Urban Baker's Dozen concluded

David Gourley concludes his epic German journey.

Neues Rathaus, Hanover

From my base in Frankfurt I did a round trip taking in three cities in three different Länder. I started with Mannheim so it was back to Baden- Württemberg. This is not generally regarded as a tourist city.  Rhine cruises might stop there but the purpose will usually be to transfer people to its more glamorous neighbour, Heidelberg. So why go there? I'd had a hankering to go to Mannheim that dated all the way back to the early sixties. Holidays at that time in Austria entailed journeys by coach from Ostend. So we spent quite a bit of time on the German autobahnen where we kept on seeing signs for Mannheim which thereby became a place of mystery. All the more did we see these signs when once, in its vicinity, our driver started heading north towards Frankfurt rather than west to the Belgian frontier. "I hope he's not taking us to East Germany," whispered a lady in a nearby seat.

Mannheim was apparently a beautiful city before World War II but, rather as in Stuttgart, its centre was rebuilt in functional style. Again like Stuttgart, it is perfectly pleasant and historic buildings are to be found if one looks carefully. There is an interesting water tower (not open to the public) just outside the centre and the city's pride and joy is Mannheim Baroque Palace, parts of which are open to the public whilst others are used by the University of Mannheim. It is known as the "city of squares", due to the unusual grid pattern formed by its streets. I was glad that I'd been there. After fifty-odd years, my curiosity had been assuaged!
Mainz: This was my one excursion west of the Rhine and the one place also visited on our Rhine Cruise. On this stretch of the Rhine one gets two Land capitals for one's money: Mainz is the capital of the Rhineland Palatinate whilst Hesse's capital, Wiesbaden, is on the opposite bank.

History repeated itself. On our cruise we had run through pouring rain to get to one of the city's prime attractions, the Gutenberg Museum.Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor in Europe of the printing press, was born in the city though Strasbourg also claims him as a son. Now it was raining once more. Fortunately it was not as heavy as last time - though this would have to be virtually the one place on my itinerary where the city centre was some distance from the station, with signage not all that good! The rain did ease off, giving a chance to look round this historic city in the dry. No time second time round to go to the Museum but I did revisit the magnificent Cathedral.

Wiesbaden: At last a double-deck train! But for a journey lasting all of twelve minutes. Most cruise vessels sail past Wiesbaden, on their way to or from Mainz, but it is a city well worth visiting, an elegant spa town where hot springs flow to this day. During the Cold War period it was the HQ of the forces in the American Zone, one of the four, along with the British, French and Russian, that were carved out in occupied Germany. The troops arrived as occupiers but stayed on as allies. Apparently Elvis Presley was a frequent visitor to the city during his time in the army.

Dresden: I pressed on into former East Germany for my next two-night stop, Dresden. Whilst there is a direct train link from Frankfurt Airport to that city, there isn't, curiously enough, one from Frankfurt itself. So a change of train in Leipzig is necessary. We headed eastwards through the town of Fulda. In the Cold War it had been thought that the most likely route of any Soviet attack on Western Europe would be through the Fulda Gap. I was curious as to when we would be crossing what had once been the interzonal border or Iron Curtain having, unusually, not brought a map with me. I was assuming, as we'd been travelling for a while, that we had crossed it but I checked on my phone and found that we were still in Hesse. The line in this area turns north, paralleling the former divide before turning east at Bad Hersfeld. Thereafter one soon crosses the divide, thus entering the Land of Thuringia.

Today there is no trace whatever of what had once been termed the 'Ugly Frontier': the countryside on one side looks pretty much the same as on  the other. I have a book of that name, dating back to 1970, in which the author, David Shields, travels along the entire interzonal border, from the Baltic to the Czech frontier. The frontier fortifications at that time were, on the eastern side, multi-layered, stretching from the actual border past barbed wire, ploughed strips, guard dogs and watchtowers to the barrier cordoning off the hinterland. The author describes how the border, on its Hessian section, ran through one house in the village of Philippsthal. The family lived in the West, cut off from the decaying part of the building in the East.

Thuringia, it might be said, got unlucky after World War II. If one looked at a map of present-day Germany, not knowing where the border had once run, one might assume that it was a western Land, lying as it does due north of Bavaria. It was, though, liberated by the Americans who continued east through Leipzig to their rendezvous on the Elbe with the Red Army. But after a few weeks they pulled back to the agreed interzonal border, the quid pro quo being that western allies occupied their zones in Berlin. Thuringia thus became the westernmost outpost of the Soviet empire, just a hundred miles or so from the Rhine.
The train continued through the Thuringian capital, Erfurt, by all accounts a nice place to visit, and the historic city of Weimar, which gave its name to the short-lived democratic republic created after World War I. In Leipzig an unpleasant surprise awaited: there were no trains going to Dresden. Back home one is resigned to the fact that railway services can't be counted on to run 7/7 but at least engineering works usually take place at weekends. Here they were taking place on a Monday. So instead of reclining in a first-class carriage, I was shepherded into a crowded coach. It was an enjoyable journey nevertheless for I was sitting next to a charming German lady, Andrea. Her English was somewhat better than my schoolboy German so we mostly spoke in English. Andrea was from Stuttgart, heading for a conference in Dresden.

I was planning to return to Leipzig the next day for a look round and fretted that there might again be no trains.  I wanted to see more of that city than a backwards glance at its station as our coach headed out to the motorway. But Andrea thought the line was closed just for the one day and this was confirmed by the information office when I got to the station in Dresden. I had wondered as well how I would get to my hotel, the Kempinski, since this was the one place where it wasn't near the station. A different information office put me right. There was a tram that went straight there.

