The Moselle

On a warm long weekend, we took a trip to the Moselle valley. It is nice. We camped and stopped in the places pictured below.

Hamburg

We did a long weekend trip to Hamburg in the spring, since the Thursday was a holiday in Germany. We saw the harbor area, then walked over to the Reeperbahn area, the red light district, where the Beatles also played when they were starting out. We had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant (Leaf) in Altona, a gentrified area west of the Reeperbahn area. The next day we saw the Speicherstadt and the Miniatur-Wunderland. The amount of deatil there was very impressive. Then we had lunch at Ti Breizh, which serves gallettes and the same French cider (Val de Rance) that we had at another crepe place in Berlin. After that we walked around more, by the old town hall, and stopped for tea at an art nouveau cafe (Cafe Paris). Then we went by the Chilehaus. We had dinner at an Asian restaurant (it's a thing in Germany to combine countries). That night we went to a Laura Marling concert with Gill Landry as opener. It's not the first time we've combined a concert with a visit to a city (Paul McCartney in Vienna and the Decemberists in Zurich, e.g.). The next day we went over to Blankenese, a rich area with nice houses on a hill overlooking the river. There were a few old-style houses with thatched roofs. Then we took the ferry back to the city center and went to the Museum for Kunst & Gewerbe, which had Islamic art and tatoo exhibits and an art nouveau room. Then we went to dinner in the Schanzenviertel (another hip area of Hamburg). I got a veggie burger at a vegetarian burger (and other things) place. Then we went to a seafood restaurant, where I got salad. Our last morning, Sunday, we went to the fish market, which sells fish and lot of other things. It is funny to see all the people who have partied all night stumbling around at 7am. In the old fish auction hall they keep the party going with a live band and beer drinking. There was also a plant seller who had kind of a performance for selling the plants. Some of the other sellers were also kind of entertaining. After that we stopped at a Portuguese bakery before going up the bell tower in St. Michael's church. We then went by a memorial to Brahms (Brahms cube) and the place where he was born (there's just a stone with a plaque there now). The weather was nice, so we went to a cafe right on the Binnenalster lake. It then rained for about 15 minutes, but then it was ok again. Before we left we had lunch at a gourmet burger place named after a Grimm brothers fairy tale (Hans im Glueck), which they played in the bathrooms.

Limburg

We went to Limburg for a birthday brunch for one of Ben's colleagues. Afterwards we walked around the old town some, but it was very cold. Limburg has a lot of half-timbered houses. It is not where Limburger cheese comes from.

Marburg

We went to Marburg on German Unity Day (a national holiday). It has a pretty neat castle and old town, and the weather was good.

Berlin! (finally)

Art Nouveau in Bad Nauheim

Bad Nauheim is an old spa town. There is mineral water flowing around that you can still sample. It tastes strongly of salt and iron. You shouldn't drink much of it. There is a spa complex (the Sprudelhof) that was built in the early 1900s, therefore in the art nouveau style (Jugenstil in German). It has bathouses that are still in use today. So every year the city has a Jugendstil festival with antique vendors and people walking around in period costume. The reason we went, though, was the opportunity to ride an old-timey bike (apparently called a penny-farthing). The guy who owned the bike had to hold it up the whole time we were on it, but that still counts.

One of the pros riding around

Wetzlar

Wetzlar has a nice old town with a lot of half-timbered houses. Like everywhere else in Germany, Goethe lived there for a brief time. Two of his friends who lived there influenced his book The Sorrows of Young Werther, and you can visit their houses.

some half-timbered houses

Tuebingen

We went to Tübingen on one of the few summery days this year. We walked around the old town and saw parts of the university, where Kepler, among others, studied. We had lunch at a restaurant on the river, then walked around some more and up to the castle. The castle has nice views over the city and a museum that includes a prehistoric horse figurine.

