East Germany
East Germany the German Democratic Republic, was a country that existed from 1949 to 1990, when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. It described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state", the territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II — the Soviet Occupation Zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line; the Soviet zone did not include it. The German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany was a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, the GDR began to function as a state on 7 October 1949. However, Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War; until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party, though other parties nominally participated in its alliance organisation, the National Front of Democratic Germany.
The SED made the teaching of Marxism -- the Russian language compulsory in schools. The economy was centrally planned and state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the USSR, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc. Emigration to the West was a significant problem – as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people, it further weakened the state economically; the government fortified its western borders and, in 1961, built the Berlin Wall. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps, such as landmines. Several others were imprisoned for many years. In 1989, numerous social and political forces in the GDR and abroad led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalisation; the following year, open elections were held, international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany.
The GDR dissolved itself, Germany was reunified on 3 October 1990, becoming a sovereign state again. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz, were prosecuted in reunified Germany for crimes committed during the Cold War. Geographically, the German Democratic Republic bordered the Baltic Sea to the north. Internally, the GDR bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin, known as East Berlin, administered as the state's de facto capital, it bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the rest of the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989; the official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik abbreviated to DDR. Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of the abbreviated form since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968.
West Germans, the western media and statesmen avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone, Sowjetische Besatzungszone, sogenannte DDR. The centre of political power in East Berlin was referred to as Pankow. Over time, the abbreviation DDR was increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media; the term Westdeutschland, when used by West Germans, was always a reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to the area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent. Before World War II, Ostdeutschland was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt. Explaining the internal impact of the DDR regime from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter has argued that the East German state was defined by two dominant forces – Soviet Communism on the one hand, German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German Communists on the other.
It always was constrained by the powerful example of the prosperous West, to which East Germans compared their nation. The changes wrought by the Communists were most apparent in ending capitalism and transforming industry and agriculture, in the militarization of society, in the political thrust of the educational system and the media. On the other hand, there was little change made in the independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally. At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies (the U. S. the UK and
Windmill
A windmill is a structure that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Centuries ago, windmills were used to mill grain, pump water, or both. There are windmills; the majority of modern windmills take the form of wind turbines used to generate electricity, or windpumps used to pump water, either for land drainage or to extract groundwater. Windmills first appeared in Persia in the 9th century AD, were independently invented in Europe; the windwheel of the Greek engineer Hero of Alexandria in the first century is the earliest known instance of using a wind-driven wheel to power a machine. Another early example of a wind-driven wheel was the prayer wheel, used in Tibet and China since the fourth century; the first practical windmills had sails. According to Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, these panemone windmills were invented in eastern Persia, or Khorasan, as recorded by the Persian geographer Estakhri in the ninth century. The authenticity of an earlier anecdote of a windmill involving the second caliph Umar is questioned on the grounds that it appears in a tenth-century document.
Made of six to 12 sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind grain or draw up water, were quite different from the European vertical windmills. Windmills were in widespread use across the Middle East and Central Asia, spread to China and India from there. A similar type of horizontal windmill with rectangular blades, used for irrigation, can be found in thirteenth-century China, introduced by the travels of Yelü Chucai to Turkestan in 1219. Horizontal windmills were built, in small numbers, in Europe during the 18th and nineteenth centuries, for example Fowler's Mill at Battersea in London, Hooper's Mill at Margate in Kent; these early modern examples seem not to have been directly influenced by the horizontal windmills of the Middle and Far East, but to have been independent inventions by engineers influenced by the Industrial Revolution. Due to a lack of evidence, debate occurs among historians as to whether or not Middle Eastern horizontal windmills triggered the original development of European windmills.
In northwestern Europe, the horizontal-axis or vertical windmill is believed to date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the triangle of northern France, eastern England and Flanders. The earliest certain reference to a windmill in Europe dates from 1185, in the former village of Weedley in Yorkshire, located at the southern tip of the Wold overlooking the Humber Estuary. A number of earlier, but less dated, twelfth-century European sources referring to windmills have been found; these earliest mills were used to grind cereals. The evidence at present is that the earliest type of European windmill was the post mill, so named because of the large upright post on which the mill's main structure is balanced. By mounting the body this way, the mill is able to rotate to face the wind direction; the body contains all the milling machinery. The first post mills were of the sunken type, where the post was buried in an earth mound to support it. A wooden support was developed called the trestle.
