There are many easy hiking trails in Germany
Earlier in the year, we took you on a “sculp-tour” through the city of Münster (in northwest Germany), which hosts an internationally famous sculpture exhibition every ten years and which – since 1977 – has become one of Europe’s hot spots for urban modern art. The city, one of Germany’s finest, is equally well-known for its…
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…
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,…
Alone among European countries, Germany can claim sections of both the Rhine and the Danube, Europe’s most storied rivers. Most of you will have been aware of that, of course, but here is something that may surprise you: the German sections of both rivers are of a roughly similar length (865 km for the Rhine,…
Münster is one of western Germany’s most favourite day trip destinations and also happens to be a modern art hotspot. People from the region and beyond like to come here partly to experience the town’s ancient and interesting history: in 1535, the Siege of Münster ended the tyrannical regime of the eccentric Jan van Leiden, a…
8000 Japanese citizens live in the German city of Düsseldorf and they built a little colony complete with a Japanese Garden in Duesseldorfproviding middle and upper management people of Japanese companies in the city with their home comforts with Japanese shops and Japanese restaurants. There is probably no other place in Europe where you find such a wide array of excellent Japanese eateries.
Catholicism, in theory, is the same all over the world In reality, however, its practices are as different as a village in rural Germany is from Rio de Janeiro. Catholicism is probably best thought of as an abstract concept like “art” or “music” – certain basic rules are the same, but everybody creates something distinct…
… and when the twain finally did meet, two worlds collided – and two rival viewpoints of history. Two trillion dollars have been spent. This is not a trifling amount, even for one of the world’s richest nations. Still, East Germany – after 25 years of reconstruction – has preserved an Eastness about it which…