Topic: Europe

Halfpipe and bikers: Sounds of the city captured virtually everywhere.

City tourism: Sound-hearing soon enhancing Sight-seeing?

15.12.2015

What are the sounds usually associated with a city? The irritating ones issued from cars hooting, tyres screeching, trams rumbling, from air-conditioning units humming relentlessly? From ambulances swishing by with sirens amplified by the Doppler effect that hurts our eardrums and sets our minds on alert? When embarking on a trip to a busy metropolis, an undistinguishable concoction of man-made noise will have to be tolerated as an inevitable part of the package. Positive connotations are asking for more pleasant experiences, though.

Conquering an urban jungle by mapping it out via the typical sounds it exudes, is an idea temporarily put into practice in Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam during an “ambient marketing” campaign: from interactive audio billboards, the “Sounds of the City” could be tapped by means of a personal headphone plugged into jacks directly embedded in the “neighbourhoods” of choice.

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19th century drawing: ladies in the gym. The German Gymnasium: A successful structural modification at King's Cross.

London: The German Gymnasium at King’s Cross

7.10.2015

For the conscientiously-thinking German of the past centuries, keeping physically fit was equal to a national duty to be fulfilled – like going to church on Holy Sundays. Not a chance of ever playing truant. The constant surveillance by a rigorously watchful society saw to these rules not being neglected. Meanwhile in Germany, like in any place else in the world, people who work out regularly on a voluntary basis have become rarer and those zigzagging between sporadic exertion and hard-core couch-potatoing a sad majority.

German discipline was worthwhile being exported to ensure that far-away expats would not forget to stay in shape. And this is how the German Gymnasium at King’s Cross came to be. The money for „the first purpose-built gymnasium in the United Kingdom“, opened in 1865, was raised entirely by the German Gymnastics Society and the German community in London. 6,000 pounds well invested. Even women were allowed to use the facility: a freedom otherwise alien to ladies of that era.

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Powered by the people: Britain’s first Bio-Bus

4.10.2015

How many facets there really are to sustainability respectively to the options of a new raison d’ être for recycled waste of varyingly appetising origin, is being demonstrated by a treatment plant located in the South-West of England. The company’s core objective is to „develop environmentally sustainable waste treatment processes and to increase the production of renewable energy“ in an „innovative and cost-effective“ fashion. Should your argument be that most treatment plants offer similar solutions, perhaps you are right. But this one has been awarded an ‘outstanding’ status in the Times Top 100 UK Companies listings. And it is taking its environmental efforts to new realms – by providing the first public biogas bus with fuel derived from food waste and human sewage.

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Germany: 25 years of Reunification

3.10.2015

The young boy holding on to the concrete steel bars that reinforced The Wall, was nine years old when the Iron Curtain fell in 1989. The lady next to him became one of the innumerable so-called „Mauerspechte“, „wall peckers“, who secured themselves a morsel of the unholy structure to bring home a grisly souvenir. The „antifascist protective wall“, as the German Democratic Republic had chosen to name it, not only separated West from East Berlin and barbariously split the German nation, but symbolised the rift that divided the entire world in two political camps. Erected in August of 1961, The Wall finally came down after decade-long diplomatic efforts and a peaceful revolution during which not a single shot was fired. Hacked apart piece by piece by citizens and visitors flocking in from all over the globe, The Wall ceased to exist and with it the Cold War.

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A refugee programme in Vienna: magdas – the not-for-profit hotel

17.09.2015

The magdas hotel’s homepage not only displays a pretty witty sense of humour and fluffily formulated descriptions. It also shows deep respect for a cause. When scanning the site for the hotel’s location in Vienna, visitors casually learn that it is situated near the city centre, in the vicinity of the Danube Canal mottled with cool clubs and pubs and close to the „Prater“, the popular amusement park that offers space for a wide variety of outdoor activities and sports Vienna’s famous landmark, the Ferris Wheel. Good access from all angles, a key factor for hotels getting booked, is definitely given.

But most importantly for the magdas, it lies within easy reach for its employees „because we want to spare them another round-the-world trip when commuting to their workplace“: magdas staff almost exclusively comprises refugees who descend from 14 different nations. Amongst them, they speak 23 languages. Dinis, the receptionist from Guinea-Bissau, alone is versed in seven! He came by boat. It took almost ten years to be granted asylum.

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