BERLIN, GERMANY

East Meets West

Executive summary by darmansjah

IT’S DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE what this city was like in the early 1960s, when the 87-mile-long Berlin Wall intact and bristling with barbed wire and gun emplacements. So desperate were they to cross to the West, East Berliners tried such tactics as hot-air ballooning, tunneling, and hiding in hollowed-out car panels. Many were shot for their efforts. Today, the wall has essentially been shattered into tiny bits, now scattered as souvenirs around the world.

You can navigate its former route by guided Segway, walking, or ‘video bus’ tours. Or hike or bike the Berlin Wall Trail, marked by signs and special cobblestones that trace the wall’s former path. Ask the kids to lead the way with a street map or handheld GPS-based MauerGuide. Only three small sections of the concrete wall remain, now safeguarded as national historic treasures.

A remnant on Bernauer Strasse is seen from a viewing tower that also show old black-and-white documentaries of people trying to escape East Berlin. The East Side Gallery showcases the work o more than 100 international artists commissioned to cover the wall in striking murals and graffiti.

Another one of the remains is between Postdamer Platz and Checkpoint Charlie, once the key crossing point between East and West used by foreign diplomats and military. A museum is nearby, and kids will be able to travel back to a long-lost era through escape apparatuses such as a hollowed-out surfboard, and films of the divided Berliners in a paroxysms of celebration. And they will get an important lesson here-the fall of the wall is a symbol of how humanity’s hunger for freedom can topple authoritarianism.

When the wall came down in 1990, East Berlin was a dour warren of bombed-out buildings, courtyards filled with rusty cars, and shabby apartments, Now East and West are virtually indistinguishable, though cross a street in Berlin and you’ll see a quaint echo of Communist yesterday: the now cherished little green and red men called Ampelmannchen who signal walk or don’t walk.

“Many who live in the East have a selective memory, a deep nostalgia for the good old DDR (East Germany),” says journalist Cornelia Hohling, a native East Berliner. “This includes the Ampel men and the old Trabi cars. Everything else is disappearing quickly.”

You can explore historic East Berlin in a Trabi, the cute car manufactured during Communist days. “There was a shortage of steel in those days, so the shell is made from cotton resin,” says Trabi-Safari manager. Led by a guide, you drive the Trabi on a tour that passes the site of Hitler’s bunker, the Reichstag, and Karl-Marx-Allee, with its imposing socialist realist architecture.

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Executive summary by darmansjah

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Behind the delicious joy of Kiwi Fruit

Original text by Frans Sartono, executive summary by Darmansjah

If you enjoy kiwi fruit, the delicious flavor behind there work all my life in New Zealand farmers. They work with the intention to harvest the fruits most delicious and useful for health. That way, their lives meaningful.

Gather ripe kiwi fruit on the branches. Thousands of them, waiting for the hands to pluck, and very appetizing. Roger Hoebers (45), a kiwi grower or farmer in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, we took a walk in the garden kiwi which orchad or ready to harvest in mid-April.

Roger kiwi fruit from the garden would eventually become part of the kiwi are exported to 50 countries, including Indonesia. If you buy a kiwi fruit in supermarkets in Indonesia, one of which may be picked from the garden Sir Roger.

With shorts and shoes gardens, Roger put a big bag in the waist. The bag was used to hold the fruits of passage. He was accompanied by his wife, Deborah, who carried her daughter, Alexy, who is almost 2 years old.

"I'm a kiwi fruit farmer because I've always liked to eat kiwi" Roger said that only two years has kebuh 1.2 hectares in Taurangga, Bay of Plenty, which is located 200 kilometers from Auckland, New Zealand.

A walk in the garden kiwi, is an excursion into the green nature, with clean air, fresh, and peaceful. Neighborhood gardens still forested, hilly land with contour where chirping birds fly free. "That was just a peacock fly there before we came here," said Deborah.

Enjoying Life

Roger kiwi orchard consists of three blocks. Each block bounded by dense pine trees lined the walls form a natural fence tight. The tree fence protecting kiwi plants from strong winds are not good for kiwi fruit.

Roger involved in the horticulture industry after pass high school at the age of 16 years. He then lecture in the horticulture department at Zespri worked as a manager. After  teen years of work, the new two and a half years ago he bought the kiwi plantations.

"You know, I'm getting older and I want to enjoy life with day-to-day work in the garden kiwi. I could have a garden this forever and I can still get income from this garden, "he said of the reason kiwi farming at the age of 45 years.

"When I started working in the garden kiwi, I always dreamed that one day I would have a kiwi orchard itself rather than continue to work for someone else. So, this was the dream come true, ha-ha-ha, "Roger while picking kiwi fruit.

Roger understand the true philosophy of farmers who are members of Zespri kiwi. The point is to maintain, cultivate crops as possible, in order to produce delicious fruit. Thus, the consumer will be served with satisfaction and its turn kiwi fruit will keep them alive.

"The most exciting aspect for me as a farmer is to work with nature and produce fruit with high quality," said Roger who planted sun gold kiwi species, the yellow flesh.

