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On October 29, we are visiting Dagmar and Juergen in Dresden. We visit the Dresden “Frauenkirche”. The cathedral collapsed after the bombing of Dresden on February 13/14 1945. The RAF Lancaster bombers dropped over 600 000 fire bombs on the city. The next day, the US Air Force finished the destruction of the city. The “Frauenkirche” was rebuilt and recently opened to the public. The exterior has new sandstone, mixed with charred black bricks from the original church. The church is beautiful and now serves as a symbol for reconciliation and peace in the world.
We stay in Kamenz, where Juergen has rented an apartment. He shows us the new Evonic factory, whose start-up operation is under his supervision. At night, we have a nice dinner at his place and catch up on events in our lives. We have not seen each other in a few years and time flies, shooting the breeze.
On Sunday, we visit the DDR Museum in Radebeul. It is a “Zeitreise” into the life in former East Germany from 1949 to 1989. Gabi and I could not have had any more appropriate museum guides. Dagmar and Juergen grew up in Goerlitz, not far from here, and their memories and comments make our visit even more interesting. It must have been interesting to have coworkers who work for the Stasi Secret Police.
In the afternoon, I can add a steam locomotive train ride to my collection. We are traveling on an open train car of the “Loessnitzgrundbahn”. The train started service between Radebeul and Radeburg in 1884, and today we travel with the steam train as far as Moritzburg. We admire the Schloss Moritzburg, whose construction began in 1723 under “August The Strong”. There is a fishing festival going on, and we have “Gluehwein”, sitting around a fire pit. We are warmed from the inside and outside simultaneously. It is dark for the train ride back to Radebeul. After a few minutes, the lights go out in our train car (battery empty?) and we have a romantic journey in the darkness. We have dinner in a neighborhood restaurant in Kamenz. It is still very reasonable: a beer for 2 Euros and a big dinner for 8 Euros. We have a nice evening with Dagmar and Juergen and sleep well after all the day’s activities.
On Monday, Juergen takes us back to the train station. Thank you very much for a great weekend, Juergen and Dagmar!
Today, Gabi and I travel across Germany, leaving Dresden at 10:02 and arriving in Freiburg in the Black Forest at 17:59. At least that is the scheduled arrival time.

On Sunday, October 23rd, we take ICE 595 from Berlin to Fulda and continue on ICE 91 to Wuerzburg. This is a high speed track, with many tunnels and bridges. At one point, a tunnel seems to go on forever. Later I search for the tunnel on the internet. We travel through the “Landrueckentunnel”, 10779 meters long and the longest tunnel in Germany (about 6.7 miles).
We spend another 5 days in the Novotel Wuerzburg, our second home. The weather stays warm and sunny. We have some extra days left on our German Rail Pass and on Wednesday ride the rails again. We take the ICE to Cologne and the Regio train to Koblenz. Gabi and I are the only passengers in 1ST Class. After coffee and cake in Koblenz, we hop on Intercity 2027 and travel south along the left bank of the Rhine river. Some great photo opportunities of the castles and vineyards along the river valley. At 19:31 we are back at home in Wuerzburg, just in time for dinner.
On Friday, October 28, we take ICE 2933, leaving at 10:30, arriving in Muenchen at 13:00. We walk through the English Garden and have a Bavarian lunch at the Chinesischer Turm: “Weisswurst, Leberkaes, Brezen and Weissbier”. It is still warm enough to sit outdoors, some people in the park are actually sunbathing nude. On our way back, the train is overcrowded. I forgot that today is the beginning of school vacation in Bavaria. We experience a first: the train conductor is calling for a mandatory “partial evacuation” of passengers. Some people will have to leave the train, so we can depart with the train aisles being empty. Gabi and I quickly find an empty seat and make it back to Wuerzburg.
On Saturday, October 29, we have reserved seats from Wuerzburg to Dresden. At first, all we see is morning fog in the Rhoen mountains. From Fulda to Dresden, ICE 1555 travels through Eisenach, Erfurt and Leipzig to Dresden. It turns into a sunny day, with beautiful fall foliage along the Saale river. We have a nice breakfast in our 1st Class compartment and arrive in Dresden-Neustadt at 11:56. Unfortunately, the train station is being renovated, and we can not find an escalator. We have all of our luggage with us, and I am not looking forward to carry everything up and down stairs. In the end, a nice train station master (lady) takes us down a service elevator, leads us through supply and catering storage in the basement and out a back door into the departure hall. Here, we are greeted by Dagmar and Juergen, our hosts for the weekend.