This was covered over or surrounded by a roundhouse to protect the trestle from the weather and to provide storage space. This type of windmill was the most common in Europe until the nineteenth century, when more powerful tower and smock mills replaced them. In a hollow-post mill, the post on which the body is mounted is hollowed out, to accommodate the drive shaft; this makes it possible to drive machinery below or outside the body while still being able to rotate the body into the wind. Hollow-post mills driving scoop wheels were used in the Netherlands to drain wetlands from the fourteenth century onwards. By the end of the thirteenth century, the masonry tower mill, on which only the cap is rotated rather than the whole body of the mill, had been introduced; the spread of tower mills came with a growing economy that called for larger and more stable sources of power, though they were more expensive to build. In contrast to the post mill, only the cap of the tower mill needs to be turned into the wind, so the main structure can be made much taller, allowing the sails to be made longer, which enables them to provide useful work in low winds.
The cap can be turned into the wind either by winches or gearing inside the cap or from a winch on the tail pole outside the mill. A method of keeping the cap and sails into the wind automatically is by using a fantail, a small windmill mounted at right angles to the sails, at the rear of the windmill; these are fitted to tail poles of post mills and are common in Great Britain and English-speaking countries of the former British Empire and Germany but rare in other places. Around some parts of the Mediterranean Sea, tower mills with fixed caps were built because the wind's direction varied little most of the time; the smock mill is a development of the tower mill, where the masonry tower is replaced by a wooden framework, called the "smock", thatched, boarded or covered by other materials, such as slate, sheet metal, or tar paper. The smock is of octagonal plan, though there are examples with different numbers of sides; the lighter weight than tower mills make smock mills practical as drainage mills, which had t
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II. Following the Vistula–Oder Offensive of January–February 1945, the Red Army had temporarily halted on a line 60 km east of Berlin. On 9 March, Germany established its defence plan for the city with Operation Clausewitz; the first defensive preparations at the outskirts of Berlin were made on 20 March, under the newly appointed commander of Army Group Vistula, General Gotthard Heinrici. When the Soviet offensive resumed on 16 April, two Soviet fronts attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. Before the main battle in Berlin commenced, the Red Army encircled the city after successful battles of the Seelow Heights and Halbe. On 20 April 1945, Hitler's birthday, the 1st Belorussian Front led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, advancing from the east and north, started shelling Berlin's city centre, while Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front broke through Army Group Centre and advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin.
On 23 April General Helmuth Weidling assumed command of the forces within Berlin. The garrison consisted of several depleted and disorganised Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, along with poorly trained Volkssturm and Hitler Youth members. Over the course of the next week, the Red Army took the entire city. Before the battle was over and several of his followers killed themselves; the city's garrison surrendered on 2 May but fighting continued to the north-west and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe on 8 May as some German units fought westward so that they could surrender to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviets. Starting on 12 January 1945, the Red Army began the Vistula–Oder Offensive across the Narew River. On the fourth day, the Red Army broke out and started moving west, up to 30 to 40 km per day, taking East Prussia and Poznań, drawing up on a line 60 km east of Berlin along the Oder River; the newly created Army Group Vistula, under the command of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, attempted a counter-attack, but this had failed by 24 February.
The Red Army drove on to Pomerania, clearing the right bank of the Oder River, thereby reaching into Silesia. In the south the Siege of Budapest raged. Three German divisions' attempts to relieve the encircled Hungarian capital city failed, Budapest fell to the Soviets on 13 February. Adolf Hitler insisted on a counter-attack to recapture the Drau-Danube triangle; the goal was to secure the oil region of Nagykanizsa and regain the Danube River for future operations, but the depleted German forces had been given an impossible task. By 16 March, the German Lake Balaton Offensive had failed, a counter-attack by the Red Army took back in 24 hours everything the Germans had taken ten days to gain. On 30 March, the Soviets entered Austria. Between June and September 1944, the Wehrmacht had lost more than a million men, it lacked the fuel and armaments needed to operate effectively. On 12 April 1945, who had earlier decided to remain in the city against the wishes of his advisers, heard the news that the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died.
This raised false hopes in the Führerbunker that there might yet be a falling out among the Allies and that Berlin would be saved at the last moment, as had happened once before when Berlin was threatened. No plans were made by the Western Allies to seize the city by a ground operation; the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, General Eisenhower lost interest in the race to Berlin and saw no further need to suffer casualties by attacking a city that would be in the Soviet sphere of influence after the war, envisioning excessive friendly fire if both armies attempted to occupy the city at once. The major Western Allied contribution to the battle was the bombing of Berlin during 1945. During 1945 the United States Army Air Forces launched large daytime raids on Berlin and for 36 nights in succession, scores of RAF Mosquitos bombed the German capital, ending on the night of 20/21 April 1945 just before the Soviets entered the city; the Soviet offensive into central Germany, what became East Germany, had two objectives.
