#karlruhe

[allthingseurope]

Karlsruhe, Germany (by Stephan)

[leifpm]

Maria Lindberg vs Lela Terashvili

[allthingseurope]

Karlsruhe, Germany (by Stephan Gehrlein)

[loyrks63-blog]

Karlsruhe , Durlach

[nprontheroad]

Syrian-Palestinians, a rose in Karlruhe, and a beautiful song

Many of the Syrians we’ve met in Greece, Germany and Sweden (including Lulu in Fagersta) are actually Syrian-Palestinians, many from Yarmouk, a once-vibrant neighborhood in Damascus that’s been decimated by the war. (A young pianist, Ayham al-Ahmed, has been featured in several YouTube videos playing amid the rubble, hoping to draw attention to the people trapped, starving and without water, in the remains of Yarmouk).

Syrian-Palestinians enjoyed a good status in Syria, at least compared to other Arab countries. They held nearly all rights of Syrian nationals (except citizenship and voting rights) and could attend Syrian schools and universities. Now they are refugees twice over.

Yarmouk, located in the southern edge of Damascus, was the largest of the twelve Palestinian camps in the country. According to a thorough, excellent study by Nidal Bitari in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Yarmouk was different from the other Palestinian camps in Syria because it was very diverse (many Syrians also lived there) and was also home to many educated professionals, including doctors, lawyers, engineers and businesspeople.

One of those businesspeople was an elegant woman named Ghada, who fled Yarmouk with her family and now lives near Mainz, Germany with her two sons. I first met Ghada in the German village of Ober Hilbersheim in March, when her brother-in-law, whom I had met in Athens a month earlier, introduced us. (The photo above is a view from the window of his room in the refugee camp in Karlsruhe, Germany, shortly after he arrived. He found the rose on the sidewalk outside the camp, still plump and tender, even though someone had dropped it).

The three of us roasted eggplant together in Ghada’s new home in a sleepy German village, sipping red wine as she recalled her life in Yarmouk, where she ran a pharmacy. “I’m just as Syrian as I am Palestinian,” she said. “I was born and raised in Syria, and its landscape is as familiar to me as my own family.” She loved mornings in Damascus, where she would sit on her terrace drinking coffee, surrounded by the scent of roses. “And at night, we would all cook together,” she said. “We would play music, and my husband would make pomegranate molasses.”

She took out her mobile phone and cued a song, "Pass By Your Name," by Marcel Khalife, the renowned Lebanese composer whose best albums are inspired by the poetry of the late Mahmoud Darwish, the eminent Palestinian poet.

As this beautiful song played on her phone, she and her brother-in-law tried to translate the lyrics into English - “As I pass by your name, I feel like a Damascene who passes by Andalucía" - but they both choked up. The song didn’t conjure Palestine for them, but rather placed them in their ruined, long-gone homes in their city of birth. "Damascus, my Damascus," Ghada said, wiping tears from her eyes. "You can’t imagine how beautiful my Damascus used to be." 

- Joanna Kakissis @joannakakissis

[eiram-l]

today "Echtdampf Hallentreffen" in Karlsruhe... Awesome!! All these little model railway with real tiny steam engines.

A huge playground for old and youn children!

Absolutely Awesome! :)

[miseengreen]

Installation view of the exhibition, Liu Ding’s Store, 2011, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany

[rentofficespace]

Xanadu office portfolio sold for €180m

Capita Asset Services, Europe's largest provider of loan services to financial institutions, have sold German office portfolio Xanadu to an unnamed private equity firm for €180m, according to realtor Savills.

The sum amounts to just half of the €350m valuation given at the time of CMBS issuance in 2007, with the sale only proceeding as a result of the acquisition on a non-performing CMBS loan portfolio to be secured against it.

The Xanadu portfolio features seven office properties across Germany’s major industrial and financial centres, including Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Landshut and Münster. A subsidiary of German Telekom occupies the majority of the combined space of 160,000 sq m, with the centres maintaining an average remaining lease term of seven years.

Crédit Suisse, the Swiss financial services company, provided the €297m loan against the Xanadu portfolio as one part of the €1.3bn Cornerstone Titan 2007-1 pan-European Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities scheme. However, the borrowers were unable to repay the amount before it matured in January 2012.

Estate agent Savills have advised Capita on the structured selling process, with details finalised at the close of 2012. A spokesman said that the prospective closing price of €180m is still dependent upon a range of factors that may affect the final structure of the sale upon completion.

The value of Capita’s commercial mortgage loans and financial institution portfolio loans across the continent is thought to be in the region of €120bn.

The news comes following the SOS report on Monday that BNP Paribas Real Estate Property Management had been appointed by German Acorn Real Estate to manage 22 assets across the country, in what has made for a hectic start for the German commercial property market in 2013.