Sep 20, 2012 - Schöningen & Hötensleben GERMANY

Today was a special day. We drove about 45 mins out of Braunschweig to a little town called Schöningen to see my Tante Hortense. She prepared a beautiful lunch for us. After lunch, we drove a further 15 mins to reach my mother's home town of Hötensleben. This is an historic place because it was a town right on the border of the former East and West sides of Germany. In fact, the wall was at the end of my mother's street, about 50 metres away. The wall ran alongside the town and watch towers were stationed along it from which guards shot at...

Jun 6, 2010 - Rothenburg, Germany

Where do I start? There is so much to say about this trip. I guess I will just start at the beginning. I am currently serving the fine taxpayers of the U.S. by working in Kuwait and Iraq. This is a trip that I will not be adding to our trip journal. My deployment did offer me the chance to go to Germany for a few days and I will tell about that. My trip started with a late night trip to the Baghdad Airport and then a six hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany. We (military group) arrived around 0530hrs. Sauncee and one of the other wives were...

Apr 3, 2010 - Dessau, Germany

First of all an apology. We have very few pictures of the Worlitz Gardens. My (Hank) fault. Ran out of batteries for the camera. That's why I never made it in Boy Scouts - not prepared. Okay, onward now. Our ship has now made its way to Dessau but that is not where we are touring. Instead, we hopped on a coach for a short ride to the Worlitz Gardens. These are actually English-style gardens plopped in Germany. Now how can that be? Here’s how. In the past, it was common for European princes to make what was known as a Grand Tour of Europe...

Apr 2, 2010 - Wittenberg, Germany

During the night we sailed and docked in Wittenberg, so this morning we headed off for our tour of Wittenberg – and a heavy dose of Martin Luther. Prepare yourself. But first, a little touch on Wittenberg. It was chartered as a town in 1293. Two hundred years later with the rise to power of Frederick III (Frederick the Wise), Wittenberg had become a regional political and cultural center. Also, it was the capital of the Saxe-Wittenberg Duchy. Beginning in the mid 18th century, Wittenberg was taking a series of pummelings. First the...

Apr 25, 2006 - Berlin, Dresden ... Cousin Karin takes the Mentz family on tour!

Our first day in Berlin was memorable. More on this when we get back to Karin's. ... and so we got home for a night before we were off again for Bremen and Hamburg. Berlin was amazing ... it is a city that is, apparently out of money, and yet the projects ongoing are massive and futuristic and ... everywhere. The building boom is continuing, having started after the "Wende", the turning point, when The Wall came down. The entire Berlin Wall no-man's land is full of development, from oversized sculptures of cars and library books and even a...

Oct 29, 2005 - What, lost again again!

Because of the bloody arrival at Tegel Flughafen where I thought I'd pick up a map, I didn't have a map. Actually, I did have a map in the glove compartment of the Meriva, but who knows such things? We missed the best turnoff for Wittenberg. More cows, more haystacks, 1,327 tiny villages, winding curvy onelane farm roads and we were there, nevertheless. I like really getting to know a place, don't you?

Aug 8, 2005 - Magdeburg, our final tourist stop on the continent

We are so lucky to have family in so many of the right places! This city would never have been on our tour list except that Werner's cousin Volker lives here. Visiting family is its own reward but touring Magdeburg was a pleasant surprise. Every European town has its own variation on the WW2 theme. Magdeburg's detail is that it was in the east close to the border, on the main road to Berlin and a heavy industry town. Locals had to not only respect the big boundary but had to live with walled off areas within their city too. They were...

Aug 15, 2004 - Halle- What a hole.

Halle was what I expected Leipzig to be- keine Schönheit. What was remarkable however was that they really did have some terrific towers and churches but the rest was an absolute disaster. The tunnel connecting the train station to the centre was smeared with dirt and graffiti while huge buches of bare electrical wire hung down like vines from trees and lay scattered about the concrete floor. The Beatles museum, the reason why I went to Halle an der Saale, was naturally very good though ok course Yoko's museum was better. There were all...