Stalin did not believe the Western Allies would hand over territory occupied by them in the post-war Soviet zone, so he began the offensive on a broad front and moved to meet the Western Allies as far west as possible. But the overriding objective was to capture Berlin; the two goals were complementary because possession of the zone could not be won unless Berlin were taken. Another consideration was that Berlin itself held useful post-war strategic assets, including Adolf Hitler and the German atomic bomb programme. On 6 March, Hitler appointed Lieutenant General Helmuth Reymann commander of the Berlin Defence Area, replacing Lieutenant General Bruno Ritter von Hauenschild. On 20 March, General Gotthard Heinrici was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula replacing Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Heinrici was one of the best defensive tacticians in the German army, he started to lay defensive plans. Heinrici assessed that the main Soviet thrust would be made over the Oder River and along the main east-west Autobahn.
He decided not to try to defend the banks of the Oder with anything more than a light skirmishing screen. Instead, Heinrici arranged for engineers
Italian cuisine
Italian cuisine is food typical of Italy. It has developed through centuries of social and economic changes, with roots stretching to antiquity. Significant changes occurred with the discovery of the New World and the introduction of potatoes, bell peppers and sugar beet, this last introduced in quantity in the 18th century. Italian cuisine is known for its regional diversity between the north and the south of the Italian peninsula, it offers an abundance of taste, is one of the most popular and copied in the world. It influenced several cuisines around the world. Italian cuisine is characterized by its simplicity, with many dishes having only two to four main ingredients. Italian cooks rely chiefly on the quality of the ingredients rather than on elaborate preparation. Ingredients and dishes vary by region. Many dishes that were once regional have proliferated with variations throughout the country. Italian cuisine has developed over the centuries. Although the country known as Italy did not unite until the 19th century, the cuisine can claim traceable roots as far back as the 4th century BCE.
Food and culture were important at that time as we can see from the cookbook which dates back to first century BC. Through the centuries, neighbouring regions, high-profile chefs, political upheaval, the discovery of the New World have influenced its development. Italian food started to form after the fall of the Roman Empire, when different cities began to separate and form their own traditions. Many different types of bread and pasta were made, there was a variation in cooking techniques and preparation; the country was split. Regional cuisine is represented by some of the major cities in Italy. For example, Milan is known for its risottos, Bologna is known for its tortellini and Naples is famous for its pizzas and spaghettis; the first known Italian food writer was a Greek Sicilian named Archestratus from Syracuse in the 4th century BCE. He wrote a poem, he said that flavors should not be masked by herbs or other seasonings. He placed importance on simple preparation of fish. Simplicity was replaced by a culture of gastronomy as the Roman Empire developed.
By the time De re coquinaria was published in the 1st century CE, it contained 470 recipes calling for heavy use of spices and herbs. The Romans employed Greek bakers to produce breads and imported cheeses from Sicily as the Sicilians had a reputation as the best cheesemakers; the Romans reared goats for butchering, grew artichokes and leeks. With culinary traditions from Rome and Athens, a cuisine developed in Sicily that some consider the first real Italian cuisine. Arabs invaded Sicily in the 9th century, introducing spinach and rice. During the 12th century, a Norman king surveyed Sicily and saw people making long strings made from flour and water called atriya, which became trii, a term still used for spaghetti in southern Italy. Normans introduced casseroles, salt cod, stockfish, all of which remain popular. Food preservation was either physical, as refrigeration did not exist. Meats and fish dried, or kept on ice. Brine and salt were used to pickle items such as herring, to cure pork. Root vegetables were preserved in brine.
Other means of preservation included immersing meat in congealed, rendered fat. For preserving fruits, liquor and sugar were used; the northern Italian regions show a mix of Germanic and Roman culture while the south reflects Arab influence, as much Mediterranean cuisine was spread by Arab trade. The oldest Italian book on cuisine is the 13th century Liber de coquina written in Naples. Dishes include "Roman-style" cabbage, ad usum campanie which were "small leaves" prepared in the "Campanian manner", a bean dish from the Marca di Trevisio, a torta, compositum londardicum which are similar to dishes prepared today. Two other books from the 14th century include recipes for Roman pastello, Lasagna pie, call for the use of salt from Sardinia or Chioggia. In the 15th century, Maestro Martino was chef to the Patriarch of Aquileia at the Vatican, his Libro de arte coquinaria describes a more elegant cuisine. His book contains a recipe for Maccaroni Siciliani, made by wrapping dough around a thin iron rod to dry in the sun.
