Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Darmstadt. This city, as far as I know, isn't really that important as far as historical politics and things go. It's got an interesting history though, into which I am not going to delve at this current moment. However, something which is not common knowledge, but is interesting all the same is that Tsarina Alexandra Romanov was born here and was the Archduchess of Hesse-Darmstadt before she married Tsar Nicholas II and became the Empress of Russia. For those of you still left out of the loop, she and Nicholas were the last rulers of Russia before the Communists came in and murdered their entire family in order to take over the government. Also, their daughter was the infamous Anastasia, made famous by Ingrid Bergman's portrayal in the movie "Anastasia" with Yule Brenner. Anyways, that's pretty much the most important/interesting thing that is close to common knowledge that involves Darmstadt.
When Isaac and I first arrived in Darmstadt, we really had no idea that the actual city center was so far away from the Hauptbahnhof. In most cases, the Hbf is at least semi close to where you want to be (Except in the case of Heidelberg where it's like COMPLETELY on the other side of the city). Anyways, we started walking and eventually found the stadtmitte, with probably the WORST Weihnachtsmarkt I've ever seen...and I've seen plenty since being here. We first went though Luisienplatz, which has the large statue of Ludwig I, who was a Duke of Darmstadt and some other combined city-states. After looking at the statue and seeing the SPD people walk around with their flags--we think they were attempting to begin a protest or something, but nothing ever formulated, so I guess not--we walked over to the Landgrave palace and took some photos in front of the cool lion statue near the North entrance. Not only is this lion probably one of the COOLEST things I've ever seen, it also has a bible verse from John 15:13 "Niemand hat größere Liebe denn die, daß er sein Leben läßt für seine Freunde." It was really cool b/c Isaac and I sat there and translated it and we got it right....before we realized that it's like one of the most common quoted verses from the Bible. So that was pretty cool. After staring at the lion for a bit, we went inside of the Palace thinking that it might be some sort of museum or something, but no, it was not. It was the UNIVERSITY!!! Can you believe that? They turned the Palace into the University!!
After exploring the Landgrave palace, we walked towards the Prinz-Georg Palais on the other side of the Royal Gardens, and this was pretty nice, but again, not the most spectacular thing I've seen. After visiting this, Isaac basically just wanted to find the Wildspiral building, and we began our search for that. This search took us all the way back to the Hbf and then on another train to find it.....basically it took about 1.5 hrs to track this s*** down. Anyways, we eventually found it, and it was cool. I wouldn't personally want to live there, but it was interesting to look at. After seeing it though, we both were ready to get back to Mainz and chillax....which is exactly what we did. All in all, Darmstadt was pretty cool, and I'd go back.
- comments