Terra X: Germany from Above 1 (DVD - 2011 - DE)

Terra X: Germany from Above 1 on DVD

• Cities: Hardly any country in Europe is as urbanized as Germany. Almost the entire country is populated, but viewed from a satellite, one sees primarily the large points of light: Berlin, Hamburg, Munich. And the vast "Milky Way" of the Rhine-Ruhr region, stretching from Cologne to Dortmund. From a bird's-eye view, the cities reveal the secrets of their layouts, their internal logic, and some of their hidden lifelines. But how did the seemingly haphazard maze of medieval streets in the old towns of Rothenburg, Regensburg, or Lübeck come about? And why do the streets in many city centers still follow their ancient course?
• Germany is Europe's number one transit country. No other country handles as much transit traffic as Germany's motorway network. And there are even more transit routes in the sky: millions of migratory birds, from storks to cranes, migrate across the country in spring and autumn. Elaborate animations, based on GPS data from tagged birds, show the paths these migratory birds take in satellite images. However, the birds have to share the airspace over Germany with air traffic. No other airspace is as full of invisible flight paths and corridors as Germany's.
• Rivers and waterways in Germany have always been more than just water: the castle-lined Rhine, the Port of Hamburg and the Elbe, the ebb and flow of the Wadden Sea, the echo on Lake Königssee, or the endless mirror-like gray of Lake Constance – it is the rivers, seas, and lakes with which many Germans associate something akin to home. The theme of rivers and seas is considered in both a literal and a figurative sense: from the archaeologists diving for Stone Age pile dwellings in Lake Constance, to the water police monitoring shipping traffic on the Elbe by helicopter, to the departure of the legendary "Queen Mary," which brings tens of thousands of spectators to Hamburg each time.

Written and directed by Petra Höfer and Freddie Röckenhaus

Format: DVD, Region Code 2

Language: German

Subtitles: German for the hearing impaired