The macaroni was cooked in capon stock flavored with saffron. Of particular note is Martino's avoidance of excessive spices in favor of fresh herbs; the Roman recipes include cabbage dishes. His Florentine dishes include eggs with Bolognese torta, Sienese torta and Genoese recipes such as piperata, squash and spinach pie with onions. Martino's text was included in a 1475 book by Bartolomeo Platina printed in Venice entitled De honesta voluptate et valetudine. Platina puts Martino's "Libro" in regional context, writing about perch from Lake Maggiore, sardines from Lake Garda, grayling from Adda, hens from Padua, olives from Bologna and Piceno, turbot from Ravenna, rudd from Lake Trasimeno, carrots from Viterbo, bass from the Tiber and shad from Lake Albano, snails from Rieti, figs from Tuscolo, grapes from Narni, oil from Cassino, oranges from Naples and eels from Campania. Grains from Lombardy and Campania are mentioned as is honey from Taranto. Wine from the Ligurian coast, Greco from Tuscany and San Severino, Trebbiano from Tuscany and Piceno are mentioned in the book.
The courts of Florence, Rome and Ferrara were centra
Mitte
Mitte is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Hansaviertel, Moabit and Wedding, it is one of the two boroughs. Mitte encompasses Berlin's historic core and includes some of the most important tourist sites of Berlin like Museum Island, the TV tower, Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, Potsdamer Platz, the Reichstag and Berlin Hauptbahnhof, most of which were in former East Berlin; when Berliners refer to Mitte they mean the smaller locality rather than the larger borough. Mitte is located in the central part of Berlin along the Spree River, it borders on Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in the west, Reinickendorf in the north, Pankow in the east, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in the southeast, Tempelhof-Schöneberg in the southwest. In the middle of the Spree lies Museum Island with its museums and Berlin Cathedral; the central square in Mitte is Alexanderplatz with the prominent Fernsehturm, Germany's highest building, the large railway station with connections to many subway, city trains and buses.
There are some important streets which connect Mitte with the other boroughs, e.g. the boulevard Unter den Linden which connects Alexanderplatz to the west with Brandenburg Gate and runs further as Straße des 17. Juni to the Victory Column and the centre of former West Berlin in Charlottenburg, or Karl-Marx-Allee from Alexanderplatz to Friedrichshain and the eastern suburbs; the former Mitte district had been established by the 1920 Greater Berlin Act and comprised large parts of the historic city around Alt-Berlin and Cölln. Brandenburg Gate was the western exit at the Berlin city boundary until 1861. Between 1961 and 1990, Mitte was the central part of East Berlin, however at the same time it was surrounded by the Berlin Wall at its north and west. There were some border control points, the most famous of, Checkpoint Charlie between Kreuzberg and Mitte, operated by the United States Army and its allies and was open to foreigners and diplomats. Two other checkpoints were at Heinrich-Heine-Straße/Prinzenstraße east of Checkpoint Charlie, open to citizens of West Germany and West Berlin and on Invalidenstraße in the north on the border with the West Berlin Tiergarten district.
The government district is located in the locality of Tiergarten around the Reichstag Building. Most institutions of the German government have their seat at the Regierungsviertel Bundestag, the German parliament in the old Reichstag Building Bellevue Palace, seat of the Federal President German Chancellery Offices of the Abgeordneten, members of the parliament, in the Paul-Löbe-Haus and the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus Federal Ministry of the Interior Many embassies and the Federal Ministry of Defence in the historic embassy quarter in the south of the Tiergarten Park. Großer Tiergarten is the name of the biggest urban park in Mitte, located in the same-named locality; the Tiergarten Park was established as a hunting ground in the 16th century by the Prussian kings. Today its enclosed by densely built-up areas by Hansaviertel and Moabit in the north, the Government District in the east and the City West and the Embassy Quarter in the southwest. Many cultural monuments and memorials are located in the Tiergarten Park, like the Siegessäule, the Soviet War Memorial and a historic rose garden.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the biggest victim group of the Nazi-Diktatorship, is located on the east side of the park, near the Brandenburg Gate and the place where once Hitler's New Reich Chancellery was. The Kulturforum was built in the 1950s and 1960s at the edge of West Berlin, after most of the once unified city's cultural assets had been lost behind the Berlin Wall; the Kulturforum is characterized by its innovative modernist architecture. Among the cultural institutions housed in and around the Kulturforum are: Neue Nationalgalerie Gemäldegalerie Museum of Decorative Arts Musical Instrument Museum Kupferstichkabinett Art Library Berliner Philharmonie Chamber Music Hall Berlin State Library Ibero-American Institute Wissenschaftszentrum St. Matthäus-Kirche Berlin Alexanderplatz, a 1929 novel by Alfred Döblin Mitte 1, a 2013 novel by Albrecht Behmel Berlin Mitte, Norman Ohler Unter diesem Einfluss, Henning Kober The present-day borough of Mitte consists of six localities: As of 2010, the district had a population of 322,919, of whom 144.000 had a migration background.
