Travel Log IV (The East)

Day 10

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.

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Travel Log III (The South)

Day 7 (December 5th)

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:

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Travel Log II (Regional Excursions)

Just by chance I attracted a readership >0 on the topic of showing the parents-in-law (PIL) central europe. So “hi” to everybody. I am particularly sorry that I was not able to hold up the promise of “live blogging” during the trip – our schedule was too full to do that. The wife attempted to “future blog” the whole trip during our absence, so if you feel like it, you can compare the planed trip from the actual one.

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.

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Travel Log I

First days of the parents in law (PIL) in Germany. As expected, they are pretty overwhelmed by the fact that almost everything is at least slightly different than at home. This is what I enjoy most, when international visitors come by, to see the whole situation through their eyes and share the amazement of the exoticness of places that I usually hardly experience with full awareness. So instead of just giving a generic travel overview I will try to overlay their perspective with mine and talk about the perceived and real differences, large and small. Also, even at the first day I ran into situations where I could not answer the most basic and legit questions about stuff that just appears to everyday and familiar to really think about it – I guess the same display of not-knowing that would happen with a kid.

(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:
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Winterreise

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.

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