In moving photos from various places to Google Photos, I discovered I had written up our vacation to Germany in 2002, using the technology of the time. I’ve ported that information here, with some update for current content management, and photos hosted at Google instead of on the same hard drive.<\/p>\n
It turns out that weeding through all the photos we took and putting a
\nselection up for other people to see is a lot of work. So there are
\nsome here, if you want to know more about something, just ask!<\/p>\n
Sept 27-29, It was just too convenient to cross the pond one time, with a “long layover” at Heathrow. That was a 3 day layover, letting us make a side trip to Gloucester, and a return to the Pipe and Tabor festival we had attended in 2001.<\/p>\n Monday, Sept. 30. We flew from London to Stuttgart, where our friend Peter met us at the airport, and whisked us off straight to Heidelberg, where we walked up and up and up a hill to the castle on top. (One of the disadvantages of touring castles is that they’re\u00a0always<\/b> up<\/i> from wherever you start.) This castle is maintained as a romantic ruin, since it was destroyed in 1689 by the French.\u00a0 Remember that date and those culprits — its a recurring theme.<\/p>\n Then we went down something like 372 steps (each one with a painted number) to the bottom of the hill, which was still way above the river, and visited the library at the University of Heidelberg. They had an exhibit of rare books, some of which are famous. And we discovered the digital camera does really well in low light with no flash, if you can just hold it steady.<\/p>\n And we returned from Heidelberg to Stuttgart in time to meet up with Peter’s wife Debbie, and go to the Stuttgart Oktoberfest (2nd largest in Germany) for dinner. We finally understand Oktoberfest — it’s like a state fair in the US, except with good<\/u> beer. We rode the ferris wheel, and got a good picture of the Oktoberfest from the top.<\/p>\n And then back to the apartment to sleep.<\/p>\n Tuesday, Oct. 1, we went for a cruise on the Rhine. Debbie had to work, but Peter had taken the week off, so we got up really early to drive to Bingen for a Rhine river cruise. This is the same Bingen that Hildegaard was von, but there wasn’t much of anything there about here that we could find. There was a modern sculpture in a town square, but that’s about all.<\/p>\n The cruise ship wasn’t anything spectacular. Bar\/restaurant on the lowest level, lots of windows, open seating on top. The Germans don’t seem to have the concept of non-smoking area, and there are a lot of smokers. So we spent a lot of time out in the wind. Our hosts tell us that they’ve seen improvement in the number of smoke free areas in the three years they’ve been in Germany, but it is still quite different from most of the USA.<\/p>\n But if the ship wasn’t interesting, the cruise was. Every bend in the river seemed to have another castle, in all different styles. Most of them had stories, announced over loudspeaker in German, Japanese, English, and a couple other languages, too. (and in that order). All of the castles do have some similarities in their story — built in the 12th-13th century, they were destroyed by the French in 1689. Unless they were destroyed by the Swedish in 1630, and then<\/u> by the French in 1689.<\/p>\n And we went back to Stuttgart to sleep.<\/p>\n Wednesday, Oct. 2, we first went to the Rittersport factory outlet store, where chocolate was cheap! Then off to Frankfurt to meet our friends David and Nadine, flying in from Maryland. Debbie had the rest of the week off, so the six of us went off touristing together. First stop Nurnberg, where we arrived and checked in to our hotel early enough to spend several hours in the National Museum.<\/p>\n Thursday, Oct. 3. We spent the night in a hotel, then went off to tour Nurnberg. A friend of Peter and Debbie’s, a British transplant, acted as our tour guide. A great deal for us, since he’s done that The we hopped in the car (well, van — Peter drove their Ford Windstar. And the autobahn really does move at a high rate of speed between towns) and went off to Rothenburg ob der Tauber.<\/p>\n Rothenburg is a medieval walled city, the most untouched in Germany. It was a successful trading center until the 17th century, when it was repeatedly taken by opposite sides in several wars. It then became a very poor city, that never could afford the updating the rest of Germany did. In WWII, it was only about 40% damaged, and that not in the oldest section of the city. Immediately after the war, it was rebuilt, and has become a tourist destination.<\/p>\n And we went back to the guesthouse and to bed.