In the former West Berlin areas of Wedding and Moabit, foreigners and Germans of foreign origin compose nearly 70% of the population, while in Mitte proper the share of migrants is low. The immigrant community is quite diverse, Turks, Eastern Europeans and East Asians form the largest groups. At the 2016 elections for the parliament of the borough the following parties were elected: SPD 14 Alliance'90/The Greens 14 The Left 10 CDU 7 Alternative for Germany 5 Free Democratic Party 3 Pirate Party 2 Higashiōsaka, Japan since 1959 Holon, Israel since 1970 Bottrop, Germany since 1983 Schwalm-Eder-Kreis since 1992 Shinjuku, Japan since 1994 Tsuwano, Japan since 1995 Tourcoing, France since 1995 VI. kerület, Hungary since 2005 Central Administrative Okrug, Russia since 2006 Berlin Mitte Official homepage Official homepage of Berlin
Arab cuisine
Arab cuisine is the cuisine of the Arabs, defined as the various regional cuisines spanning the [ and the Arabian Peninsula. The cuisines are centuries old and reflect the culture of great trading in spices and foods; the three main regions known as the Maghreb, the Fertile Crescent, the Arabian Peninsula have many similarities, but many unique traditions. These kitchens have been influenced by the climate, cultivating possibilities, as well as trading possibilities; the kitchens of the Maghreb and Levant are young kitchens that were developed over the past centuries. The kitchen from the Khaleej region is a old kitchen; the kitchens can be divided into rural kitchens. The Arab cuisine uses specific and sometimes unique spices; some of those foods are: Meat: chicken are the most used, with beef, goat. Other poultry is used in some regions, fish is used in coastal areas including the Mediterranean sea, Atlantic Ocean or the Red sea. Pork is prohibited for Muslim Arabs, being both a cultural and religious taboo and prohibited under Islamic law.
Dairy products: dairy products are used yogurt and white cheese. Butter and cream are used extensively. Herbs and spices: The amounts and types used varies from region to region; some of the included herbs and spices are sesame, Black pepper, turmeric, cumin, Parsley and sumac. Spice mixtures include Ras el hanout, Za'atar, Harissa. Beverages: hot beverages are served more than cold, coffee being at the top of the list in the Middle-eastern countries and tea at top of the Maghreb countries. In Jordan, Egypt, some parts of Syria and Algeria, tea is much more important as a beverage. Other Arabic drinks include Andalucian Maghrebi avocado smoothie. Grains: rice is the staple and is used for most dishes. Bulgur and semolina are used extensively. Legumes: lentils are used in all colours, as well as fava beans, scarlet runner beans, green peas, lupini beans, white beans, brown beans. Vegetables: Arab cuisine favors vegetables such as carrots, zucchini, okra and Olives. Potatoes are eaten as vegetables in Arab culture.
Fruits: Arab cuisine favors fruits such as Pomegranate, Figs, citruses, Cantaloupe, Honeydew melon, grapes and nectarines. Nuts: Almonds, pine nuts and walnuts are included in dishes or eaten as snacks. Greens: Parsley and mint are popular as seasonings in many dishes, while spinach and mulukhiyah are used in cooked dishes. Dressings and sauces: The most popular dressings include various combinations of olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, or garlic, as well as tahini. Labaneh is seasoned with mint, onion, or garlic, served as a sauce with various dishes; the Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula, Middle-East and North-Africa relied on a diet of dates, dried fruit, wheat, barley and meat. The meat comes from large animals such as cows and lambs, they eat dairy products: milk, cheese and buttermilk. The bedouins would use many different dried beans including white beans and chickpeas. Vegetables that were used a lot among the bedouins are variants that could be dried, such as pumpkins, but vegetables that are more heat-resistant, such as aubergines.
