The name of the post is from JFK’s (President of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy) speech in West Berlin. The speech was made on June 26 1963 some 22 months after the Berlin wall was erected on August 13 1961. The wall was erected as a means of keeping people in East Germany from fleeing to West Germany.Today Berlin is once again a united city and construction is still ongoing to bring the former East up to the standards…
Carl von Linné (May 23 1707 – January 10 1778) was Carl Linnaeus name after his ennoblement. He was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who formalized the naming system of organisms – called the binomial nomenclature. The binomial nomenclature is a latin or latinized name of the organism. It consist of two parts, the first part indicates the genus and the second part is the specific name. Carl von Linné did his work at Uppsala University. He was in fact a…
If you go to visit the cemetery in Paris where Jim Morrison and many other celebrities are buried, I suggest that you also take a look around in other places and you might discover some very powerful and emotional markers for people and time in history that we all need to keep in mind.
The Queen Elisabeth Olympic Park and the arenas were built in East London for the 2012 Summer Olympics that were held in the city. The London arena is now home to the football (US-‘soccer’) team West Ham United. The towering sculpture ArchelorMittal Orbit is a lookout tower with a slide, a free fall abseil, it is also labelled the tallest sculpture in the UK. The Aquatic centre was originally designed by Zaha Hadid in 2004. This was before the Olympic bid was…
Built 1977 on the initiative of then president of France, George Pompidou. Centre George Pompidou – Musée national d’art moderne as the proper name is, celebrates 40 years this year 2017. It was not without controversy when it was built since it was a very modern and industrial looking building. As the blog title indicate it was among many different things called Notre Dame de la Tuyauterie (Our lady of the pipes). This was mainly due to the exposed mechanical systems and…
Weimar in the state of Thüringia in Germany was the place, where after the First World War, the first German Democratic constitution was signed. This was also where the Weimar Republic period in German history (1918-1933) was formed. It was the home of the period in art called the German Enlightenment and also the home of two of the main characters in the Weimar Classicism literary genre – Goethe and Schiller. Weimar was at one point home to such artists as Franz List…
In the midst of the forest in the very Eastern part of Southern Finland you can find a pool of people amidst the Pine, Birch and Fir-trees. Parikkala sculpture park is the work of Veijo Rönkkönen (1944–2010) who was a self taught artist and a full time paper mill worker that lived in this part of Southern Finland, very close to the Russian border. Below are some of the more interesting pieces in the garden, but there are many more to see. If you…
Sweden is said to have the most restored 1950’s U.S. made cars in the world. For example, although only 2 1958 Cadillac convertibles were originally sold in Sweden – today there are over 200 of them registered there. Every year there are thousands of U.S. made classic cars imported into Sweden. In the town of Rättvik by lake Siljan in the landscape of Dalarna (Dalecarlia) there is an annual event called Classic Car Week , where thousands of proud owners show…
Castile-La Mancha is famous for, among other things, Don Quixote and his trusted sidekick Sancho Panza in the novels written by Miguel de Cervantes Saveedra (1547-1616), two volumes published in 1605 and 1615. The full title of the books are “The Ingenious Nobleman Mister Quixote of La Mancha” or in Spanish “El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha”. This work is considered to be the first modern novel and it is also the most important novel ever published in the…