<\/p>\n Friday, October 4. This was the day with the least pleasant weather of the vacation. There was a light rain all morning, although it cleared by late afternoon. We spent the entire day in Rothenburg.<\/p>\n In fact, that’s the gate the van was parked on the other side of. But before we left, we had dinner, and went to the Hans Sachs plays (two one-acts) in the theater in the city hall. We were very pleased that we’d picked up enough German over the week to have no trouble understanding the actors, especially with the slapstick style of production.<\/p>\n And we drove back to Peter and Debbie’s place near Stuttgart to sleep.<\/p>\n Saturday, October 5. Well, we didn’t do anything particularly interesting, just back to the Rittersport outlet store to use up the rest of our Euros on chocolate, and flying home, crossing 7 time zones along the way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In moving photos from various places to Google Photos, I discovered I had written up our vacation to Germany in 2002, using the technology of the time. I’ve ported that information here, with some update for current content management, and photos hosted at Google instead of on the same hard drive. Our Vacation, 2002 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":537,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGloucester International Pipe and Tabor Festival, Gloucester,<\/a>
\nEngland<\/p>\nPart Two<\/h2>\n
1. Heidelberg, Germany<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\nand feast hall.<\/li>\n
\nrain, probably, but the weather we had was much better for touristing.<\/li>\n
\nthe castle armory destroyed by the French visible behind them. The
\nclear structure of the building is quite interesting.<\/li>\n
\nseen from the top of the castle. There’s been a bridge in this
\nlocation since the 12th century. This one was built in 1788, blown up
\nin WWII, and rebuilt to the 1788 pattern (using original parts) right
\nafter the war.<\/li>\n
\nFrederick V as a birthday present overnight in 1615. We’d prefer gift
\ncertificates, if anyone is thinking of a similar construction project!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
\n
2. Rhine river cruise, Germany<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\nhoarding grain in this tower… the populace was starving, he moved
\ninto the tower to protect his grain from the peasants, and the mice
\nate him and all his grain.<\/li>\n
\nall up and down the river. They really look like model railroad
\nlayouts blown up large.<\/li>\n
\nscaffold behind the tower.<\/li>\n
\nAnd I’m curious how many of the structures on the hill are really
\nconnected.<\/li>\n
\nphoto? The Rhine river valley is a hotbed of commercial travel.<\/li>\n
\nSt. Goar. This was the furthest downriver we got (the Rhine flows
\nsouth to north). We got off the boat here, ate lunch, and spent
\nseveral hours in the castle.<\/li>\n
\nbehind her for directions to the castle. It was a 19 percent grade up
\nthe hill.<\/li>\n
\nthe other side at the next bend. That seems to be the normal spacing
\nbetween castles — every other bend on one side of the river, the
\nother bends on the other side.<\/li>\n
\nearly 14th century manuscript with a music notation I haven’t seen
\nbefore.<\/li>\n
\nalthough the Germans are unenlightened about smoking, they do allow
\npeople to take their dogs along just about everywhere.<\/li>\n
\ndefenses, and they let us wander about anywhere we wanted to go.
\nPeter and Laurie are wondering which way is out…<\/li>\n
\nworked… This room was quite dark, light coming in only from arrow
\nslits at floor level, to allow defenders to shoot down at the
\nattackers. Laurie demonstrates.<\/li>\n
\nthis one had a more or less modern handrail added. There were a lot
\nof places in this ruin that if it were open to the public under US
\nrules, we never would have been allowed to go, for fear we’d hurt
\nourselves and sue. I prefer the German approach.<\/li>\n
\nbakery had a sense of humor about their treats.<\/li>\n
\nto where we started. And with the sun on the other side, the scenery
\non the way back was different!<\/li>\n
\nmarker in the foreground, and you can see that the Rhine moves along
\nat a brisk clip.<\/li>\n3. Nurnberg, Germany<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\nHans Sachs was a cobbler who became mayor of Nurnberg in the 15th
\ncentury. He also wrote plays and poetry — thousands of them. He was
\nthe model for the main character of the opera Der
\nMeistersinger<\/i>, and a favorite character of Laurie’s.<\/li>\n
\nActually, this entrance was closed and we had to go around the
\ncorner…<\/li>\n
\ninstruments. This is just one of the hurdy-gurdys (drehleier in German) I
