Entries tagged 'people to people'

I visited what was still then East Germany in 1990 as part of the People to People Student Ambassador Program, which is when I took this picture of the ruins of the Frauenkirche Dresden, which had been destroyed during World War II. It has since been rebuilt.

I don’t think it’s in the cards, but it would be interesting to visit Dresden again and see the rebuilt version.

Anyway, this picture caught my eye again as I was looking back at my photo archives and looking at where my life stands.

now that you have been thoroughly inoculated with puppy pictures, here are some pictures from auschwitz, taken on my trip in the summer of 1990.

i am sure that other people have written about the experience of seeing auschwitz much better than i ever could. it is a tremendously moving experience, and something i would really recommend not missing if you ever have the chance.

and there probably won’t be a film shoot in your way. those things have been following me around for decades, i guess.

one of the sights that just blew me away on my trip through eastern europe in summer 1990 was the still-destroyed buildings in dresden. when doing some research to figure out what church was in this picture, i ran across the articles about how the frauenkirche had been rebuilt, and realized the photo above was of the destroyed frauenkirche.

here’s a reasonable shot that includes most of the people who were in my tour group. i’m not sure where exactly this was, or even the date — my notes for the roll just say “fulda / weimar” but neither of those are in the itinerary i still have.

and here’s more evidence of a long-running photographic interest: graffiti. wir hassen nazis, indeed. i’m not sure what the symbol that looks like a circled “b” with an arrow pointing from it means.

when we left washington, d.c., we first went through jfk airport in new york city, where we had to run with our luggage between terminals, and then heathrow, before making it to munich. from munich, we travelled on to nuremburg.

this latest batch of photos from my summer trip in 1990 is from places we went in munich and nuremburg, but my notes are scant enough that i can’t say where in each city these places are, or even which of the cities they are in (or near).

i think the name of the girl in the corner of the frame was rachel. she was one of the other students in my tour group.

way back in the summer of 1990, i participated in the people to people student ambassador program, and spent a month traveling through parts of western and eastern europe. i recently had the negatives from the ten rolls of film i shot on the trip digitized, and i’m going to start putting the highlights online.

the first two days were spent in washington, d.c., where we toured the capitol building and some of the other usual tourist stops. we also met up with some of the other student groups getting ready to head overseas.

as you can see, standing in a rotunda and shooting up isn’t just a new habit of mine.

as a preview to come, here’s the itinerary from the trip:

• june 24-25: washington, d.c.
• june 26-28: munich, west germany
• june 29: nuremberg, west germany
• june 30-july 1: dresden, east germany
• july 2-4: prague, czechoslovakia
• july 5-7: krakow, poland
• july 8-9: lvov, u.s.s.r.
• july 10: debrecen, hungary
• july 11-13: budapest, hungary (homestay)
• july 14-15: budapest, hungary (hotel)
• july 16-17: balaton, hungary
• july 18-21: vienna, austria (homestay)
• july 22-23: vienna, austria (hotel)
• july 24: return home

of the seven countries (besides the united states), four of them no longer exist as they did back then — east and west germany have unified, czechoslovakia split up into the czech republic and slovakia, and the u.s.s.r. broke up.