They would drink a lot of Arabic tea, Maghrebi mint tea, or Arabic coffee. A daily break to freshen up with drinks is a much loved tradition; the bread, eaten a lot is called Khobz as well as Khaleej, in the Maghreb regions. Dishes such as Marqa, Tajines were prepared traditionally among the bedouins. Breakfast existed of baked beans, nuts, dried fruits, milk and cheese with tea or coffee. Snacks dried fruits. Essential to any cooking in the Arab world is the concept of generosity. Meals are large family affairs, with much sharing and a great deal of warmth over the dinner table. Formal dinners and celebrations involve large quantities of lamb, every occasion entails large quantities of Arabic coffee or Arabic tea. Coffee ceremony: In the Khaleej region, a visitor is greeted by a great table of dried fruits, fresh fruits and cakes with syrup. Dried fruits include figs, dates and plums. Fresh fruits include citruses and pomegranate. Arabic Coffee is served the most, but Arabic tea is a great refresher.
Spices are added in the coffee or other drinks. Dinner guests: In the khaleej region, a visitor might expect a dinner consisting of a large platter, shared with a vast amount of spiced rice, incorporating cooked spicy lamb or chicken, or both, as separate dishes, with various stewed vegetables spiced, sometimes with a tomato-based sauce. Different types of bread are served with different toppings specific to the region. Tea would accompany the meal, as it is constantly consumed. Coffee would be included in the same manner. Tea/coffee ceremony: In the Maghrebi region, a visitor might expect a table full of bread-like snacks, including Msemen and other stuffed breads; these are served with rosewater or olive oil. There are many different cookies and cakes included accompanied by plates with different kinds of nuts. Arabic coffee and Mint tea is served with it in a traditional Maghrebian teapot. Dinner guests: In the Maghrebi region, a visitor m
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were centralized; the country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Minsk, Alma-Ata, Novosibirsk, it spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, steppes and mountains; the Soviet Union had its roots in the 1917 October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government which had replaced Tsar Nicholas II during World War I. In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed by a treaty which legalized the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian and Byelorussian republics that had occurred from 1918. Following Lenin's death in 1924 and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s.
Stalin committed the state's ideology to Marxism–Leninism and constructed a command economy which led to a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization. During his rule, political paranoia fermented and the Great Purge removed Stalin's opponents within and outside of the party via arbitrary arrests and persecutions of many people, resulting in at least 600,000 deaths. In 1933, a major famine struck the country. Before the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, after which the USSR invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. In June 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk; the territories overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Soviet Union.
The post-war division of Europe into capitalist and communist halves would lead to increased tensions with the United States-led Western Bloc, known as the Cold War. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin and began the de-Stalinization; the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred during Khrushchev's rule, among the many factors that led to his downfall in 1964. In the early 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed with the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. In 1985, the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika, which caused political instability. In 1989, Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist governments; as part of an attempt to prevent the country's dissolution due to rising nationalist and separatist movements, a referendum was held in March 1991, boycotted by some republics, that resulted in a majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the union as a renewed federation.
Gorbachev's power was diminished after Russian President Boris Yeltsin's high-profile role in facing down a coup d'état attempted by Communist Party hardliners. In late 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union met and formally dissolved the Soviet Union; the remaining 12 constituent republics emerged as independent post-Soviet states, with the Russian Federation—formerly the Russian SFSR—assuming the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and being recognized as the successor state. The Soviet Union was a powerhouse of many significant technological achievements and innovations of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite, the first humans in space and the first probe to land on another planet, Venus; the country had the largest standing military in the world. The Soviet Union was recognized as one of the five nuclear weapons states and possessed the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, it was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
The word "Soviet" is derived from a Russian word сове́т meaning council, advice, harmony and all deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti, related to Slavic věst, English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or", or the Dutch weten. The word sovietnik means "councillor". A number of organizations in Russian history were called "council". For example, in the Russian Empire the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905. During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union, which he named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. Stalin resisted the proposal, but accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name of the newly proposed sta
Prenzlauer Berg (help·info) is a locality of Berlin, forming the southerly and most urban part of the district of Pankow.
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
Lichtenberg
Marzahn-Hellersdorf
Mitte
Neukölln
Pankow
Reinickendorf
Spandau
Steglitz-Zehlendorf
Tempelhof-Schöneberg
Treptow-Köpenick
