Short Trips / Mostly Germany

TO ALL

We’ve done several short trips since Christmas and I thought it might be worth posting a blog with some pictures. Those of you reading this as e-mail might find it a bit frustrating. Some things won't make sense without the pictures.

I won’t bore you with the “when,” “why,” and “how” for these places, but just a few short sentences about each location that we visited. You might notice that we are entering a new phase of our European explorations. Some things that were once pretty amazing are starting to become common place and it’s the quirky, less obvious things that are starting to catch our attention.

Frankfurt
One day in January we discovered that Frankfurt is more than just the location of a huge international airport. There is actually an Altstadt (old town) in Frankfurt, including a cathedral, several churches and towers, and a market square surrounded by half-timbered buildings. Some of it looks suspiciously newer than its style would lead one to believe. In case you think that homelessness is a uniquely US phenomenon check out this picture and keep in mind that Germany has a highly accessible welfare system.

Munich
Steve Kliewer this is for you. We finally got to Munich. It, too, has a pretty intriguing Altstadt. I really liked the unique style of the Frauenkirche’s twin towers.

I also liked the gate leading into the Altstadt.

Munich is the home of the Hofbrauhaus, the world’s most famous beer house. Most of your know that Mike and I are not beer drinkers in any way, shape, or form. I’ve become a little more liberal in my old age about alcoholic beverages – a glass of wine is of interest if someone actually hands it to me. Mike is still of the opinion that anything alcoholic is just glorified cough syrup. However, Mike decided he wanted to visit the Hofbrauhaus in Munich strictly for nostalgia purposes. His parents had a couple of large beer steins around the house as he was growing up that they acquired while they were in Germany (although they also were tee-totalers). One of the beer steins was of the plain grey variety with an “HB” logo on the side in big blue letters. Like idiots we sold it – probably for a dollar or two – at a garage sale a few years ago when we emptied out Mike’s mom’s house in Lawton, Oklahoma. Now that we are living in Germany, Mike has come to understand it’s significance and decided he wanted to replace it. So . . . what we sold for a pittance we have now reacquired for 20 euros. Such is life. We might have dressed up our purchase a little by eating a meal at the Hofbrauhaus, but it was just too crowded and smoky inside to be enjoyable.

Swans are almost as common in Europe as geese are in the US. And they are every bit as beautiful and graceful as one might imagine. There is a rather large flock of them in the ponds around Schloss Nymphenburg.

A lot of the towns in Europe set up temporary outdoor ice skating rinks in the city center during the winter months. Where were these clever little devices when I was learning to ice skate as a kid?

Munich is the headquarters for BMW (Bavarian Motor Works) and the large BMW plant located there is a city unto itself.

Landshut
(not to be confused with Landstuhl which is the location of the huge American military hospital that treats virtually all Americans wounded in Iraq. Landstuhl and Landshut are on opposite ends of Germany!!) Landshut is the town where Mike lived for the first 3 years of his life, while his dad was in the army helping to guard the Czech border. We were here briefly once before and decided to go back. This time, instead of exploring the Altstadt as we did before, we checked out the castle on the hill overlooking the town. We got there just before sunset and enjoyed beautiful views of the town. The castle was fun, too, in that there was no admission fee and, although you couldn’t go into any of the buildings, you could walk all over the grounds to your heart’s content.

By the way Landshut is pronounced lands-hoot which means “land’s hat.” Lots of German place names are compound words with an “s” and some other consonant in the middle: Kaiserslautern, Sinsheim, Bensheim, Ludwigshafen, Darmstadt, Wiesbaden etc. We Americans tend to want to combine the “s” and the consonant that follows but in German if the “s” is followed by an “h” or an “l” then the “s” goes with the first word in the compound name and the “h” or the “l” is the beginning the second word. So --- Kaisers-lauten (King’s lutes), Sins-heim (someone’s home), Bens-heim (someone else’s home), Ludwigs-hafen (Ludwig’s harbor) etc. etc. So now you know.

