ozt

sunny san diego!

i visited s.d. last summer and liked it very much :-) especially the p.b. block party was quite cool!

i´ve visited s.d. sea world last summer and enjoyed it – except the fact, that i felt sick after the “Wild Arctic” ride :-O

I liked it… it´s an outlet mall west of San Diego.

some autobahns don´t have speed limits! i recommend nice cars e.g. a Nissan 350Z :-))

be there or be square!

It has been more than 5000 years since the first farmers settled permanently at a Rhine ford near to present-day Speyer. Finds from the Stone, Bronze and Iron ages bear witness to this, long before any written sources appeared.

Speyer expands rapidly in the economic upswing of the 50s and 60s: new residential areas, industrial plants, schools and hospitals are built. Pedestrian precincts help to make the centre more attractive.

Since the 2000 year town’s anniversary in 1990 the touristic infrastructure has been continually expanding with the Technical Museum and Sea Life Aquarium, and together with the Historical Museum of the Palatinate, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors to the cathedral town every year.

see: http://www.speyer.de/de/tourist/geschichte?switch_language=en

1. FSV Mainz 05 (Fußball- und Sportverein – Football and Sports Club) is a football club based in Mainz, Germany. Mainz is currently playing in the First Bundesliga (Germany´s highest level league club competition).

The club currently plays in its Stadion am Bruchweg, which was built in 1928, modified in 1955, 1981, 1997 and 2002 and currently has a capacity of 20,300.

I studied here some years ago and i liked it very much :-))

Some “official” information:

One of the oldest and one of the largest universities in Germany and located in a city of both tradition and progress, Mainz University attracts students from all over the country and from all over the world. Numerous national conferences are hold international symposia are regularly hosted on a wide spectrum of academic fields.

With its about 32,000 students of more than 130 nations, the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz is one of the largest German universities. With its 2,200 academics and scientists teaching and researching in more than 150 institutes and clinics, the University also constitutes the academic center of the state Rhineland-Palatine.

The philosopher Pliny the Elder wrote with pride of the Romans, and of their proud discoveries and engineering success: “Indeed, whoever sees the fullness of the waters which are so cleverly directed into the city in order to serve public needs, whoever views the towering-high aqueducts which are necessary to guarantee the conveyance of the waters properly, whoever thinks of the mountains through which it was necessary to bore , and the valleys which must be filled in, one must admit that in all the world has nothing else to offer that is more amazing.”

Water also served as a means of preserving the population’s standard of living. With the help of an aqueduct, this valuable commodity could be transported over kilometers to military bases and other cities. The Mainz occupation forces of antiquity owned an absolute architectural wonder—the highest aqueducts north of the Alps – in their Mainz waterworks. The “Roman Stones” to be found in the Zahlbach part of town are all that remain of these splendid constructions.

The route of the waterway covers about nine kilometers or six miles starting at the water source in Finthen. The mains first ran underground, then surfaced, and finally ran overhead on arched viaducts above the ground . In order to overcome the differences in surface level, the supports in Zahlbach attained their greatest height: more than 25-meters or 77-feet, the equivalent of an eight-to-ten-storey building. Of all this genius, grandeur and engineering, only the “Roman Stones” remain today.

see: http://www.mainz.de/WGAPublisher/online/html/default/hthn-5ttjfg.en.html

Throughout the Roman Empire thermal baths and amphitheaters were to be found even in the smallest cities, both physical health and hygiene and arts and entertainment being accorded high value and a necessity for civilized life.

Mainz, known as Mogontiacum, Rome’s most important city in Germania, was no exception. In fact, the stage and auditorium of the Mainz theater was the largest anywhere north of the Alps. More than 10,000 audience members could be accommodated. The theater proportions were gigantic: The stage measured 42 meters – 136.5-feet – wide. The audience area was 116 meters—377-feet –in width : one-and-a-half football fields!

(That’s two-and-a-half times larger than the Metropolitan Opera House, and ten times larger than the Mainz Staatstheater, the city’s principal theater.)

The theater site was only first discovered at the beginning of the 20th Century below the Citadel location at the Mainz-South Rail Station. The theater’s dimensions, based on the size of the beams supporting the structure, allowed engineers to approximate the astonishing proportions of the structure: they dwarfed the imagination!

see: http://www.mainz.de/WGAPublisher/online/html/default/hthn-5ttjhv.en.html

Mainz Cathedral, also formally known in English as St. Martin Cathedral or Mainzer Dom as it is called in German, is located near the historical center of Mainz, Germany.

Mainz Cathedral is the site of the episcopal see of the Bishop of Mainz.

The cathedral looms over the largely pedestrianized center market square. It’s red-sandstone, six-towered body shelters the half-timbered houses of the old city and commands a prominent place in the skyline of Mainz.

The cathedral’s spacious interior houses the tombs and funerary monuments of former powerful prince-archbishops of the diocese. There are many statues on the cathedral grounds, like those of St. Boniface and the Madonna.

Mainz Cathedral, along with the cathedrals of Worms and Speyer, represents the highpoint of Romanesque cathedral architecture in the Rhine Region of Germany. These particular cathedrals are often called Kaiser-Domes, a reference to their consecration during the height of the Holy Roman Empire (the German word Kaiser, a variant of Caesar, means emperor, the word Dome in this instance, is a derivative for the german word Dom, meaning a cathedral or very large church).

Though predominantly Romanesque, later exterior additions to the cathedral, coupled with the influence of different artisans over the centuries on the cathedral’s interior, have resulted in the appearance of various styles seen today.

Historical snippets
The construction of the medieval cathedral dates back to Archbishop Willigis (975-1010), who fostered the commerce of Mainz, an important medieval trade center.[...]
It was at Mainz Cathedral on March 27, 1188, that Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, known as Frederick Barbarossa, symbolically took up the Cross and enlisted the military of the Holy Roman Empire in the Third Crusade called by Pope Gregory VIII.[...]
In its prime the cathedral saw the coronation of German kings, who were subsequently crowned emperors by the Pope through the traditional political process of the Holy Roman Empire. The coronation of German kings was a rite afforded to the Archbishop of Mainz during city’s status as an archdiocese from 747 until 1802 when much of Germany was reorganized politically under Napoleonic rule, though most kings had been crowned in Aachen. The Bishop of Mainz held considerable secular power as a Prince-Elector within the Holy Roman Empire.[...]
Mainz Cathedral has fallen victim to war damage over its long history. Prussian troops attempting to dislodge French Revolutionary forces from Mainz destroyed the east portion of the cathedral as they besieged the city in 1793. The Allies bombing of Mainz during World War II destroyed 80% of the inner city; fortunately the cathedral emerged with relatively little damage. The reconstruction of the cloister and the Chapel of St. Godhard, that had been damaged was completed in 1960.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainz_Cathedral )