Gabi and I enjoy the history, culture and entertainment, you can find here on every corner. One evening, we are in the Friedrichstadt Palast, Europe’s largest theater and watch the show “YMA”. There is a lot of dancing, singing, acrobatics and muscle men twisting their bodies and standing on one hand. The stage is amazing and keeps changing the floor level of the performers. All of a sudden, the floor under the dancing Revue Girls is flooded and they start splashing in a pool. The Russian duo Galina Golovacheva and Allahverdi Israfilov are flying through the air in a mesmerizing, heart stopping Flying Acrobat performance. All without a safety net!
The next day, we are in the new “Theater am Potsdamer Platz” and see the musical “Hinterm Horizont” (over the horizon). This is a love story between Udo Lindenberg, a West Berlin singer and a girl in East Berlin. Great songs and a lot of history and politics from the Cold War times in Berlin!
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Gabi and I have 4 days in Berlin. Our last visit here was in February 2010, taking 28 GAPP students along. Now it is just the two of us and we make the most of it!
We arrive at dinner time on October 18th, flying on Air Berlin from Catania, Sicily to Tegel Airport. Our first evening is spent in an Irish Pub near Olivaerplatz, watching a match with the German Soccer team. Now we know that we are back in Germany.
I actually had shortened our visit to Italy, since we could not live on pizza or pasta dinners much longer. The German cuisine seems to have more variety, at least in my opinion. Here they offer a lot of game dishes in the fall: wild boar, venison, hare, pheasant, duck, goose, turkey and the usual meats and fish.
We find Berlin has more to offer than any other city we know. We have seen the main attractions in the past, so we just drift around this metropolis. One morning, we explore the old Tempelhof Airport. Today, bikers and joggers use the now silent runway, where in 1948/49 the American “Candy bombers” (Rosinenbomber) were flying in supplies to keep the 2.2 Million West-Berliners alive during the infamous Russian blockade of West Berlin.
The record was 1398 flights landing here in a 24 hour period. Planes were landing at 3 minute intervals, and stayed for only 30 minutes on the ground. The Allies had 3 air corridors across the Russian occupied East Germany: one from Hamburg and one from Frankfurt to fly into Tempelhof and a third corridor back from Berlin to Hannover for departures. They brought everything the city needed to survive: food, gasoline, coal ,medicines and so on. An unbelievable achievement. All this logistic was done before cell phones, GPS or computers! American and British pilots flew about 280 000 supply missions into Tempelhof and Tegel Airport.
Now the airport serves a peaceful mission: recreational park for skate boarding, biking, jogging or just laying in the sun.

The Sicily of today is what I remember of the Italy of 30 years ago, when I was a student here. It seems like for the most part time here has stood still. One of the first things we noticed is that everything is chiuso between approximately 1-5 pm. Try to go to the grocery store, è chiuso, how about some food for the car, è chiuso. They take their siesta seriously. At this time of year, with beautiful sunshine outside, the beaches, the beach bars, most hotels, all chiuso. We are told that Sicily is a holiday spot for the summer tourists. I can understand this mentality, where a pleasant season ends, as on Cape Cod, and a winter season begins, but here, where the temp never reaches below the upper 50′s? That would mean Florida has to close all its shutters during the winter, just when all of the snow birds go south. Lost financial opportunity! But then maybe, here they prefer the slower pace of life.
We had a road map of 1996, where the Autostrada was marked to be under construction. 15 years later, in many segments, it is still under construction. The sections, which were completed with European funds, as it is often stated by signs, are marvels, with up to 2 km long tunnels going through the center of mountains, just like in the Alpine countries.
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We are staying at the Hotel Le Calette in Cefalu, Sicily.
I was in Cefalu, traveling with 3 buddies, in 1971, exactly 40 years ago! We were driving through Italy and Sicily on our way to Tunesia and northern Africa. I only remember the Norman cathedral, which Gabi and I visited yesterday. It was Sunday morning, and we listened to the Sunday Mass. I do not remember so many restaurants and souvenir shops having been here in 1971. Otherwise, Sicily has not changed much in 40 years. The town streets are still very narrow and sometimes become too small for a car (without warning), the laundry and underwear are still drying on the balconies or roof gardens, and Italians are as loud as ever. Gabi and I explore the town on foot and in the afternoon actually swim in our hotel pool and use the sauna twice to warm up. It is sunny, but only in the upper 60′s. It does feel much warmer in the sole!
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We arrive at the Hotel Isabella in Sciacca at 18:40, just in time before the reception is chiuso at 19:00. The first night, we actually have dinner in the hotel ristorante. Since, we are the only guests, Gabi can practice her Italian, chatting with the waiter and cook. We use the pool and restaurant, and can’t believe that the staff keeps everything open, just for the two of us. our lunch or dinner are usually pasta or panini and on Friday, Gabi has enough of this monotony. The Spar supermarket is closed from 1:30 to 4:30PM, but eventually, Gabi can buy some food. At night, she cooks a tasty dinner: fried potatoes, mixed vegetables and pork barbecue, which we enjoy on our balcony, overlooking the Mediterranean sea. We managed one day without pasta!

