I am sure will take a long time after I return home to properly comprehend. But I have a big smile on my face after the past eight weeks of traveling, and that’s never a bad sign. ☺

I will be staying in Berlin for another week, but I probably will update my blog only a few more times. This weekend upcoming is the Love Parade, which is a huge electronic music festival that is happening where the fan festival was in Berlin with some of the top DJ’s performing. There should be over a million people going to the event so it should be amazing. I’ll be taking photographs of that as well and post them here.

But thanks for being part of my trip and reading my updates.

Round About Germany

The past few days I spent using up the rest of my train pass in Germany. My pass expires on July 11th, and I thought I should at least check out a couple of sights while I can still get around the country for free.

My trip started on Wednesday. I wanted to photograph at a beer garden fans watching the semi-final between France and Portugal. A couple of people had told me about the beer gardens in the English Garden in Munich and thought it would be a good place to check out. I made it down there and although it was a fun place to watch the game there were not a lot of fans there. I ended up talking most of the game with two Americans I sat next to and some Mexican-Americans who were there to support Mexico.

After the game I said my goodbyes and wandered around the city until the morning when I was going to take a train to see the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s retreat high in the German Alps. I was trying to save some cash on my trip around Germany so I didn’t want to buy a hotel room.

So finally in the morning after wandering around and hanging out in a bar next to the train station I finally made it on an early train to the town of Berctesgaden, sleeping almost the whole way.

The town was back in the time of Hitler where the Nazi’s had their summer retreat and also was supposed to be their command center of last resort at the end of World War II. However it didn’t end up that way. When I got there I took a tour of the Eagle’s Nest and also the bunkers under where the Germans were going to stay at the end of the War.

But the tour happened in the afternoon, so I went on a nice hike in the morning along a crystal-clear river to see the Konigssee that is a beautiful emerald-green lake in the mountains. It was a nice hike and the day was really warm and exceptionally humid. I even ended up soaking my feet in the river on the way back.

The tour was informative and fun and it was interesting to see the bunkers and especially the Eagle’s Nest that was built high atop a mountain to impress visiting dignities of the Reich.

On the way down the mountain when we made it back into the town as the skies started to turn rather ominous, with dark, grey skies looming over the ridge. I got on a train back to Munich and the rain started to come down in buckets. We seemed to keep running right along with the start of the storm on the rain, cause when I had to transfer at the town of Freilassing the storm hit hard. It was literally a wall of rain everywhere and it was pounding. Most people hid in the underground tunnels waiting for the connecting train as pea-sized hail pelted down on the train platform. The train arrive on time and everyone rushed aboard to be dry and out of the downpour.

Back in Munich I then took an overnight train to get to the Middle-Rhine valley, which I had been told was a must see of Germany sights.

I got there early in the morning and traveled along the Rhine to several small towns. They were all really cool, but my favorite stop was in the town of Boppard where you could take a ski-lift type ride up a hill to get an amazing view of the river and the small towns beneath. I rode the lift early in the morning before any other tourist was there and it was amazing how when you rode up the hill all the sounds of the towns slowly melted away into the distance. Soon you were just among the trees and the silence of nature, with the occasional train rumbling in the distance. It was kind of a Zen-like experience. Definitely one of my touristing highlights for sure.

There were also some cool castle remains to wander through in St. Goar and a pretty town in Bacarach, but I still enjoyed the ride the most.

After that I took an express train back to Berlin, and crashed, getting the first decent night’s sleep in three days.

A Nation Cries

Everyone in the country hugely anticipated the Germany v. Italy Semi-Final. It seemed like Germany was on its way to a fairy-tale ending to win the World Cup in its home country. However it didn’t end up that way.

I made my way down to the Fan Festival in the center of Berlin to take in the game. They had several large screen televisions to handle the anticipated 1 million spectators who were going to watch the game there.

It was a massive event. For every German I talked to, despite the amazing run of the national team, they were still not confident that Germany would win the World Cup. That was evident to me from the beginning of the game. I didn’t watch the first half of the match at all; instead I was watching the fans view the games on the big screen. In almost everyone’s eyes there was uncertainty about what would happen. I guess that is one of the beauties of soccer, you never really know exactly is going to happen.

The game appeared to be a classic encounter, with both nations going for the goal. However it was not until the 119th minute of overtime that Italy scored. The fans stood in shock. A quick second goal was scored before the end of the game and with it Germany’s dream run was over. The emotions of the German fans, which had been at a fever pitch the whole World Cup, finally boiled over.