Schloss Nymphenburg

We went to a Neutral Milk Hotel concert in the evening in Munich, so we used that day to go to Nymphenburg Palace near Munich. We ate lunch in a park nearby that has a beer garden right next to a deer enclosure. The palace is very similar to a number of other palaces we've seen in Europe. The buildings in the gardens were pretty neat.

from the front

part of the interior

in the Hall of Mirrors in of one of the garden houses (Amalienburg). That's all silver there, even though it looks goldish in the picture.

grotto-like chapel

Japan Day in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf has a relatively large Japanese population, and they have an annual Japan Day festival. We though it would be a lot of traditional arts and food and such, but it was much more Japanese pop culture-oriented. There were a lot of people in anime and other costumes. I think there was a competition. Almost everyone there was in their 20s or younger. A lot of people were wearing "free hugs" signs, and at one point, there was a very long line of such people, and you move down the line hugging everyone in it. There were also food stands, but just serving food, not with grocery items other than some packaged snacks. The whole thing was outside along the Rhine river. They also had various martial arts demonstrations and musical groups throughout the day and a fireworks show at night. The next day we went to a Japanese ramen place for lunch.

Black Forest

In April we took an extended weekend trip to the Black Forest. Our first stop was Baden Baden. It has hot springs and apparently a lot of rich people go there. It was nice enough, but didn't have too much for tourists to see. We didn't go to the hot spring spa, because it was kind of expensive. They did have a bunch of flower pots everywhere with quotes on them, which was neat. Then we went to Gengenbach. It was used in the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie as the hometown of Augustus Gloop. It is picturesque, with a lot of half-timbered houses. Next we went to Triberg, which is one of the places where Black Forest Cake was supposedly invented. We got some cake at a cafe that claims to use the original recipe. The town is very touristy, with many souvenir shops and a little train to take people up the hill. There is a waterfall there, but you had to pay to see it, so we didn't. Not pictured below, we stopped briefly at one of the two places that claims to have the largest cuckoo clock in the world. It's on the side of a souvenir store. Towards the end of our first day, we went by one of the origins of the Danube, that is, one of the small rivers that combines with another river to become the Danube. It comes up out of the ground as a small creek. Then we went to our hotel. It was pretty neat. It's an old building now operated by Best Western, between Freiburg and Titisee. There were some cows in a field nearby, which we tried, once successfully, to feed. They seemed wary of people. For dinner we went to Titisee, to an Italian restaurant.

The next day we drove to Freiburg. It has the most sunny days of any city in Germany. It did get sunny in the afternoon. They have mosaic signs on the sidewalk everywhere that historically represented what kind of shop they were in front of. Some of them are still traditional-looking and some are newer. After eating lunch we drove to St. Blasien, which has an impressive cathedral and overpriced cafes. In the late afternoon we went to a large indoor pool complex with lots of pools and waterslides. An hour was included in a pass we got from our hotel. They had one pool with a high salt content, like the Dead See, so you could float really easily, which was fun. They also had seats that shot out bubbles, like a jacuzzi, but they were seats in a larger pool and an outdoor heated pool area with a bar, as well as a hamam-style steam room. But the waterslides were the best part and much fun was had.

On our way back home the next day we stopped by the confluence of the Danube and in Villingen, a small town where we ate in a restaurant that had booths in giant wine vats.

Ulmer Munster

My brothers visited for a week, so we finally went up the Ulmer Munster tower. It's all open, so it's pretty terrifying.

view of the back

up among the gargoyles

the uppermost part of the tower, from the inside

Another Castle

We went to Sigmaringen.

Pedestrian Area

The piazza around the Duomo and some attached streets are now pedestrian only.

     

A break from the heat

As a little break from the summerly heat, here's a video of the Perito Moreno glacier, which we saw in Argentina in March. The ice bridge that forms periodically is now breaking apart, making for some pretty spectacular glacier watching.

A reverse Marshall Plan?

In one of the many free newspapers that I was handed at the bus stop yesterday, I saw an article which announced a promotion for American tourists: at selected locations, restaurants and hotels, as well as museums and theaters will be offering 10-20% discount for Americans. Apparently the dollar is so weak that they'd rather have Americans come here and pay less than not come at all. You can try to decipher the article here, or just have Babelfish give you a translation. I'm not sure how they'll check that you're actually American - maybe you have to show your passport when you get the bill in the restaurant or something.