Gabi is suffering from Italian beds, nighttime noise and resulting sleep deprivation. We are flying from Rome to Catania on October 9. Our Alitalia Airbus gets us safely to Sicily, even though the dirt in the cabin and the broken water faucet and condition of the bathroom are not exactly confidence builders!
We arrive at 9:45 in the morning and did not have any breakfast yet. We end up at a Burger King in a modern Catania Mall and have an early lunch. Mount Aetna is looming behind the mall, and I do not understand, why the Sicilians build a huge mall at the base of Europe’s most active volcano ( numerous small eruptions already this year).
Gabi has booked us a room at Hotel Crystal Sea in Forza d’Agro and the view from our room’s hilltop terrazza is “priceless” ( and yes, I am paying with Visa)! We overlook the Bay of Taormina and in the north can see the tip of the Italian boot and the Strait of Messina. Our first night here is unbelievably quiet. Hardly any guests in the hotel, and Gabi sleeps, for the first time here in Italy, through the night. We right away book 2 more nights and now have 3 days to rest, sleep and be lazy. There is not much to do here anyway. Except for visiting Greek and Roman ruins. Everything else is pretty much closed. The season ended last month, the hotel pool is closed and most beach chairs and umbrellas are packed up. Today is sunny and 24°C and we find a Bagno with 2 chairs and an umbrella for us at the Lido in Letoyanni.
The chairs cost 10 € now, and the life guard tells Gabi that it costs 30€ ($ 45) in the summer to sit here on the beach, with people lining up to grab a chair! We read, sleep on the empty beach, and even swim in the ocean. We do not understand, why there are only a dozen other people here now, compared to the crowds of the summer.
Did I mention, that the elevator in our hotel wakes us every morning and sounds like Mount Aetna rumbling?

On Thursday, October 7, we pick up a Fiat Panda and try to get out of Rome. To our surprise, the GPS can not locate any satellite. I navigate the old fashioned way: following the sun and driving south. It takes us about one hour to get to the suburbs. Along the way, Gabi does some drive-by shooting: taking pictures of the Forum Romanum and Colosseo.
We drive on the Autostrada del Sole to Napoli and Ercolano (Herculaneum). The GPS is working again and takes us through narrow back streets to our destination. Our hotel Andris is on a quiet hill at the base of Vesuvio. Gabi and I have a peaceful dinner on our balcony: prosciutto, bread, cheese and Australia Shiraz, which I had carried in my suitcase since Germany. The half moon illuminates our small world.

We have one day to spend some time in the Eternal City, aka Caput Mundi.
Gabi takes me to a show about the history of Roma, called Time Elevator. Appropriately, it begins with Romulus and Remus and takes us through the centuries. Our seats are moving, as we are flying through time. I really like the rats during the plague, with air blowing at our feet, imitating something moving at your legs. Another time, we get water drops raining on us from a Bernini fountain.
Continuing our exploration, we hop on city buses and hope that they take us where we want to go.
In the afternoon, we admire the oculus in the dome of the Pantheon. After our Roman Siesta, we have dinner at Zio Mario on Piazza Bernini. I watch Italian ladies, wearing winter coats and boots, while others wear summer dresses.
The metro stops running at 9PM, and we head back to our hotel. This time, barking dogs and noisy plumbing keep us awake.