\ntook photos of. This one is unusual in being set up to play left handed.<\/li>\n
\nrecorders) has an entire line based on these, extant from early in the
\n17th century.<\/li>\n
\nmodern instruments are based on the design of these.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\nprofessionally, in English and in German, and knew Nurnberg and its history very well.<\/p>\n\n
\nLaurie.<\/li>\n
\nit was rebuilt as it was before, using the original parts. Note how
\nthis church has a mottled look in the stone — that comes from the
\nstones having aged in one place on the building, and being put
\nsomewhere else when it was rebuilt.<\/li>\n
\nsaved some parts of some buildings before the bombing. So this is the
\noriginal sculpted doorway to the church.<\/li>\n
\nspout that tilts into the water flow, so you can hang your bucket at
\nthe end of it to take water home.<\/li>\n
\nDennis, Laurie, Debbie, Nadine, and David.<\/li>\n
\nwindows to buildings. Wives stayed in the house pretty much all the
\ntime except for going to church, and this was a way for them to be “in
\nthe house” but still see the street life.<\/li>\n
\nRoman Emporer’s castle in Nurnberg. This castle was the first thing
\nrebuilt after the war.<\/li>\n
\nthat steep.<\/li>\n
\nin Nurnberg, and his house (which contained his workshop) is still
\nthere. This chandelier was particularly exciting, because he drew
\nseveral of similar designs, sculpted wood dragons attached to antlers.<\/li>\n
\nfriendly British transplant, and another local friend of Peter’s
\ntranslated for us, although this tour guide was so fascinating, we
\nalmost didn’t need the translation.<\/li>\n4. Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\ninteresting lounge area on the 2nd floor. Well, 1st floor if you use
\nEuropean numbering.<\/li>\n
\nplanned Friday evening activity — seeing Hans Sachs (remember him?)
\nplays!<\/li>\n
\ngig going. He gives two tours a night, for about an hour each, one in
\nEnglish, one in German. He has a lot of information to share about
\nRothenburg, life in a medieval town, the role of the night watchman —
\na very interesting tour.<\/li>\n
\nmayors, who saved the town during one of the wars by winning a bet by
\ndrinking a gallon of beer in one gulp. He’s in the right window.<\/li>\n\n
\ncity, completely surrounded. Much of the wall has a walkway, and we
\ndid accomplish circling the city on the wall. At least it kept us out
\nof the rain. Mostly.<\/li>\n
\nan interesting example of how post-and-beam construction walls get
\nfilled in.<\/li>\n
\npoints.<\/li>\n
\nthe town!. The door was locked, so we couldn’t give it a try. The
\noutflow went down the hill to the river.<\/li>\n
\nis sort of L shaped. So you can see the other leg of the city from
\nthe wall, looking over the river.<\/li>\n
\nthe Kriminalmuseum, with history of the criminal justice system. It
\nhad a lot of really interesting things in it. One of the justice
\nconcepts gone from the modern world is that of “shaming”. People who
\ncommitted more minor infractions could be punished by shaming. For
\nexample, a couple that fought too much might be placed in a yoke that
\nlocked their heads and hands in, facing each other. This particular
\ntool of justice is for bad musicians — fingers where locked to the
\ninstrument, and it was strapped around the neck, and the “convict”
\nwould have to walk around town, bearing the visible evidence that they
\nplayed badly.<\/li>\n
\nRothenburg. No, this was not a pedestrian only walkway, although it
\nwas apparently a no parking zone.<\/li>\n
\ntallest tower in town. We went through the town hall and up many,
\nmany steps to get this view.<\/li>\n
\nis the central square with the clock tower with beer drinker.<\/li>\n
\nis very simple, and should work perfectly well, as long as there are
\nno hurricanes.<\/li>\n
\nthe L from where we first looked at the city from the city wall.
\nThere’s a hot air balloon passing by.<\/li>\n
\nthe city wall, down to the river. Back a few hundred years, those
\ntrees wouldn’t have been allowed to grow so tall, so close to the
\ntown.<\/li>\n
\nNight Watchman tour. David and Nadine in the foreground.<\/li>\n
\nback down again. As Nadine says: “Stairs. It’s always stairs. Sigh.”
\nAnd after a few hundred years and thousand feet, they get worn down.<\/li>\n
\nwas in the smaller window waving to us, but moved to the one with
\nflowers when we asked if we could take a picture.<\/li>\n
\nthe auto at ground level — American SUV type vehicles would never
\nfit.<\/li>\n
\ndon’t just mean out of the house, but out of the city. There were
\nextensive playgrounds outside the city wall.<\/li>\n
\nbefore, with one of the city gates in the background.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n