Charleston

Here is the first set of pictures taken on our road trip that took us to Asheville, Charleston, Savannah, and Atlanta. The route of this trip can be found here.

I will skip Asheville here (I might post some impressions of Asheville in a later post) and start with Charleston, SC. The city was founded in 1670 and has since been an important trading post. It is clearly dominated by colonial architecture and the climatic influence of the Atlantic ocean.

Our first goal was the water. This is not quite the ocean, it is rather the Cooper River. The weather was exactly as expected: warm and sunny (well, I consider 15 - 20 degree C warm in the winter).

We were all happy to see the palm trees, something I haven't seen for a long time...

It seems not only we enjoyed the nice weather at the water front.

This is a view down Broad Street with Charlestons oldest church in the background...

... and en details.

But this is not the only church, there are churches all around town although we were told that churches never outnumbered the bars.

Between Broad Street and the water front is the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, formerly used to incarcerate priates and those who took part in the revolution against England.

These colonial style houses are quite common in Charleston and be found in many places. All of those houses have such a porch which helps keeping the inside cool in the summer.

Besides the old houses, there were also quite a few nice old cars. However, driving an old car does not prevent you from getting a ticket...

The bridge that connects Charleston with Mt Pleasant over the Cooper River at night.

Unfortunately, the second day in Charleston was not so nice anymore. It was drizzling and raining and without any sun.

However, it was not too cold and there were a lot of sailing vessels on the river.

On our way to Savannah we stopped at the beach to see the Atlantic ocean. Although it was raining, it was a great experience to be there. It is not hard to imagine how beautiful the beach will be in the summer.

The lighthouse is position at the outlet of the Cooper River into the ocean. It is not in use anymore and seems to be quite rundown but still offers a nice view.

Steinsdorf Church

Another set of pictures, most of which taken on 12/25/2012. I had the chance to get into the church in Steinsdorf, the village in which I grew up :)

One of the baptist fonts with the crucifix in the background.

The interior with the organ...

Some of the registers...

... and the mirror to let the player see the cantor.

The statue of "Anna Selbtritt" which gave the the church its name St. Anna.

I even had the chance to get up the steeple to enjoy the view...

... and see the bells (here one of them with the hammer which chimes the bell every hour).

Philadelphia

After returning to Knoxville I finally found some time to work on the pictures taken in Philadelphia on a 10h stopover on my way to Germany for Christmas. I was blessed with great weather: sunshine and temperatures around 10 centigrade :)

My first goal was to see the museum of art. Not for the art, but...

... for the view. The view is quite famous due to the Rocky movies. And indeed, I have seen at least two tourists jumping around up there trying to mimic the original. It also seems to be a nice place for wedding photography (as seen in the lower right).

The statue was put atop the steps for the movies Rocky III and IV and later moved to the foot of the steps.

Going back into the city I found what looked like a crashed airplane on first sight. It is located right next to the art school and was a project by one the students, who put a plant in the cockpit.

I passed through (crowded) China town (with the typical gate that I have already seen in Washington)...

... and ended up at the Delaware river where I watched an old man feeding seagulls.

The Benjamin Franklin Bridge is 533m long and used to be the worlds longest suspension bridge.

In a small bay, you can find the Cruiser Olympia (launched in 1892)...

... and across the river lies the Battleship New Jersey.

The last goal of the day was to find some food. One recommendation was to try Philly Cheese Steak but this restaurant was just too crowded, people seem to be waiting in line for more than 15 minutes...

... so I went on and found this one. The Cheese Steak was a mess, simply white bread, cheese and meat (I didn't add the fried onions due to the 9h flight ahead of me). Well, typical American fast food, I guess ^^

More interesting than the food were these two stickers on the windows of the restaurant. While I don't want to comment on the first one, the second one caught my attention as I have seen people calling to free Mumia on almost all demonstrations I attended back in Germany over the years. Now, this seems to be the other side of the story (I don't want to go into details here).

Due to a lack of time and because I didn't want to go through the security hassle, I haven't seen the Liberty Bell. However, I came across a demonstration for legalizing marihuana which was a delightful ending for my tour through the city.