Blog.JonECat.com

I am eating a wonderful lunch from Yogi’s. It is an Avocado Roll, I can’t get enough of these!

I got Castle Crashers last night for the XBOX 360, and I am thoroughly impressed. If you have a 360 and have this game, hit me up with a friend request, my username is “GoukiXL”.

Here is a clip I shot on a SD1000 P&S camera. On the last night we had a little going away party and they brought in some musicians. They play us some traditional Bavarian style music, it was very cool. I don’t know if I would load it up on the iPod, but interesting to experience once.

Instruments left to right:
Hammer Dulcimer, Accordion, Acoustic Guitar, Sitar (I know that is wrong but that is what they called it)

As you probably know by now I have been staying in a converted monastery. Well not all of the rooms were modernized for the training center. A few of the most sacred rooms were kept as they were hundreds of years ago. The two rooms that I am going to share were by far the most incredible of the facility.

First was the “Chapel Of The Mother Mary”. This room was incredible, it had gold leafing and frescos everywhere. The Second is the library. This room had so many incredibly rare books it was ridiculous.

Our tour guide who is one of the facilitators of the think tank has been working here for the last 20 years. This was only the 3rd time he was allowed to be in these rooms just to give you the significance of this event. I truly felt privileged to be allowed to go in these rooms. He later offered to give myself and Rich Miller (my partner in crime at work, he does the Flash work and I do the video) a separate tour from the rest of the group to get closer look at all of it by one of the Conservationist of all the rare items of the monastery. She also took us into some rooms that the others did not go into, it was sick!

Once again, click on the image to see more information about it, and to see a larger size. Enjoy!

I lied I guess I am going to show you three rooms.. kinda, this image was in one of the rare animal rooms.

This is a panorama of the ceiling fresco in the library, sorry the ends got a little scewed, I did it by hand, no tripod laying on my back.

I have also been putting up all of the unprocessed images from Germany in a web albums on Picasa Web Albums. Currently I have 375 photos in it. Keep in mind that none of these have been processed so they are not up to my usually quality that I put on the site here. I also have alot of images from the think tank that I am in, so not all of them are fun to look at.

Click Here

Ok I know this post is extremely heavy on photos but some of these pics are incredible in my opinion. I had the opurtunity to goto Nordlingen and Die Klosteranlage Neresheim (Say that quick 3 times).

Nordlingen is in the middle of a meteor crater, but to me that is not why it was cool. This is the town where they shot the final scenes of Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory with the glass elevator. When they are flying over the town in the end that is the town you see, needless to say, I was stoked. FYI the rest of the movie was shot in Munich.

Die Klosteranlage Neresheim is an active monastery and church. This cathedral had some of the most impressive fresco painting I have ever seen. Painting on the frescos alone took 6 years. I know these photos don’t it justice but have a look.

For more information on each photo, click on it and it will take you to Flickr with a description for each image. If you have a Flickr account you can also see a larger version of each of these, I suggest it for the fresco shots. I hope you enjoy!

Click on the photo for more information about it.

I am in Dillingen, Bavaria, Germany right now in a converted 14th century monastery, now training facility. It is very nice, they just recently got done with a 20 year restoration of it, and it is beautiful. I will get some pics for you guy tomorrow.

After dinner tonight I walked around downtown Dillingen, it was quite nice. I went and got an ice cream cone at a shop down the road from where I am staying. Dillingen is about 110KM Northwest of Munich.

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I have been in training sessions all day so I am a little tired. I will have more for you tomorrow.