After a quick tour to the Königssee we started to drive up the A9 all to way to Leipzig. This Autobahn takes you over some hills, where the car really could show its bad gas mileage. It took us until the late afternoon to arrive in Leipzig. As I work in Leipzig, visiting here was a a non-brainer. Nothing much happened on that day so I might as well give you little bit of background about the town.

"Neues Rathaus" in Leipzig

When I say that this took us to the east it is more a historical than geographical information. The drive is almost straight northwards. Leipzig lies in what constituted East Germany (The German Democratic Republic – GDR) until 1990. On a map you will see that the five states on the ground of the former GDR cover the north-east quadrant of today’s Germany.

Leipzig is a very relevant city in German history. It was an important center of trade and culture hundreds of years before. The University of Leipzig is the second oldest in Germany (estimated 1409), trade was a major business since the late middle ages. Johann Sebastian Bach worked in Leipzig for many years and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe studied at the University.

Leipzig was an important place during the time of change (Wende) in 1989. During its traditional demonstration on mondays (“Montagsdemonstrationen) masses of people were voicing their disagreement with the political and economical situation. This increased pressure on the political system, but were not oppressed bloodily, unlike other riots before. This encouraged the formation of opposition movements. Today, almost two decades after the reunification, Leipzig is one of the few towns in East Germany that is prospering, while many other regions struggle with economic problems as a result of reunification.

Day 11

Leipzig has a lot of sites to offer. In order to acommodate diverging interests we decided to split up. In the morning, the boys went to see an exhibition about the recent history of a divided Germany and the girls looked at old musical instruments.

An Entrance Hall in Leipzig Central Station.

As I said, Leipzig played a crucial role in the events leading to the fall of the Berlin wall, and that is why the “Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland” has a branch in Leipzig dealing with this part of the German history. Both exhibitions, in Bonn and in Leipzig are very well made. They use a lot of real-life exhibits to illustrate their points. The fact that the museum did not have any explanatoriy texts in English gave me an opportunity to give my father in a law a self-translated tour

Leipzig was also an important music history, so that the Grassi Museum is one exclusivley dedicated to musical instruments and their history. Mother and daugher assured me that it was worth the visit.

Another wonderful thing about Leipzig is, that the sites are so close by. Almost everything you want to show somebody is within the “ring” of the old city center, right downtown. In the afternoon we just walked around and had our rest in a café that in itself is a museum “Zum Arabischen Coffeebaum“. One of the older cafés in Germany, established in 1694. Many famous citizens and visitors of Leipzig had their coffee in this place. The atmosphere is not as classy as in the coffee houses in Austria, but still pretty neat. Plus, while our visitors could take the tour of the little museum (dedicated to coffee and its history in Europe) we were able to sit a little longer and enjoy another piece of cake.

Day 12

Leipzig is not far from Berlin and Berlin and Berlin is of course a mandatory stopover on a trip through Germany. Alas, the parents-in-law showed first symptoms of a emerging culture shock and were eager to get back to Dortmund, which, after seeing something new every day for more than a week, they considered their (temporary) home. They just had seen too many old stones… That created the challenge to give a Berlin tour within half a day.

Berlin, of course, was a focal point of almost all episodes in German history. It was the center of power in Prussia, capital of the Weimar Republic, as well as the Third Reich. During the cold war, it was the one place where Russians and Americans forces were facing each other directly. While Berlin as a whole is a part of East Germany, the city itself was separated into a West German and an East German part. And today, Berlin is the capital again in the reunified Germany.

Berlin Central Station.

We parked the car at the new Hauptbahnhof (central station) as this is a pretty central point for a tour and naturally comes with a great connection to the local train system. The Hauptbahnhof was finished only some years ago and is supposed to be one of the many symbols of a reunifed city (and by extension – country). Before that, no real central station existed and in the separated city, there was not one single center. The trains go through on two levels, on one in a North-South direction and on the other in East-West direction and in the middle of the building it is possible to get a glimpse of the two train lines “crossing”. That is about the only cool architectural feature of this station as the rest is an uninspired “glass and steel” style that any office park would be constructed in.

"Reichstag" building, seat of the parliament.

The S-Bahn took us to Bahnhof Friedrichstraße, from which we started walking to “Unter den Linden”, a big boulevard that has at one end the Brandenburg Gate. We walked around to the Reichstag, which is the seat of the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany, and served as a parliament building since 1894 (at that time for the German Empire). From there we took a big walk to see Checkpoint Charlie, which was one of the crossings betwween East and West Germany during the time of the wall. Today it is nothing but a street intersection and somebody reconstructed a hideous little hut that does not even resemble the border installations that were standing there last. But just as Neuschwanstein this seems to fire the imagination of tourists like nothing else, let alone that there are actual remains of the wall elsewhere or what other sites the huge city has to offer.