Remagen
This is the location of a famous WWII “battle” which became the basis for a movie called “The Bridge at Remagen.” The story goes that in the last months of WWII, the US was intent on capturing the heartland of Germany and the bridge at Remagen was the only bridge over the Rhine still standing. If it could be captured intact their progress would be significantly expedited. The German commander, Kruger, who was defending the bridge at Remagen, had been ordered to destroy it but he was reluctant because in so doing he would cut off the escape route of thousands of his comrades on the far side of the Rhine. When it became apparent that he was not going to be able to hold out against the Americans he did finally attempt to blow up the bridge. However, the explosives he used were cheap and ineffective and failed to drop the span into the river. While he was gone trying to get help, his men were forced to surrender to the Americans. In the end, Kruger was executed for desertion and failure to carry out orders. Meanwhile, the Americans began streaming across the bridge into the Germany. Unfortunately, the bridge had been sufficiently weakened by the explosives that, in due time, it collapsed, killing a number of Americans. All that is left of the bridge today are the towers and supports on either side of the Rhein and the memories that they evoke.

Aachen (say AAH-ken and clear your throat decisively as you say the “k”)
This was the capital of Europe in the 8^th century when Charlemagne was emperor. He built a cathedral there which ended up being the coronation site of some 30 subsequent Holy Roman Emperors. His remains are buried inside the cathedral and his throne is there also. This is one cathedral whose inside I will not soon forget (see my blog called “Some Roads Lead to Rome” in regard to the uniqueness of the outsides of cathedrals). The core of this cathedral is octagonal instead of the long narrow shape which is typical of most cathedrals. The walls and ceilings are covered with a gold, glittery, floral pattern. When you look closely it turns out that the floral pattern is a mosaic of gold pieces (click on the picture to enlarge it). The roof of the main octagonal area is folded.

Tongeren
This town is in Belgium and is the location of a basilica (how that is different than a cathedral I do not know) plus a HUGE open air flea/antique market. I’m not particularly into antiques, but I had heard about this from several of the wives and thought it would be interesting to check out. The market happens every Sunday morning starting at 6:00AM. In the winter it is pitch dark at 6:00AM. Eight o’clock was plenty early for us. The flea market (or flohmarkt as it would be called in German) was located in the town square but then it overflowed into the side streets and went on forever down a couple of them. We bought a couple of small items including a water pitcher that supposedly is Victorian, but mostly it was just interesting browsing – looking at the merchandise and also at the shoppers. The stuff ran the gauntlet from pure junk to really nice solid wood antique furniture. I’m not sure I’m qualified to evaluate the prices. I can, however, evaluate the income bracket of the shoppers – clearly middle to upper class. They were dressed really nice.

The basilica in Tongeren also was interesting. The interior was gutted for remodeling, but they had a viewing platform set up so that you could see the progress. There were several pieces of heavy equipment about where the altar should be and boxes of numbered bricks stacked up in various places waiting to be reassembled at some future date. From the outside, the front of the cathedral was shaped like the prow of a ship.

Belgium border – On the way home from Tongeren we decided to check out a highway that was marked as a “scenic route” in one of our road atlases. Sometime after we entered Germany again, we were driving through some unknown little town and I said casually to Mike (as I was examining the map), “The Belgium border is just right over there a few blocks.” And Mike said “Oh, well then those are tank traps that I just saw.” He immediately found some place to turn around and started poking around down some side streets for a better view of what he had glimpsed. Sure enough we discovered a section of Belgium / German border that has been left just like it was at the end of WWII. Apparently in an attempt to at least slow down the Germans as they came across the border into Belgium, the Belgians lined their borders with tanks traps. The traps consist of upright concrete slabs, triangular in shape and about the size of a large tombstone (4 to 6 feet high). The slabs are joined together at the ground with more concrete in groups of three to prevent them from being pushed over easily. The rows of three are perpendicular to the border itself and are too close together for a tank to get between them. Mike thinks that probably the whole area was also covered with concertina wire to slow down any movement of infantry. We parked and walked along the border for a ways in a couple of different places, taking pictures and just thinking about what it took to set all this up and what it would have been like to live here when all that was happening. As we returned to the car after one of our little walks, we noticed a section of concrete slabs partially covered with moss that were actually quite close to someone’s house – presumably left as a reminder of how fragile freedom really is. It was almost like a little garden with concrete slabs instead of rose bushes.

This weekend we are headed for the French Riviera. I’m not sure we’ll actually get our feet wet, but we’ll see. Rick Steves has a couple of driving tours laid out that sound pretty spectacular.

Nancy