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Post by whatagain on Nov 20, 2023 18:02:05 GMT
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 30, 2023 11:55:40 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 30, 2023 15:58:48 GMT
You live in a wild and crazy place!
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 30, 2023 16:42:05 GMT
Lawless as well. I saw someone walking on a cycle path today. It's just not done.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 30, 2023 22:05:01 GMT
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Post by lugg on Jan 3, 2024 20:40:02 GMT
A UK telephone box in ? Germany. Now that is unexpected
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 3, 2024 21:09:08 GMT
There's more Anglophiles here than you would think. You should have seen the headlines when Brexit was announced. There was a lot of sadness, like losing a close relative.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 12, 2024 5:53:29 GMT
At first I thought this was another Google Street View car, but it is actually a parking enforcement vehicle. Seems perfect for finding cars parked in the wrong place but I don't know about properly paid parking fees, which is what is indicated on the side.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 12, 2024 6:03:07 GMT
Overkill on the cameras.
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Post by mossie on Jan 12, 2024 8:01:37 GMT
Is that why it has a target marked on the side???
With regard to Mark's bit about the sadness in Germany when we left the Common Market...They were crying because they would loose all the money they were leaching out of us.
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Post by whatagain on Jan 13, 2024 12:56:27 GMT
I was also crying when Brexit happened but now I am laughing when I read soon a majority would want to come back.
I don’t think Germans noticed being poorer. I didn’t and we Belgians are not as rich as the Germans. But good if everything became cheaper in UK we will see soon being in London end of feb.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 13, 2024 16:02:15 GMT
But good if everything became cheaper in UK No. But then I doubt there isn't a country where things are. I've just gone stock up supermarket shopping in Germany and it's just getting ridiculously expensive. I suggest you eat a lot of 'meal deals'.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 16, 2024 12:03:26 GMT
Wonder how fast it goes?
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 16, 2024 13:30:06 GMT
With or without the flower baskets?
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 16, 2024 13:37:56 GMT
With of course. Would make a nice touch
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Post by fumobici on Jan 16, 2024 17:00:48 GMT
They still make/sell Lambo farm machinery, there's a dealer near my house in Anghiari. I've never seen a red Lambo tractor though, they are traditionally in a bright yellowish green like John Deere stuff should be a more medium green. I don't think the founder would be happy seeing one of his tractors in Ferrari red.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 16, 2024 20:57:49 GMT
Didn't Jeremy Clarkson buy a new Lamborghini tractor? I think so.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 30, 2024 9:37:18 GMT
There are quite a few of these knocking around on the pavements Germany (and many other countries in Europe, about 30) but it's the first I've seen where I live, so somewhat unexpected. In the past I have posted a couple elsewhere but they are worth mentioning again I think. They are called Stolpersteine - "A Stolperstein is a ten-centimetre concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. Literally, it means 'stumbling stone' and metaphorically 'stumbling block'." This woman was sent to a ghetto in what was Czechoslovakia and died soon after. Here lived.... ....born 1875. Tells of the place she was sent to and the date she died -
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 30, 2024 10:00:11 GMT
That’s very interesting Mark. Thanks.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 30, 2024 10:37:19 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 30, 2024 11:30:43 GMT
In France we just have plaques on buildings. Too many buildings.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 30, 2024 14:37:30 GMT
Gosh. That is something not only unexpected, but also important. The name for them is great -- stumbling stones. My many adblockers wouldn't let me go directly to Mark's link. In looking around for a path to it (which I found through The Guardian), I came across this site which lists prices and procedures. Be sure to click on Steps, which is exhaustive. www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home
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Post by lugg on Jan 30, 2024 20:07:48 GMT
I did not know about these memorials before , thank you Mark.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 30, 2024 21:08:15 GMT
