traveldiary.stracke.us

Würzburg, definitely the best city in Germany. Are we prejudice? Of course not!:wink:
We always feel so at home here, we definitely will have to make it our 2nd home in the future.
This is the first year in a couple of decades that we were able to catch “Spargelzeit” here. It is a time of year that Spargel ( white asparagus) is served fresh from the fields in restaurants. It is usually accompanied by fresh yellow potatoes and smoked prosciutto slices. Such a delicacy!
We are in a lovely condo type apartment, costing only €45 a day, unheard of in the US, and enjoying life here as the Würzburg inhabitants do.
On Sunday evening, we attended the Würzburg Mozart Festival. We had tickets to hear and view Die Zauberflöte , composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was a beautiful evening in the rear garden of the Unesco World Heritage site, the baroque Residenz, where the whole garden was transformed into a romantic fairy tale atmosphere, with candles aglow. At sunset there was a small lull in the romaticism, as a whole horde of June bugs were on the attack and the audience had to practice the Australian wave, even though they were in Germany. Once the little critters settled down, it was time again to be transported back in time to Mozart’s era, with the orchestra playing in front of a large enchantingly lit hallway, painted by Guiovanni Battista Tiepolo in in the mid 1700’s.
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On Sunday, June 26th, we met our good friends, Maria and Rolf, in Würzburg and started to talk in front of Würzburg’s town hall. A street festival, with a band playing full blast, prevented us from carrying on a conversation and we moved on. We walked along the river Main in Randersacker and had lunch in ” our” old restaurant : Urlaub’s Weinstuben. It was another hot and sunny day and I ate fresh asparagus, accompanied by the local Franconia white wine. Later in the afternoon, we walked to the ” Schützenhof” restaurant, overlooking the Main valley and had the obligatory afternoon coffee and cake.
In the evening we had to cut short watching the soccer game Mexico- Argentinia, because we had a date with Mozart in the park of the baroque Würzburg Residenz ( castle).

We took the German ICE high speed train from Berlin to Würzburg and traveled at 250 km/h or 156 MPH !
German trains are still the best in the world, at least in our experience. They are very sleek, give a very smooth ride, very high tech with cell phone service, computer hook-ups and so on and almost on time. The trains in Japan were more punctual, but pretty utilitarian; the trains in Thailand were old, but they washed the train windows at the beginning and at the end of every trip.
We arrived here on June 24th and are back in our town. Würzburg is the town, where I graduated from Medical School, where Gabi and I met for the first time in the university’s cafeteria and where we got married in 1977.
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Several waterways are going right through the center of Berlin: the River Spree, the River Havel and the
” Landwehrkanal “. Berliners have deposited some sand along theses waterways and opened downtown beach bars with beach chairs, umbrellas, beer and bratwurst. We took our breaks either in one of these beach bars or the big city park ” Tiergarten”. It was sunny and in the low to mid- 90’s all week !
On our last day in Berlin we took the S-Bahn to Charlottenburg and went on a 2.5 hour narrated boat tour through central Berlin : Charlottenburg, Bonhöffer Ufer, Schloss Bellevue ( Residence of the German President), German Bundestag ( Government and Parliament), Berliner Dom, historic Nikolai Quarter,
East Side Gallery and Port of Treptow.
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Berlin is a great city. Every morning we bought a ticket for unlimited use of the subway, S-Bahn, trams and busses and criss-crossed the city from one end to the other.
Some of the highlights we saw : Einstein exhibit, German Expressionist painters in the ” Neue Nationalgalerie”
( Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Müller, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner),
free admittance to the Beach Volleyball World Championship ( it was hot and sunny, and the matches were played on 3000 tons of the finest sand, spread out on the Berlin Schlossplatz ).
We saw the ” Blue Man Group” , a total waste of money and time. No artistic, culture, talent or entertainment value !!! Gabi stated : Great marketing on their part !
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The Holocaust Mahnmal near the future American Embassy and around the corner from the Brandenburger Gate consists of over 2700 big dark gray stone blocks. It is there to help the German and Jewish people reconcile their relationships. It is there as a reminder of the millions who died in a sad chapter of German history. It is a hope for the future, that this would never occur again. (Forget that idea, just look at Africa.)
While viewing this immense monument for the first time and then pacing through the walks between the stones (Stelens), one gets the feeling of what it must have been like not to be able to see out, going deeper and deeper into an abyss. Upon exit out of the dark checkered board, one felt a relief, as if one was coming to life again, probably similar to all the people who were in concentration and work camps during that era.
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Now in our schooling, we all heard E=mc squared. Most of us actually also know that Einstein came up with this theory. And somewhere along the way, we could kind of figure out what he meant. All over Germany, Einstein is being celebrated this year for the breakthrough theories he postulated a hundred years ago. There is actually a boat, MS Einstein that is travelling throughout Germany with an exhibit on board about his life and his works. This week it was in Berlin and since we have been ignoring the scientific part of our brain for a while, it was time to venture into the exhibit. The part about his life was very interesting and comprehensible. Some facts:

• Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, near where Sonja is teaching.
• Einstein didn’t talk till he was 3 and not perfectly until he was 9.
• He wasn’t good in school, esp. in math.
• His teacher said, he would never amount to anything.
• When he entered college, his teachers suggested that he should not study physics, but rather something easier, such as medicine, law, or theology
• Early years after college, didn’t bring much success.
• He wasn’t very successful in his personal life either.
• His great interest in science evolved at the age of 5 from a gift of a magnetic compass.

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We spent 6 days in Berlin and did not even try to see the 2400 events, the city claims to host every day.
We had arrived on the Euronight train from Sweden at 6 AM on June18th, and immediately started our immersion in German art, architecture and culture ( culture meaning : festivals, food and “Berliner Kindl”).
We took the S-Bahn to Grünau and watched the Dragonboat Race Competition on the river Spree. The boats are big canoes with a double row of about 2 dozen people paddling and one person on the bow, beating the pace with a drum. Next we took a tram to the historic suburb of Köpenick ( Der Hauptmann von Köpenick).
A comedy play is based on true events, which took place here during the late 19th century. An impostor pretended to be a Prussian army officer, and wearing the correct uniform, marched into the townhall, giving the order to turn over the town’s cash receipts. He pulled off this stunt, since being in official uniform, nobody questioned his authenticity.
Later on, people made fun of the town fathers, who blindly followed orders under the Imperial Prussian Rule.
We happened to come across a festival parade in Köpenick, commemorating this event. Our tram stopped in the middle of the road and we had front row seats, watching the people in historic costumes and old Prussian police helmets ( with a spike on top) marching in the parade. Music, marching bands and dance performances kept us entertained.
Coming right after an elementary school group in the parade, 2 open convertible cars drove with topless girls sitting on top of the rear seats, promoting a local BMW dealership . The 2 ladies sitting next to us on the tram did not understand the connection. I explained to them topless cars and topless girls ( oben ohne ) and that it takes a male brain to understand this.

Last week we spent in Berlin and the first three nights were in an art’otel , which we had booked for a very reasonable rate on the INTERNET. It’s a new concept in the sometimes mundane hotel market. The originator of this new chain wants to combine travel with art, photography and design. This Berlin Hotel was dedicated to the pop artist Andy Warhol. Displays of his works, as well as pictures of him, taken by photographer Christopher Makos, were displayed in every room, as well as the common spaces of the hotel.
The design of the rooms was ultra modern in lime green and violet with light furniture. When we turned on the desk light, Andy’s face was greeting us. When we went to sleep at night, Marilyn Monroe’s picture image was watching over us from behind the bed. Beyond that, it did have all the amenities of a modern hotel and with a 5 min walk to the Ku-Damm, it met our expectations.
I guess this concept is taking off, since there are more of these types of hotels, each time with a different artist highlighted, around the country. Hey, you just got to have an idea and put it into action, with a marketing plan and shazzam it’s there. People seem to get bored easily and are always game for something new.

We spent June 16th in Copenhagen, having yet another sunny day. On the way back to Malmö, the odors in our train compartment got a little musty. A group of air travellers had joined us at Copenhagen Lufthaven (airport).They were on their way home to Sweden and apparently were not using any deodorant. This is actually quite common with Europeans and they don’t seem to mind the smell of the natural odors (stink).
On June 17th we killed some time at the internet in Malmö, before boarding our night train to Berlin.
We had our private 2 bed sleeper compartment and were already in bed when the train pulled out of the Malmö, Sweden station at 21:52.
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