Freezing and tired, we returned to the car and headed home to Dortmund.

The last days

Dunes at Nordwijk beach.

Since we arrived in Dortmund early and had the car for two more days we decided to do a spontaneous trip to the Netherlands to see the North Sea at Noordwijk. It’s only three hours (two hours less than to Berlin, when you come to think of it) and is harmless enough to spent a night and two days just to chill.

On the weekend we did some last shopping and the parents-in-law got ready for their trip home.

On friday, the big roadtrip finally began. During our preparation, we decided to rent a car that would get us four adults comfortably through the country and carry a navigation system. So we consciously booked a upper class car, but still were surprised to get this:

A Volkswagen Touareg V6. Probably ideal to drive up the mountains we wanted to see, but hardly a car to drive comfortably on the Autobahn around them – the round trip offered my the chance to get over SUVs for good, and it worked.

The first trip in our newly rented monster truck took us to Munich, with a stop over in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. This town was known to me only because of the akwardsness of its name, even for German standards. But apparently it is quite the famous little German town –  a must-see on any Japanese or North-American bus tour through Europe, it seems. The main attraction is its historic center that closely resembels a medivial German town, complete with a surrounding stone wall. Not surprisingly, the place was overrun with foreign tourists not knowing what to photograph first, but hardly any Germans beside the locals. There was a Weihnachtsmarkt so perfectly integrated into the scenery that one had to wonder if this was not built into the city permanently – as a permanent “Weihnachtsmarkt Show”. It even had a centralized return location for empty Glühwein cups, complete with opening times:

FInally, we arrived at Munich. A bavarian local and former co-worker at Leipzig convinced me, that the Hofbräuhaus would actually be an acceptable location for dinner, at least in their first floor restaurant, the “Braustüberl”. And so we tried it, and it turned out to be actually good. Hearty, bavarian food in good quality at decent prices.

Day 8

Neuschwanstein.

If Rothenburg ob der Tauber is a tourist magnet for oversea visitors to Germany, the number one, visit-at-all-cost Cliché-Burger with extra bacon is, of course: Neuschwanstein aka “The Disney Castle”. I never had any urge to see it but was quickly convinced by both, in-laws and their daughter, that in this case my opinion was of no matter. So we went and while all my concerns about how much this is a tourist trap were neatly affirmed, I also learned how bad it really was:

• Neuschwanstein is not older than 150 years, 
• the whole interriour is a marketing stunt from Richard Wagner, the composer. All paintings promote one or the other play of his
•  it looks impressive only from far away, when you come closer it appears like a movie set. Also, the building is a horrible mix of interpretations of medieval as it was fashionable in the late nineteenth century.
• There is no meaningful history to the place, other than the fact that only six weeks after King Ludwig was dead, the state opened it up as a museum.
• Visitors are managed like cattle to take the meager 30 minute tour, which reminded me strongly of MTV’s “My Crib”, just citing a long list of meaningless details about the flashy interior and expecting the guests to be impressed about it.

THe short tour luckily meant that we were done quickly, so were back in Munich by the afternoon. There we had a taste of the local Weihnachtsmarkt and some harmless shopping.

Day 9

Salzburg as viewed from the Festungsberg.

The Sunday took us over the border to Austria, more exactly Salzburg. Needless to say that the parents in law were pretty flashed by seeing the alps. It is quite amazing how they somehow abruptly appear after the last turn on the A9 shortly before Piding.

You would think that Salzburg was on their list because it is Mozart’s birthplace or because of the “Festspielhaus”, but obviously the main draw of this place is “The Sound of Music“. Never heard of it? Then you must be German. Because every other nation seems to know about it. It seems to be a broadway musical and some German film adapted the musical afterwards. Can’t say much about the story itself, but it plays in Salzburg and oddly enough they did a lot of singing when escaping the Nazis in WW2. Somehow this movie manages to represent the life in mountainous regions of Central Europe for a lot of people. 

Anyway, Salzburg is a pretty town, and is best viewed from the Festungsberg – yet another castle much older and historically relevant then Neuschwanstein. The visit ended in an oldest cafè (Kaffeehaus), which was particularly enjoyable, as it represented “Viennese café” style, even if not in Vienna. Old, wood pannelld walls, marble tables, a waiter in a smoking and a lady carrying the selection of fresh cakes to your table.