You're welcome. There's about a 100,000 of then around. The "world's largest decentralized memorial". Easy to miss as you wander around a town/city but as K2 says, they tend not to be cobblestones but plaques in France and according to the map, only about 100 of them there. As you'd expect, the vast majority are in Germany but they are in one form or another in 30 countries. Unfortunately there are many more that have been made but as Bixa pointed out, the bureaucracy to lay them is long and many are just in storage waiting to be authorised. Some places, like Munich have objected to them being laid and there is just one in the UK, in London. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein
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Post by onlyMark on Feb 5, 2024 11:44:27 GMT
There were a couple more within a bit of a walking distance from me and as it was a sunny and warm day, plus I realised there was a good café nearby, I visited them after stocking up on a German breakfast (breads, cheeses, hams etc). I'll leave it with this - Bertha Schlauss, maiden name Scheier, was arrested in 1944 due to a roundup of all those with a portion of Jewish blood in them or in a mixed marriage as she appeared to be. Then sent to a euphemistic labour education camp where she was probably worked to death. Erich Schlauss was arrested in 1941 and sent to Buchenwald where he lived long enough to be freed. Joseph Levy was a butcher who was killed at his shop by the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party in 1935 when he stood up to them placing banners in front of his shop and the surroundings. He was stabbed and gassed (not sure how) and found in the back of his shop by an assistant the next morning. The doctor called, a 'normal' German refused to write suicide on the death certificate and was advised by others to keep his head below the parapet from then on. The fate of two others in his family (wife and son) speak for themselves. There were a number of Levy's in the area, same family or not, don't know as it is quite a common name, who saw the writing on the wall in the 1930's and fled to Colombia -
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 5, 2024 21:31:15 GMT
Every single one of these is devastating. The stone is enough, with the historically freighted words, dates and place names, but the stories bring home the full horror. Where do you find the backstories, Mark?
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Post by htmb on Feb 5, 2024 22:09:15 GMT
There isn’t a marker on the old, small building where I stay in Paris but, in doing some research a few years ago, I discovered a Jewish mother and her two children had lived in the building during WWII. I don’t remember all the details, but seem to recall they were originally from an Eastern European area. They were rounded up and sent to camps, never to return. Such a tragic ending for all who suffered during that time.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 5, 2024 22:55:00 GMT
That is tragic, Htmb. How amazing that you were able to find it out, too. Do you suppose anyone in the building now is old enough to remember them?
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Post by onlyMark on Feb 6, 2024 6:52:32 GMT
It all started in 1992 when a German artist traced the route from the centre of Cologne to the train station of a number of Sinti and Roma being taken to Auschwitz. He installed the first Stolperstein in front of the City Hall and its brass plate was engraved the first lines of a decree made by Himmler ordering deportation of that group of people. There were other decrees for other classes of people and it all started from there.
The butcher back story came from a Google search as it was unusual because of the date and place and turned up several modern news articles commemorating that date. Google for the places mentioned that I don't know to see what type of camp or whatever it was, finding out what "Septemberaktion" involved, my translation of the German words indicating born, arrested, freed, murdered and so on. There is information out there somewhere and so far has been easy enough to turn up.
Htmb, considering as mentioned earlier there's only about a hundred of these in France it does seem there is some resistance to them being installed, so no surprise there isn't anything. More unusual to find one than not I suppose.
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Post by bjd on Feb 6, 2024 7:58:23 GMT
re the plaque on the building in Paris. Indeed for many years, there was resistance in France to admitting that the French state and people were not quite lilywhite in their behaviour during WW2, particularly in their collaboration with the Nazis. It was Jacques Chirac, first as mayor of Paris and then president of the republic who began to bring things out into the open at a high level. Of course, there had been historians and activists before like the Klarsfelds, but when the president supports plaques being put on buildings, then it is more noteworthy.
I haven't been wandering around Paris for a few years now, but have seen quite a few schools in my usual areas (11th, 20th, 4th arrondissements) with plaques on them about children from that school who were deported. And a large memorial was opened in the 4th, with a long list of names. The Marais, now a fashionable and fancy area, was home to many Jews pre-WW2.
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