It is summer time, the sun in Northern Europe can hardly be convinced to disappear anymore, people stay up all night and due to the lack of sleep it seems impossible to concentrate on any written text. So who wants to read blogs during summer? Therefore let me hint you to three visual blogs, which I enjoy all very much:

Katutaso - The Helsinki Street Art Blog collects photographs of graffiti and other street art from all over Helsinki.

Rocektboom, with Amanda Congdon is a English language VideoBlog, that is "aired" every weekday. Amanda discusses interesting news and sites from the Internet in a very funny way.

But sorry Amanda, here is the VideoBlog that is just bit more entertaining and more attractive than Rocketboom: Ehrensenf, the German VideoBlog with Katrin. Also here you get your daily news from the Internet and it is worth a look, even if you do not speak German. Ehrensenf by the way is an anagram of Fernsehen, the German word for TV and means something like honor-mustard.

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Yesterday we took a guided tour on Jewish history in Warsaw. Here are some impressions from the tour.


Tablet at the Jewish Cementary in Warsaw, reminding of the Holocaust.


The only remains of the wall around the Jewish Ghetto can be found in a backyard. The Ghetto was established in October 1940 by the Germans, in order to isolate the Jewish population of Warsaw. At its peak there were 450.000 Jewish people living in the Ghetto. Most of them were brought to the Treblinka extermination camp, where they got killed.


Some of the stones of that wall have been removed and brought to Jewish mueseums and memorial sites all over the world.


The memorial place for the uprise within the Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw - nearly all Jews still living in the Ghetto got killed by the Nazis.


Mila 18 - the place where the leaders of the Ghetto uprise killed themselves, before the Nazis could get hold of them.


Umschlagplatz - from here the trains from Warsaw ran to the Treblinka extermination camp, where nearly 900.000 people got killed.


When German chancellor Willy Brandt came to Warsaw in 1970, he fell on his knees in front of the memorial place for the uprising in the Jewish Ghetto. This gesture became famous as the "Warschauer Kniefall", which opend the door for better relations between Western Germany and Eastern Europe. This memorial site remind of the "Kniefall"

The jewish cementary, which is over 200 years old.

» Further Impressions from the visit to Warsaw (Flickr)
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Lewis wrote a very good article on German architecture, that I recommend you to read. One of the buildings mentioned there is "Der Palast der Republik", which is currently being demolished. The building is located in the Eastern part of Berlin and the so-called Parliament (Volkskammer) of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR or in German: DDR) had its seat there.

It is with no doubt good that the GDR does not exist anymore and that Germany is re-united. But the decision to tear down the Palast der Republic, which was taken by the German Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag), is just a shame. It might be that the building seems ugly to some - we have more ugly buildings in Germany than one can count, so that is not an argument. The major reason is, that this building represents a part of German history, that most Germans are not proud of and some people also don't want to be reminded of it. With this reasoning it is still a violent act to destroy the building - it is the pride of the winning side in a cold-war between two ideologies.

» English Wikipedia: Der Palast der Republik
» Take a stroll through the palace online
» Ideology, Football, and Architecture - posting on German architecture at lewism.org
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Maija Vilkkumaa played live yesterday in Tavastia. I got recently addicted to her music when I got her two albums "Ei" and "Se ei olekaan niin" as a present. She's all Rock'n'Roll and full of drive and I regret to not understand her words.

But seeing her live is the one thing about her you must not miss, as she is a bolt of lightning. When jumping around on the stage she disproves several laws of physics, being an endless source of energy and joy.

Unfortunately I was not in the first row and I am still not good enough with my camera to make really good picture, but I hope some of them give you an impression about yesterday night.

» My pictures from yesterdays concert (Flickr)
» Watch the pictures as a slideshow (Flickr)

» Maija Vilkkumaa Homepage
» Maija Volkkumaa on Wikipedia

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