Königssee in the morning.

For the night we went back to Germany and stayed in Schönau near to Berchtesgaden, just by Salzburg. A place where I spent many summer holidays with my parents. The major deal was to give everybody a little more time surrounded by mountains and to stay in one of the higly rustic “Pension”s. At night we couldn’t see much, but the next morning we walked to the “Königssee” as an opportunity for some great photos. It is a pretty cool, almost Fjord-like setting.

To provide a complete overview of the travels I will also give a short update about the three days that my parents acted as tour guides instead of us:

Day 3 (December 1st)

"Altes Hafenamt" in Dortmund

Monday started with a quick tour of Dortmund. Downtown, the university, the football stadium… just to get a feel for the city. I would assume that they observed how the structure of a European town is different from the average American one: Different way of mixing commercial and housing zones, street layouts, styles of houses and such.

The main act, though, was definitely the birthday of my grandpa (for the remote chance that he will ever use a computer, let alone, browse the net: Happy Birthday!), he turned 79. The main attraction of this visit of course is, how my Opa and Oma represent the institution of (German) grandparentness. The whole package of having actually hand-made several cakes for just a handful of visitors, shoving it on your plate whether or not you like it, reciting stories about your relatives that you have heard about 500 times as if they just happened yesterday, and so on.

But, so I heard, everybody got along just great and loved it.

Day 4

Aachen Cathedral

On tuesday, Aachen was scheduled: Particularly old stones with actual historic relevance. The Aachen Cathedral, built by Charlemagne (Karl der Große) and the surrounding downtown. The Chapel was part of Charlemagne’s palace, which was mostly destroyed, meaning that the chapel is around since about 800 AD. Naturally, the dome was the main attraction for the day. Second best, and very impressive due to its high level of “bling bling” is the Cathedral’s treasury, where some important reliquaries and other religious items are kept. The sheer amount of gold and diamonds is particularly impressive, even when the bones that are inside the reliquaries are a bit spooky.

Aachen itself is not very pretty (to me at least), at lot of 1960 / 70s buildings, but the little historic downtown around the dome looks very medieval, even for German standards of historic downtowns. As it happens, all the shops for “Aachener Printen” (particular type of ginger bread) can be found there, which of course was exploited by the PIL as a chance to buy some souvenirs.

Day 5

Historical center of Münster

The third of their regional tours took all the parents to Münster, best known for being the place where the Treaty of Westphalia was signed and its huge amounts of bicycles. Most of the historic houses in the historic center (Prinzipalmarkt) have a stepped gable, the houses are build out of sand stone. This gives the town a much more “approachable” feel, then the dark, stuffy downtown of, say, Aachen.

At night, the wife took her parents to a Spanish Tapas Bar “Taberna Andaluza” in Dortmund. It is basically a meeting place for Spaniards / Germans with a spanish background. Dortmund, as many of the Ruhr Area towns has a large immigrant population of spanish, turkish, italian, greek and other immigrants as a result of work migration programs in the 1950s and 1960s to take low-skilled jobs in the mining and steel industry. Since those days, close knit communities exits in the town and with them their a bit of their home culture. In this particular case, the result is inexpensive, excellent spanish food.

Day 6

Panorama of Cologne across the Rhine

On the last day of regional excursions I took my parents in law to Cologne and Düsseldorf. Cologne, obviously has the Cologne Cathedral, an obvious tourist magnet, an prime example of gothic architecture and one of the largest cathedrals in the world. Building started 1248, that is over 400 years later than the Cathedral in Aachen, nevertheless impressive. Cologne was a Roman settlement since 50 AD. Under much of the current downtown (around the Cathedral) remains of the roman times are to be found. The Romano-Germanic Museum hosts a multitude of the more interesting finds of this time. Since we decided to climb the stairs of the south-tower of the cathedral, we had no time to visit it.

Düsseldorf, which is the state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia, has also some history to offer, but at that afternoon, the interest was mostly shopping. The best known and most important street for shopping in Düsseldorf is the “Kö” (Königsallee). The Kö is a well known and one the more expensive shopping areas in Germany. For us that meant mostly window shopping and finding more common stores nearby. Düsseldorf has also a large population of Japanese, as a lot of Japanese companies have their European headquarters or at least important branch offices in Düsseldorf. For dinner we decided to treat our guests to eat at one of the better sushi restaurants in town, called “KiKaKu“.

(Disclaimer: All this according to my observation and interpretation of the reactions of my PIL, also, they are to easy-going and polite to point out what they do not like or find questionable, repulsive, ugly, … In these cases I just have to guess).

