Tag Archives: Germany

June 13, 2024 · 3:01 am

Freiburg-im-Breisgau —Germany

No, I haven’t made a quick trip to Germany but I was dismayed to discover no blogpost for my visit there a year ago so when I have time, I will try to reconstruct what I did there. I remember it was a very pretty university town in the Black Forest with a medieval square dominated by an enormous gloomy church.there was a great market in the square where I had bratwurst every day for lunch. The narrow streets were lined with tiny water channels and kids pulled little wood boats with a string through the water.

I stayed at a strange old hotel near the square, had obligatory Black Forest cake and a traditional Germany meal that, as usual, was way too heavy. The waitress sneezed and I said Gesundheit…and we both smiled. One of my few German words. I also walked in the drizzle up a steep hill in the park at the edge of town and looked out over the city.

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April 15, 2023 · 12:25 pm

Emmendingen…visiting the German Diary Archive

I came a long way for this visit and fortunately it proved completely worth the schlep. (schlep sounds like a German word. Yiddish. So close.) I did inadvertently make use of a German word I forgot I knew when a server at a restaurant sneezed. “Gesundheit” I said. She smiled. (I just learned how to spell Gesundheit…I was way off.)

Plaque on the old town hall

Anyway, I came to this small Black Forest town for a gathering of European diary archives hosted by the German diary archive which is located in a stately 1728 building known as the Rathaus/old town hall. There’s a small two -room museum with displays of interesting diaries, accompanied by an audio tour in various languages. There were people from diary archives in Germany, France, The Netherlands and Austria and very interesting presentations on how diaries are used by researchers (presenters were historians, a literary nonfiction writer and a musicologist) and on how A.I. coupled with HRT (handwriting recognition transcription) will revolutionize and democratize research. Combined they can be used to do super fast transcription of handwritten manuscripts…including diaries. Right now this is often done manually, so to speak, by very patient and skilled volunteers.

Old town hall, home of deutsches tagebucharchiv (German archive for diaries)

We had an excellent dinner at what I gather is the best place in town, Vielharmonie, where I had very good local fish (char?) and I stayed an odd hotel I wouldn’t recommend because it’s very understaffed. (Taome Feng Shui) although I was greeted by a pleasant former Texan, from Austin.

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April 13, 2023 · 9:32 am

Train FROM Frankfurt to Freiburg-im-Breisgau with a Swiss -Albanian comedian.

I love riding trains in Europe. You never know who you’ll meet. Today, I’m sitting across from an intense young man, about my son’s age (he’s 33) who pulled out a notebook to write. Turns out he’s a young Swiss /Albanian comedian from Basel (our train’s final destination) who said he bombed during his first standup performance in Frankfurt so he was writing down his notes/thoughts in a little notebook with German writing on the cover.

I’d seen the same one in the book shop at the train station (I always get to train stations way too early) and wondered what it said. He told me it was the old Oscar Wilde saying: Everything is going to be fine in the end. If it’s not fine, it’s not the end. He bought three so he gave me one as a gift. Wise words.

He said he doesn’t write post show if it goes well. Apparently the crowd was full of women and if you lose the women right away, you’re sunk, the men won’t go for you either. He had 8 minutes to grab them. his favorite comics: Dave Chappell (the greatest, he says) and Trevor Noah plus two English guys and a Finnish guy. he’s only been at this for about 5 weeks (and has other game full employment.) He was also a big fan of Eminem. And had some interesting geopolitical views. He was very current on the mass killings in the U.S. (17 to date this year, he mentioned) and saw this as one of several signs our top dog status is drawing to a close. He showed me a sign with his name lit up that he puts beside him when he does his standup so I took a photo since he promises he will be a famous comedian some day.

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April 12, 2023 · 6:29 pm

Frankfurt in the rain and sun. (Sun is best): quality market wurst stand, Romer reconstructed, Motel One Romer, Kaffeehaus Goldene Waage

Frankfurt looked gloomy when our plane landed. Grey and rainy. Didn’t help that we had to deplane down metal steps in the cold drizzle to catch a waiting shuttle bus. No matter. Lovely day in this interesting city. I hitched a ride on the subway into town with two American women who had bought a group tix that apparently covered 5 people. They were doing what a lot of people do in Frankfurt…a quick trip to check out downtown between international flights.