German fans cried and hugged. One crazy Italian fan egged on the German fans before police came in to separate him. But mostly fans stood in shock, or slumped down on the ground in disbelief that their run for the cup was over.

I’ve actually never witnessed anything like that before where everyone around you was so completely despondent. It was a very powerful moment.

Of course, soccer is a game so after a few hours people were dealing with the events and moving on and laughing, but that moment will never truly leave anyone I am sure.

So today I head off to the other Semi-final match to be held in Munich. I plan to then spend the next few days taking advantage of my Germany rail pass to check out some more sights as well before it expires.

Berlin, Berlin

I handed in my keys to my studio and moved on to Berlin on Saturday morning. It was only about three hours away by train. When I got there the brother of the lady I was renting the apartment picked me up at the new train station in Berlin that just opened a month earlier in anticipation of the World Cup. They were cool and gave me a tour of the city before we headed to the place. From there we took care of business then they dropped me on in Freidrichshain, which is the “East Village” of Berlin. From there I ended up exploring the city, which is going to take a long long time for sure. On Saturday night I headed to the Fan Festival mile, where around 1 million people watched the Germany-Argentina game. The photos on television were crazy and I decided I wanted to be there for Germany’s semi-final match. I watched the end of the France-Brazil game where France pulled the shocking upset win. The French fans in the crowd partied like crazy.

After that I headed out to check some of the Berlin nightlife. Berlin seems like the capital of electronic music these days. Almost everywhere else in the world the music is not doing all that great, but from what it seems things are still rocking in Berlin. I ended up checking out this club called Maria um Uber, which has some big named dj’s playing. But it was actually the no-named dj’s that were even better. It was a big shocked, but it showed me how good the scene is here.

So the past few days I’ve been catching up on my rest and getting ready for the big-semi game Germany v. Italy.

Thuringia

After the Round of 16 games there was the first break in games since June 9th, so I decided to try and do some touristin’ around Thuringia, the state where Erfurt is located. My first stop was on my way back from Hanover to Eisenach. In that town there was a castle called Wartburg where Martin Luther, the guy who broke up the Christian religion hid out after he was ex-communicated by the church. It was a really nice castle and from what other people have told me there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of castles all over Germany.
was interesting as well. I’m Lutheran by religion so it was interesting to learn more about the man.

A cool sight was also the study where Luther translated the Bible from Latin into German that
After taking a day off to just rest, on Friday I decided to tackle a long hike. The hike was named the Gothenwanderweg which was named after Johan Wolfgang von Goethe who was a famous German writer as well. The 12-mile hike started in the town of Ilmenau, about an hour by train from Erfurt. From there the hike went to a small town call Manebach and then continued up a mountain and then went ever further to a town called Stuzerbach. I ended up getting lost in Ilmenau finding the hike so I figured out there was no way I was going to walk the whole walk so I only walked about half of it.

The first part was great, walking in a loop through some deep forest, around some big rocks and ended up walking down to Manebach. From there though for over an hour it was a straight up-hill climb to get to the top of the mountain. That was really hard and was very strenuous, but finally I made it to the top and it was a nice reward. There was a tower called the Kickelhahn that put you above the trees and afforded awesome views of the Thuringian Forest everywhere. And also there was a nice German restaurant where there was some good German food.

The funny thing was this hike was supposed to be one of the more famous hikes in Germany, but the whole day I had the whole trail to myself. The reason? Of course the semi-final of Germany against Argentina later in the day.

From there I took a short-cup back to the town of Ilmenau to try and watch the game. When the game was on the whole rest of the town was empty, besides places showing the game. It was funny cause it was a Friday afternoon at 5 pm but the main street of the town was almost completely empty. I found one place to watch outdoors but it wasn’t that great a location and wouldn’t have made great photographs so I decided to head back to Erfurt to (hopefully) catch the end of the game and capture some Germans celebrating there.

One the way back the train was really delayed and the only updates I got of the game was some school kids on a trip listening to the game on a radio.

I barely made it back to Erfurt in time to watch the penalty kicks, which Germany ended up winning.

Afterwards the party in the streets was much larger than the last win. It was a lot of fun.

But that was my last night in Erfurt, I had to pack up and get ready to head to my home base for the next few weeks, Berlin.