Visiting Karlsruhe, Germany.

Visiting Karlsruhe was the driving force behind our three city weekend tour (see our first stop in Mannheim).  Mr. Meena has been excited for several months about a new American Western film called ‘The Hateful Eight’.  It’s special because the producer used 70 mm film and cinematography equipment from the 1960s called Ultra Panavision.  Due to the equipment used and the wider than usual screen image (2.76:1 aspect ratio as opposed to 1.33:1), this is a film that must be seen in a specific theater setting to get the full, authentic effect.  So of course, Mr. Meena set out on a mission to find an English showing in the original film format (there’s a digital version out too) in Germany.  There are only a couple theaters in Germany that were showing the film and the closest one to us was Karlsruhe.

In case you haven’t heard of this film before and now you’re thinking about going to see it now, please take a moment to read about it first.  It’s a violent film that discusses racism and white supremacy in a manner that could certainly make you uncomfortable.  It’s not for everyone.  In fact, I opted not to see it with Mr. Meena, but that was partially because the English showing didn’t start until 11pm at night.

We arrived in Karlsruhe during a heavy rainstorm and had just enough time to eat dinner and settle into our hotel before it was completely dark and all the stores closed.  But we weren’t about to leave without seeing some of the sights, so after only five hours of sleep following his late night movie adventure Mr. Meena got up to explore the area with me.  Our first stop was the palace.

The palace was built in 1715 and it’s extra cool because there are 32 streets that lead out from it in straight lines, leading to the nickname “fan city”.  The palace hosts the Badisches Landesmuseum (a cultural history museum) and neighbors the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.  It’s got a massive botanical garden behind it and the Schlossplatz out front, where we were delighted to see an ice skating rink.

I was very tempted to try my hand at ice skating – it looked so romantic with the palace in the background and soft music playing.  But alas, Mr. Meena will have nothing to do with ice since it caused him to break several bones when he was growing up in Illinois.

We found a throne on the grounds that provides a prime photo spot for some regal looking shots.

It appears to be brand new (It has ‘17 June 2015’ on the back) and it’s dedicated to Karl Wilhelm, the city founder and palace builder.

I was tempted to name this post ‘Karlsruhe: the city that was entirely under construction’ because we could hardly go anywhere without having to take a detour around the fences, cranes, and dug up city streets.  In fact, the city is doing so much heavy construction that they decided to turn it into an art project and commentary on man-made disruption.  We had planned on seeing sites like the Karlsruhe Pyramid… but we didn’t actually read the many reviews on TripAdvisor that would have told us it’s hidden by construction.  Lesson learned.

We did manage to see a few sites despite the construction, including the Basic Rights Square.  There are 24 signs in the square that discuss mortality and have statements about German law by various judges, lawyers, or citizens.

We saw the Grand Duke Karl monument in the Rondellplatz, complete with construction fencing.

There are some cool similarities between this monument and the Washington monument.  It’s an obelisk, albeit a much smaller one than the U.S. monument.  It’s also located directly down the street from Karlsruhe Palace, much like the Washington monument is located directly down the National Mall from the United States Capitol.

Plus, Thomas Jefferson visited Karlsruhe during his city tour when he was looking for ideas for the layout of Washington, D.C.  The more you know, huh?

We headed to the train station and passed the Karlsruhe Zoo on our way – and I was surprised at how much of the zoo you could see from the street.  We got a very up close view of flamingoes (add that to the list of things that I was NOT expecting to see in Germany) and also spotted some owls and goat-like creatures.  Who needs to pay to see the zoo when you can see so much from the street?

We bid a hasty farewell to the construction riddled city and headed to Worms to see where Martin Luther gave his famous speech.