Monday, June 27, 2005

Sightseeing - Google style

Google just recently added global satillite images to Google Maps, which spawned a resurgence in wasting time looking for aerial photos of landmarks of former places of residence (at least for me). For the uninitiated, Google Maps is a fairly standard road map utility ala Mapquest or Yahoo Maps, with the exception that there's a small link in the top right corner of the frame that you can push to see satillite images of the area you're looking at. Very addictive, especially if you don't have anything better to do.

I was pretty excited about the added images, since I've spent so much of my life in Germany. Unfortunately, none of the places I've lived are displayed in high resolution (again). But that doesn't mean there aren't any interesting sights to be seen.

Finding landmarks outside of the US and Canada is a bit more challenging than finding those inside, because the road mapping feature only works in North America and Britain. So there's no simply typing in the address of a place you lived or a famous building; you have to find it manually, the hard way. Below are a few of the places I found while I was tooling around showing Google Maps off to my dad.

  • Norfolk Naval Base - Ok, so this is inside the United States, but it's still one of my favorite places to look at. I love looking at all the carriers, destroyers, cruisers, and submarines.

  • American Beach in Livorno - I thought those of you who just got back from Italy Beach Break would appreciate this. If you go to the east a little bit, you can see Camp Darby. Unfortunately, Pisa isn't in high resolution, and neither is Cinqueterre.

  • The Straigt of Gibralta - Be sure to zoom in and see all the tankers and cargo ships sailing through.

  • Olympic Complex in Munich - The large, oddly shaped building is the Olympic Pool, where Mark Spitz won his record number of gold medals in '72 and the European Forces Swim League holds its annual championship meet. The thought of racing in the same lane as one of the greats really builds up your adrenaline.

  • Heidelberg - Unfortunately in lower resolution, you can still make out places like PHV, Plankstadt and the Schwetzingen Schloss (Can't see the castle, though)

  • Augsburg - This is the first place I ever lived in Germany. The kidney shaped patch centered in the screen is Fryar Circle, where my family lived for two and a half years until the caserne shut down.

  • Gablingen - This is a base in the Augsburg area. The twin circles centered in the screen is a gigantic radio array which dominates the base.
So that's all I have at the moment. Leave links to places you've lived or interesting things you find in the comments. (Because Google Maps doesn't auto-update the URL when you scroll around, you need to hit "Link to this page" in the top right corner to generate a web address. Then copy it out of the address bar and you're good to go). Actually, just leave a comment anyway, even if you don't have time to mess around on Google Maps. I want to know if anyone is actually reading this yet. :)

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