So here we go:

Day 1

On Saturday we picked them up at Düsseldorf International. 40 minutes late due to traffic jams on the A40 we worried that they would get or at least feel lost. “Luckily” the checked-in luggage got lost when connecting in the Netherlands, which took some time to fix in Düsseldorf.

• Observation 1 (downer): The “Autobahn” is not so amazingly different from a interstate in a metropolitan area.
• Observation 2 (just different): The makes of models is different, the amount of pick-ups is amazingly low.

At home, we got settled and showed them around

• Observation (amazement): Roofs are covered with pan tiles, sometimes with slate.
• Observation (pleasing the hosts): Our cats are cute (well, we know that, but still)

The day ended with an obligatory visit of the Weihnachtsmarkt in Dortmund, which I guess is weird for everybody including me: Tons of people squeeze through little alleyways of card box houses, buying stuff that you can’t get sold on the Home Shopping Channel, but is miraculously attractive because it is offered on the Weihnachtsmarkt. Anyway: The amount of people and impressions together with the amount of oil in the Reibekuchen tired them out pretty quickly and they were glad to get into their new home and into their bed.

Day 2

The Sunday started (after everybody slept in) with a giant lunch at my parents. As German as it gets. Then we showed them the local forest, partly to actually see the local fauna, partly to work ourselves out of the post-lunch coma.

• Question (Testing the host): What is the “generic” tree that constitutes the forrest round here? Well, cough, its one with leafs, right? Wikipedia tells me that it must be “Buche” (Beech) and “Eiche” (Oak).
• Observation (not unexpected, still amazing): Having so many trees around you basically everywhere is sure different from the plains in Oklahoma.

We completed the day by showing them nearby Hattingen, which has a nice little, well preserved medieval downtown. Of course there was also a Weihnachtsmarkt to be visited, but given the small size and the actually nice setting it was enjoyable.

• Lost in Translation: “Fachwerkhaus” (the houses with the many black beams and the white fillings) is called “timbered” or “half-timbered” house. Sure doesn’t evoke any picture until you show it…
• Observation (Inducing amazement): Some of the houses were built when Columbus was sailing to “discover” America.
• Observation (different, at least for everything but New England): There is an overwhelming amount of dedicated church buildings (i.e. stone churches)

The local food attraction there is the “Pancake House”, where, you would have guessed it, pancakes are served. While the pancakes there were sure “German” in their basic recipe and the fact that they were eaten as a dinner (hearty, not sweet), the whole idea of putting toppings on them in a pizza fashion is not necessarily everyday German cuisine. It was nevertheless good, and the beer selection certainly was representative.

The next few days, my parents will take care of them and show them around in NRW. I probably won’t blog about that and will continue with our trip to Munich.

Neuschwanstein. Image by Spicules (CC-BY-2.0)

This year in early december my parents in law will visit us in Germany for the first time. Everybody involved is looking forward to it and as it is their first time in Germany (and Europe) we will take them on a round trip through Germany. We will stay in Munich, Berchtesgaden, Leipzig, Berlin. In between we visit Rothenburg o.b.T., Neuschwanstein. Salzburg (ok, that is Austria) and Dresden. 

On the days before and after the roundtrip, my parents and us take them on tours in and around Dortmund (Cologne, Münster, Düsseldorf, some “castles”, Aachen). By the time they are leaving they should be pretty fed up with “old stones” and the likes. Although some “can’t-miss” sites are on the list, we avoided to follow the travel advice for Americans on Nothing for Ungood.

 

Größere Kartenansicht

It will be interesting to see how they will handle all the new information and the cultural differences. My guesses are

• The roundtrip will deliver an extreme amount of impressions that makes the different places blur into each other. The same thing happened on our road trip through the US this year. 
• The densely settled urban areas we will spent most time in (Ruhr Area and Berlin) will be intimidating and appear unaccessible at first. That includes the sheer amount of people, their mix and the stark social contrasts. A trip on the “RegionalExpress” (regional train) from Dortmund to Düsseldorf should deliver all of that in less than a day.
• Everything in between might appear either completely exotic or disappointingly similar. Judging from my own memory of my first weeks in the US some things of little relevance appear amazingly different, at least to the visitor (water levels in toilets) while on the other hand people here and there pretty much share the same everyday problems and pleasures.

Now, despite all the likely stress that comes from cultural adjustment, I am perfectly convinced that this will be a nice trip for my parents-in-law as well as for us. Actually, I am looking forward to go back to experience “culture shock” by proxy, as wifey’s introduction to the country is six years in the past and she is perfectly integrated now.