The DDR, Thüringen, and Jena

While all the photos I've taken over the last month upload (it's going to take a while) I have some time to write about the region in which I am and have been. One thing that I'm perhaps counterintuitively glad about is spending my year in the east, the former DDR (or GDR in English). It was not so long ago that Germany was in two separate parts, and most of the adults here remember what it was like with the wall up. This gives me an opportunity to learn about how it was to live under Soviet rule without having to go to one of the real eastern bloc countries. I hear Georgia sucks this time of year.

The physical reality of Communist rule is really brought home by the apartment blocks that dot many of the cities in east Germany. Stendal is a perfect example of this; I don't have any pictures unfortunately, but I figure most of you know what I'm talking about when I say 'Communist apartments'. They're big, brown, concrete, square, and oppressively unattractive. This style of architecture exists in the US as well, but only in the east was it elevated to what you might call an anti-art form. The buildings are all over and tell you exactly what they think of you and any concept of individuality that you might have - they actively mock creativity and beauty. A decade after the wall came down, a building called Der Grune Zitadelle (The Green Citadel) was built in Magdeburg (a large urban center composed mostly of communist style buildings) for the purpose of mocking the architecture right back - it is painted entirely in pink and looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. You will see the pictures I took of it when I feel like showing them to you.

DDR paraphernalia of all sorts are a fairly common sight around here, the most common being the Trabie, a natty looking car which one would have had to wait about 17 years on a registry to recieve. You can't miss them; they look like remnants from the 1940s and from what I hear they drive like it too. The other thing that a visitor will almost certainly run into is Vita-Cola, a communist soda that was so popular that it has survived to this day in a capitalist Germany. It's sort of like someone poured a noticable amount of Sprite into a bottle of Coke... it's not bad, although the other American students I met didn't like it.

Thüringen is most well-known for its bratwurst, which is widely held to be the best in the world. It is also a land of mountains and valleys, much of a welcome change from the fairly flat Sachsen-Anhalt. It reminds me of the Black Hills in South Dakota, although lakes are sparser here. There are tons of trees - where I live is more or less surrounded by forest - and of course castles. There's also a wine city not far from here called Freyburg. I haven't tried the wine but I have heard it is good.

Jena itself is an industrial town, renowned for its universities and for the Zeiss optical plant. These two form the backbone of the city, a fairly large one which has a modern center surrounded by old villages. Jena proper was more or less destroyed in WWII, so the city center is mostly new while the surrounding area was mostly left intact, including the area in which I live, a small village called Ammerbach. Like any European city, Jena is compact - I live on the outskirts but I can walk into the middle of the city in under 45 minutes and fairly inexpensive buses are constantly running people in and out. It also happens to be built into the surrounding hillsides, making it a totally beautiful city to bike and walk around. It is pretty much the best and I pity people who have not been here. However, if you happen to be one of those people you can check out the photos I will be uploading at http://www.flickr.com/photos/30050210@N06/ or you can choose not to do so and break my little heart. It doesn't matter. Really.