Europe Travelblog  -

+ 6 - 5 | § ¶Lüneburger Heide

This past weekend, we explored Germany a bit more.  This time, we stayed closer to our home in Hamburg by exploring the Lüneburger Heide.  This is a very flat area south of Hamburg with lots of farms, forests, and heath.  The Heide is known as a great place for hiking and biking, but we stayed in a car this time, seeing much of its history and several of its cute towns.

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+ 2 - 8 | § ¶Another Week Gone

Well, I've just finished living my sixth full week in Germany.  I like it.

I've become settled in a regular schedule, which is nice.  However, I haven't quite gotten to the point of taking it for granted.  One example was earlier this week, riding my bike around the lake.  I've gotten used to that as my means of exercise, but then I looked up across the lake and saw the church spires in the center of the city and the sailboats on the lake.  It's at moments like that I remember how lucky I am to have this experience.

This evening was another fun experience, Stuttgarter Weindorf.  It's a big annual event during which a bunch of restaurants from the southern German city of Stuttgart set up surprisingly sturdy tents in the main town square and serve typical Swabian dishes.  It reminded Jenny a lot of her three months working in southern Germany during college, and it felt a lot more "German" than Hamburg usually does.  We ate way too much.

So, tomorrow we head out for another weekend trip.  Nothing as extreme as last time, though.  Just a couple days driving around the local countryside seeing cute old towns and a Nazi concentration camp.  Should be interesting.

+ 3 - 8 | § ¶Days of Wine and Romans

Upon leaving Luxembourg on Saturday the 11th, we spent the next day and a half in the beautiful Mosel River valley.  The Mosel River valley is one of the great wine-producing regions of Germany, and has some of the oldest recorded history in the country.  Seeing the beautiful valley and drinking its wine was a highlight of my time living in Germany so far.

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+ 5 - 5 | § ¶What Language are We Speaking Now?

We left Aachen early Friday evening, after Jenny finished work.  The rest of the day was an experience in languages.  Within a few hours, we had to be ready to read road signs in German, Dutch, German, French, German, and Luxembourgish, in that order as we passed from Germany to the Netherlands, back to Germany, to Belgium, Belgium, and finally into Luxembourg.  I didn't even realize that Luxembourg had its own language until that trip.  The most confusing part of the drive was within Belgium.  We passed from the French-speaking part into the German-speaking part without any border or sign.  The only notice was that city halls were suddenly called Rathaus instead of Hôtel de Ville.

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+ 5 - 4 | § ¶Perpetuity

The alleged abuses and religious desecrations at Guantanamo are disturbing if true. However, what really upsets me about the Bush Administration's approach to the Guantanamo situation is their total disregard for American traditions of due process and Constitutional rights.

In Senate hearings on Tuesday, the Bush Administration said the inmates could be jailed there "in perpetuity."

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+ 6 - 4 | § ¶The City of Charlemagne

We started our weekend with a day in Aachen, the capital of Charlemagne's empire.  It's a small city, but it's lively, with a large student population and a nice old city in the center.  It was the site of a major battle in World War II, being the first German city to be taken by the Allies.  So, much of the city is new construction since the war, but they did a very good job of rebuilding the core and the most important buildings.

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+ 3 - 6 | § ¶1000 miles, 4 countries, 1 weekend

Jenny and I had quite a weekend.  We drove over much of the northern half of West Germany, exhausting ourselves while enjoying beautiful valleys, ancient Roman cities, good food, and (of course) wine.  We also spent a night in Luxembourg, drove through a bit of eastern Belgium, and skipped briefly over to the Netherlands.

I plan to write a few different blog posts over the next few days to cover the trip and share some pictures.  In the meantime, I'll mention some highlights:

• seeing the ancient and historic cities Aachen, Luxembourg, and Trier
• finally getting back to the Mosel River valley, which I had seen briefly and accidentally in 1997 and had long wanted to revisit
• hitting high speeds on the Autobahn
• frequently experiencing the odd sensation of changing the foreign language necessary to read the local signs, sometimes without crossing any discernible border

So, I'll talk about this all more later, but now I need to get some sleep.

+ 3 - 6 | § ¶Heading out again

Jenny has to work in Aachen tomorrow, so we decided to make a weekend of it.  Our plan is to drive to Aachen this evening after my class is done (it should be about a 5-hour drive).  Then, she'll work tomorrow while I split my time between working on my independent study project and sightseeing.  Then, we'll spend the rest of the weekend driving around Luxembourg and the Mosel Valley, enjoying beautiful scenery, Roman ruins, and wineries.

It should be a good weekend, assuming we figure out German road signage.

+ 7 - 4 | § ¶Weekend in Berlin

We had a great time in Berlin over the weekend.  I love the German rail system (when it works, not when it strands Jenny overnight).  We took a fast 90-minute train there Saturday morning, and another fast train back Sunday evening.  It made the transportation for the weekend trip work very well.

I visited the city in 1997, and it was interesting comparing those memories with my current observations.  The biggest change is that the old downtown has regained the feel of a downtown.  The city center had been part of the East Berlin, cut off from the West for forty years.  In 1997, the split was still apparent, and the downtown seemed like a center without a city.  The separation has disappeared.  With the move of the capital from Bonn in 1999, many embassies and businesses have moved downtown, public transportation has become more organized, and the Reichstag (the parliament building) has been released from its old scaffolding. 

The Reichstag now has a new glass dome, and visitors can go to the roof of the building and even up into the dome itself.  As long as it wasn't raining, the views were impressive.

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+ 5 - 4 | § ¶Heading to Berlin

We're about to head off to Berlin for a couple days.  Jenny's never been there, so it should be fun.  We don't have any specific plans, but we'll probably explore the city with the Fat Tire Bike Tours. 

We almost had to change our plans, though.  Jenny was in Aachen the last couple days, and she was planning on returning last night on an evening train (it's about a 5-hour train trip).  However, things at work didn't go quickly, so she took the train that left an hour later.  That would have been fine, except that train got into Dortmund late, and she missed her connection.

She ended up catching another train out of Dortmund at midnight.  Fortunately, the conductor took pity on her and gave her a sleeping compartment of her own, so she was able to sleep, at least until she had to change trains again at 5 am.

Despite the adventures, she's here now, and we're getting ready to go.  Otherwise, it was a pretty boring week.