"Of course nature is very influential on what is happening on the crop, which is quite difficult to predict. So like a little gambling too, he-he-he. But I enjoy it. "

This year being the first year for Roger harvest sun gold kiwi species. Previously he planted kiwi green (sweet green). His farm produce 22 tones per hectare kiwifruit class that he described it as a super tasty. It was delicious.

Community Farmers

Roger Hoebers is one of New Zealand kiwifruit growers who gathered in Zespri, kiwifruit growers organization of the Bay of Plenty. As many as 80 percent of the proceeds kiwi New Zealand grown in this region and exported to 50 countries, including Indonesia.

Frans Sartono visiting kiwifruit-producing center in the New Zealand with an invitation lai Ndari Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Bahrain. Groups invited by Zespri. This organization is really protecting the interests of farmers 2,600 kiwi in the country. they're really devoted to customer satisfaction. And the result was remarkable. Last year they accounted for revenues of 1.6 billion dollars the State New Zealand.
"At harvest time we had a good summer with abundant sunshine. Weather like this that make a more delicious kiwi fruit, "said Blair Hamill, General Manager of Global Supply, Zespri, last April, in Taurangga, New Zealand.

As an illustration, the harvest in 2012, farmers who are members of Zespri kiwi produce 410,000 tones of kiwi are plucked from the garden with an area of ​​2,700 total 12,500 acres. Millions kiwi is then shipped in 55 shipments, transports 6,880 containers equipped with cooling.

Although the level of consumption of kiwi fruit Indonesia is still relatively low, compared to Japan, Korea or Thailand, the country as a very promising market. "Especially with the emergence of a new middle class in Indonesia," said Blair Hamill sure.

Middle class as a society towards justice suspected conscious foods. Eating with reason, he said. Zespri research suggests, they eat fruit with consideration of taste and health benefits.

Serving Health

Zespri kiwi farmers in the works to serve the consumer orientation. Of phases, planting, picking, fruit quality inspection, packing, shipping, research, research, carried out very carefully and thoroughly.

Frans S visiting companies kiwi fruit packing and storage Trevelyan's Pack and Cool Ltd in Te Puke, a small town 28km away from the Bay of Plenty. Zespri's partner companies serving packing kiwi for 220 gardens. Fruit sorting through several stages. If found to be defective fruit, the fruit will be returned to the farmers with technical notes for improvement in the future.

With such detail process, Trevelyan's 8,097,254 in 2012 to package kiwi tray (one tray contains 30's pieces). Trevelyan's make sure no one else is not worth the piece could pass delivery.

Once labeled Zespri, kiwi kept in cold storage temperature of zero degrees Celsius. Frans who had entered into the storage kiwi fruit without the jacket only lasting 3 minutes. Kiwi performance  then transshipped containers also include climate control. For shipments to Jakarta it takes about 18-22 days. Temperature is always maintained to kiwi delivery to consumer in optimum condition.

Kiwi farmers it does work seriously, diligently, but full of joy. "I enjoy working in orchad all joy, all my life (full of passion). This has become our lifestyle, kiwi farmers, "said Roger Hoebers.

Principle they are not grandiose. In the example workspace Trevelyan's motto emblazoned Success is not doing extraordinary things, but doing ordinary things extraordinarily well (Success is not doing extraordinary things but doing ordinary things in an extraordinary good).

With these principles, Zespri kiwifruit growers wander from across the world.

ATHENS, GREECE

Roots of Democracy

Executive summary by darmansjah

THE BEST PART of being in Athens is the ability to explore across centuries,” says Eleni Vainas, a Greek-American poet, animator, and longtime resident of the capital of Greece. “Walking around Athens is a living history lesson. Modern is juxtaposed with ancient, and art is featured throughout the city in ways that touch people on an everyday basis.”

Any child who has taken basic world history classes known about Athens and its indelible contribution to Western civilization. But studying a place and its heritage is far different from actually being there, especially if you are on a flat-topped hill called the Acropolis, gazing up at one of the most perfect structures ever built by man-the Parthenon.

Where indeed would we be without the ancient Greeks, their legacy of philosophy and democracy, their obsession with figuring out how Earth and the heavens function, their groundbreaking strides in mathematics and medicine?

Greek civilization didn’t start in Athens, but it reached its greatest height here in the fifth century B.C. under legendary figures like Pericles, Sophocles, and Socrates. Kids who clamber across the Acropolis and enter its new museum-which displays statues of a three-bodied monster and the goddess Nike leaning over to tie her sandal-gain a tangible connection with a bygone world that gave us so much of our won civilization.

The Parthenon alone is worth the trip. Dedicated to the goddess Athena, the temple arose between 447 and 435 B.C. The roof may be gone, but nothing can detract from the building’s graceful, geometric lines. Focal point of the Acropolis hill, the Parthenon was alter turned into a Byzantine church, a cathedral, an Ottoman mosque, and a warehouse to store gunpowder for the Turkish army, before it was resurrected as a global icon after the Greece gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

The shimmering, white structure is one of 20 atop or attached to the sides of the Acropolis, including two open-air theaters. In a flashback to those ancient times, families can attend performances at the hillside Odeon of Herodes Atticus during June’s annual Athens Hellenic Festival.