Romer area

The Motel One Romer turned out to be a gem. And a bargain at 99 euro a night. It’s a very modern, stylish place, with lovely lounges, bar and dining area. Best of all the very nice guys at the reception desk gave me a room almost 2 hours before official checkin which was very unexpected and appreciated after a long trip from Chicago.

I dragged myself through the city, with jet lag mounting. First stop the quality market/kleinmarkthall a huge enclosed market with all kinds of fresh fruit stalls, cheese and sausages counters, sushi, ethnic food stalls. Not as stellar perhaps as the food hall in Lyon that we visited in January but lots of good options and local character. I joined a line leading to a small window where two women worked very hard serving sausages (wurst) on buns with mustard.

A nice young traveler from Hong Kong was in line too and we struck up a conversation with a kind local (frankfurter) who offered to order for us and told us which of the four sausages was her favorite. (The one with the yellow casing, which didn’t look too appealing.)

Reconstructed Romer

She said she’s been going to this window for wurst since she was a kid. I later learned the woman behind the counter who was diligently boiling sausages of various colors and cutting and peeling off the casing before putting them in a to-go bun was Ilsa. A local luminary. The young woman from Hong Kong and I found a table at an outdoor cafe to eat our wurst, sitting under an umbrella in the rain.

Bombed out romer

Romer is a classic old German area downtown with elegant timbered and stone buildings. Except it’s been reconstructed after being obliterated by allied bombs during ww2. I had some apple Weiss (alcoholic apple cider) standing in the wide brick paved Romer plaza and later landed at lovely Kaffeehaus goldene waage) https://www.goldenewaage.com/coffeehouse golden way)some delicious pastries (merengues, florentines) and hot chocolate served in a glass.

I walked a little through the busy shopping plazas and along the pretty riverfront then finally succumbed to jet lag.

Koffeehaus Goldeneye Waage

I

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April 4, 2013 · 9:39 pm

Poland (Gdansk, Krakow) and Prague bound! Maybe Berlin too.

Gotyk HouseIt looks like we’re going to Poland in July – yes, Poland. Three years ago, two Polish teenagers from Gdansk stayed with us in Des Moines and our son later stayed with one teen’s family in the northern seaport of Gdansk. They were a lot of fun and we promised we’d visit some day. So when my husband got word that he’ll be going on a business trip to tour farms in the Ukraine-Moldova-Romania, we looked at map to see where I could meet up with him after his trip and there was POLAND! We’re very excited to see our friends and the gorgeous city they live in – which we’ve heard so much about. We’re also going to Krakow – which was one of our son’s favorite places when he visited Poland. And on to Prague – where we hope to rendezvous with friends from London. I may also throw in a solo trip before all this to…another place I’ve never been: Berlin. (We went to Munich and Bavaria to visit American friends living there in 1989 and I distinctly remember taking a train on a day trip to Saltzburg that was later going on to Prague. Prague! That sounded interesting but it wasn’t an option back then because this was just before the wall came down and as I recall we still needed some special documents to travel to Eastern Europe. No more.)

So far I’ve found two good small hotels, reasonably priced:

Gotyk House in Gdansk – a small  b&b in what’s reportedly this seaport city’s oldest house, built in 1541.  (see illustration above)

Karmel hotel in Krakow – in Kazimierez, the former Jewish quarter/ghetto dating back to the 1500’s. (I should feel right at home…although the Jewish ghetto has been replaced by what is now a trendy area, I’m told. And of course, the vast majority of the 60,000 Jews in the ghetto were murdered by the Nazis.) In addition to Auschwitz, we plan to visit Oskar Schindler’s factory. Apparently the nearby concentration camp Birkenau is even worse than Auschwitz. We visited Dachau years ago in Munich.

Royal Capital City of Kraków
Stołeczne Królewskie Miasto Kraków

Main Market Square, Wawel Castle, Barbican, St. Mary’s Basilica, St. Peter and Paul Church, Collegium Maius

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