President's Day and Karnival

Background for the amusing anecdote of the day: There are restrooms on each floor of the building I work in at DLR. They are located in the area where the stairwells open up to each floor, which is also the crossway between sections of the building. This area is also enclosed by fire doors on both sides. One computer that I work on is on one side of this area and the other computer is on the other side. Hence, I am frequently crossing through this area. Now that the scene has been set, here is the amusing anecdote of the day: Today, as I went through this area (every five minutes I think) I noticed that there was a workman doing something in one of the restrooms (they do not have doors yet). It looked like, at one point, that he was painting the ceiling. The reason that this was amusing is because he did not have a light on. Usually the workmen will bring up a light to hang somewhere while they work, but this guy was working away on what ever he was working on… in the dark. You might not wonder as to why I found this slightly diverting: how are you supposed to see what you area painting if you cannot see the surface that you are painting. Beats me, but this guys seems to have it down.

Moving on. Today is President’s Day. Happy for those of you who are off work and school, and not so happy for those of you who are not. Tomorrow is Mardi Gras and the day after is Ash Wednesday. Which means: we are in full Karnival swing. Well, not really here, in the north of Germany, but if one goes a little south and east into Nordrhein-Westfallen and Köln and Düsseldorf then you would have had today, and perhaps tomorrow off as well, but for only the purpose of revelry. Braunschweig did have a parade yesterday and I have been told that it is the largest Karnival parade in the north of Germany.

On Saturday I managed to take myself down into the inner city and take some pictures for your edification. I also bought a pair of everyday shoes. This will take off the great burden from my running shoes, which is good, since while looking at shoes I looked at running shoes and comparable shoes to mine were some where around 100 € which is way more than I am willing to pay for running shoes.

On to the pictures…

These pictures are of what is left of the Burg 'Dankwarderode'. Which was the castle of Heinrich der Löwe. As you can probably tell the Lion was his symbol. The statue is a replica of the original, which is now in the museum that Dankwarderode has now been turned into. Benches such as these are all

around the Cathedral which was founded by Heinrich. The following pictures are of the Cathedral. You can sort of get the idea. The other pictures are other scenes from the Burgplatz and streets that branch off of it.

On the other side of the Burg is the Altrathaus of Braunschweig, it is quite an imposing structure.

I also made it out to the area where I work and took a couple pictures. I did not want to get too close to the airport. You never know who will accuse you of taking pictures for some nefarious purpose. The picture on the bottom is indeed the airport building. You can see air traffic control sitting on top of it. In the

pictures to the above that, you see the hill that the DLR compound sits on. My building is toward the back next to the airport building and is just along the runway... very distracting for aerospace engineers to have an excellent veiw of all planes and helicopters taking off and landing.

Now, since my computer is having issues, I will stop here before I loose everything. I also have more pictures of the woods. But, since they look like woods, I figured that if you want to see them, you will let me know. Speaking of which, if you would like an electric copy of any of the pictures you see on here, or you would like to see the other pictures that I have not posted, just let me know.