Leipzig, of course, is more than “Hypezig”, as the scene quarter of Plagwitz is sometimes known So in today’s post, I will first tell you what we did to explore this interesting and historical Old Town of Leipzig in the heart of Germany, and then what we should have done. We started our walk to…
There are not many things that East Germany (that most joyless country in the annals of the world) and Italy have in common, but here is one: a conservation policy that closely mirrors the principles of “triage”. In analogy to the requirements of battlefield medicine, both Italy and East Germany divided their cities or cultural…
Organized bus trips, for all their benefits, have one major drawback: they are not purpose-made for hiking, and any opportunity they may offer for a walk is purely coincidental At best, you can find the space for a brief excursion, but at worst, you are virtually stuck in the bus for the whole day. You…
Last week, I told you about the bus company Zest and its daily tours from Menton into the arrière pays, the French Riviera’s mountainous back country. Of these altogether ten different day trips, most are going to places that also are, in principle, available on Zest’s ordinary lines. The problem is that the schedules of…
When go hiking on the French Riviera, there are good reasons for preferring either the coast or the mountainous arrière pays. One possible reason for going one way or the other is undoubtedly the right psychological “match” between hiker and route. The coast at its best is friendly and open, but can also be loud,…
Movement 4: the Adagio at the Danube in Bratislava … which is just another word for “taking it very, very easy” On its way from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the Danube passes through ten countries: there are longer rivers in the world, but none that are more international. Can you name all ten states…
The whole of Vienna is built on a foundation of lies: The Danube does not really flow through the city (and is neither beautiful or even blue) ; Vienna’s Imperial splendour belies the reality of being the capital of a small-ish country in Eastern Central Europe; a good portion of her much famed architecture is…
Vienna: for some people it is the city of Mozart, for others the city of Freud, for others still the place where Orson Welles charms and deceives everybody in The Third Man. Possibly the only thing they can all agree on is that Vienna is located on the Danube. It turns out, however, that the…
In the initial post about our trip along the Danube, I said that the Rhine landscape featured a large number of castles. While this is undeniably true, it may have been misconstrued to imply that the landscape of the Danube did not. So let me clearly state once and for all that this would be…
Considering we have sung the praises of Regensburg in our last post, it seems all the more unforgivable that we failed to mention the city’s key asset on the central European tourism market: the fact that its entire (and fairly substantial) Old Town has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You are forgiven to ask,…