German Class (Welche Sprache sprechen Sie?)

We've been going to our German class this week. It's great. This is a tough language for me, but I'll get it. Summer and Jean are really doing well with it. At one point in my life I was fluent in Spanish so I thought another language would be easier, it's not. Maybe I'm just getting too old ;-) Give me a few months and I'll be speaking like the Chancellor!

(click here to see a short video from tonight's class)



Also, I found this to be very interesting. I am starting to do research on the death camps in Poland and Germany. It's a sad and sick history.

First rabbis to be ordained in Germany since Holocaust
Sep 14 12:35 AM US/Eastern

Three rabbis are to be ordained in the eastern German city of Dresden in the first such ceremony in the country since World War II.
They studied at the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam outside Berlin which was founded in 1999 with the aim of strengthening the Jewish religion in Germany after the ravages of the Holocaust.

The college is the only institution in Germany that trains rabbis.

The three rabbis are planning to take up positions at synagogues in Munich in southern Germany, in Oldenburg in the northwest of the country and in Cape Town in South Africa, the college said on Wednesday.

The historical moment has been welcomed by the Central Council of Jews in Germany as a "return to normality".

"We need many more rabbis, 30, 40 times as many as we have," the deputy president of the council, Dieter Graumann, said on Wednesday.

Some 600,000 Jews lived in Germany before the Holocaust.

Today the country's Jewish community counts about 110,000 members, the vast majority of whom emigrated from the former Soviet bloc after its collapse and the reunification of Germany.

I always feel compelled to post an image with every blog. I suppose I'm use to seeing words and images together - a storytelling thing..

Anyway, we're slowly but surely settling in and getting our bearing. We're painting the house, taking German classes and assimilating as much as possible. It's a process.

I work on a remote Kaserne near Sandhofen, right off of the Autobahn. It's called Coleman Barracks. It's really an air field (Called Coleman Army Airfield). It's small and very empty (for all intents and purposes). You can tell that it was a bustling place in its time but now the "cold war" is over, these places are going away. It's scheduled to close in 2010 or 2011. I hope to stay to the end (unless something better comes along).


Driving on Coleman at sunrise this morning.

Here's a small, abstract video of a train into Mannheim, Germany. Initially titled, "Sushi & Sex Toys" now called "Night Train"



(5.5 MB WMV Movie)

Saturday night we went to the "innerstadt fest" in our village. It's literally a five minute walk to the village center (the big church) from our house.
It was very fun. A lot of eye-candy and interesting food and drink.

Here's a small video describing and showing interaction with the locals.



(7.2 MB WMV Movie)