Afternoon at the Uni.

On Friday afternoon we spent a great afternoon with Fabian, Almut and their girls.
The weather here was beautiful and we all went up to the Westend Campus of the University. It was so beautiful- the buildings date from before the second world war and they are so very impressive. Enormous sandstone or marble structures that go on forever. Fabian pointed out some of the architectural features, for example the windows on the bottom floor are slightly larger than those on the top, they actually get smaller as you go up the building. This gives the impression that the building is actually taller than it is. Inside we discovered the coolest ‘elevator’ ever- it is called a paternoster. The cars continually loop through the building and you just wait for an open car to pass and hop on, once you reach your destination, you just hop off. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time riding the paternoster - luckily it was a Friday afternoon AND the day after a holiday, so there were not a lot of people around actually trying to do work. The building also has a lot of very interesting history-during the war, it was the Nazi headquarters and after the war was over it became Eisenhower’s headquarters. The United States occupied the buildings until after the reunification and at some point the University got them.











The adults sat by the fountain in the courtyard drinking coffee while the children played under an enormous weeping willow tree. They made some wood nymph costumes, complete with bows and arrows. While we were there a film crew showed up and set up to film a scene for a movie! It was a really nice afternoon with some new friends.