My hotel lay in the heart of historic Dresden, with the Zwinger Palace and Semper Opera House just across the road. But this was the one city where I did not get to look round the main shopping centre, which is centred on Prager Strasse, a stop on the tram route and some distance away. I was feeling rather tired and, though I did go out for a while, did not feel that I was doing the city justice. So the bulk of my exploration was undertaken the next day, after I got back from Leipzig.

The bombing of Dresden in the closing stages of World War II remains controversial. I do not feel I can second-guess those who thought that the bombing of this strategically located city would shorten the war against Hitler.  The Communist regime, to its credit, did a good job of restoring the city, known as 'Florence on the Elbe', and it is beautiful once again.  But it was an atheistic regime and there was one big gap that was unfilled. The magnificent church, the Frauenkirche, was finally rebuilt after reunification. Movingly it contains a cross of nails from Coventry Cathedral. The visitor to the historic centre of Dresden should make a point of crossing to the other side of the Elbe. Here there is the Japanese Palace (which from the outside does not look at all Japanese). The reason for coming here is the fantastic view across the river to the centre.

On my first night I dined in the Kempinski. It was a good meal but somewhat pricey and there wasn't a lot of choice. Just three mains - and I can't eat fish and don't want to eat vegetarian. So the next evening I hunted round for somewhere else to have dinner. I stumbled across, of all things, an Australian restaurant where I dined al fresco, enjoying a kangaroo steak, not somehow something I'd expected to be eating during my travels around Germany!

Leipzig: With the trains once again running, I had an unadventurous journey to Leipzig. The Haupthahnhof was completely refurbished after reunification and is the world's largest railway station if measured by floor area.  Leipzig was the largest undivided city in East Germany.  But its spirit was never crushed and it came to be known as the 'City of Heroes' for in 1989 it was the epicentre of the peaceful demonstrations against the regime. These were centred on the Nikolaikirche (St Nicholas Church) in the city centre. Here there were demonstrations every Monday, swelling as the year went on to tens of thousands of people. The regime gave serious thought to imposing a 'Tiananmen Square solution' but they knew they would not get the support of Gorbachev's Soviet Union. The ageing leader, Erich Honecker, was forced to stand down and was replaced by Egon Krenz, who was also a hardliner but who hastily re-clothed himself in reformist garments. Within weeks the Berlin Wall had fallen.

On my way into the city, I passed the Opera House, a functional Communist-era building. The centre itself is picturesque and in places just a bit quirky. Naturally I particularly wanted to see the Nikolaikirche, one of the most beautiful churches I have been to anywhere. Outside a memorial commemorates '1989'. Somewhat counterintuitively, this former Communist-ruled city was ranked in 2013 as the most liveable city in Germany and one of the three European cities with the highest quality of living. This sort of praise is nothing new. Benedikt Carpzov the Younger, an eminent citizen in the seventeenth century who is regarded as the founder of criminal jurisprudence in Germany, declared: "[T]o live outside Leipzig is to live miserably."

Hanover: It was on to Hanover for the fourth of my stays. The journey was through the three Saxonies: Dresden and Leipzig are in Saxony itself; one continues through Saxony-Anhalt, also in the former East; then one crosses the former interzonal border into Lower Saxony, of  which Hanover is the capital.  For some of the journey I shared the carriage with a retired civil servant who was heading back to his home on the North Sea coast. I don't think he wanted a long chat but there was a bit of polite conversation. There was evident disapproval when I told him that I had commenced my travels in Munich. His problem was that it's in the South. Worse, it's in Bavaria.

The old border was crossed at Helmstedt. In the Cold War this was the location of Checkpoint Alpha, where travellers on the Autobahn to West Berlin crossed into East Germany. When they reached Berlin, they had to pass through Checkpoint Bravo. The most famous/infamous of the crossing points was of course in Berlin itself: Checkpoint Charlie, where one passed through the Wall into the eastern part of the city.

My base in Hanover was the Central-Hotel Kaiserhof, conveniently located opposite the Hauptbahnhof in Ernst-August Platz. This family run establishment has four stars but initially I wondered why. However I  came round to the view that they were merited. I had a lovely large room, complete with 'his' and 'her' washbasins. And the meals were excellent.
Both evenings I ate in its restaurant, seated al fresco so observing the busy life of the city passing by in the square outside. I ate, both times: a meaty goulash soup followed by the 'Kaiserhof Pan', a mix of pork, beef and turkey served with béarnaise sauce and vegetables.
My visit coincided with the tercentenary of the personal union of the monarchies of Britain and Hanover. This commenced in 1714 with the reign of George I and endured until 1837, ending only because Queen Victoria, being a woman, could not ascend to the Hanoverian throne. The Royal Family to this day retains its Hanoverian origins. During the twentieth century Britain and Germany were bitter enemies in two horrendous wars but it should not be forgotten that before that friendly relations were the norm, above all with Hanover. The event was being marked in five different venues, four in Hanover itself and the fifth in nearby Celle. I spent an interesting hour or two at the main exhibition in the Lower Saxony State Museum, an impressive building that overlooks the green expanses of Masch Park.
Lonely Planet is not very kind to Hanover: it reputedly has "Germany's most boring parties" and "when an Expo was held here... even its spokesperson mused aloud about whether anyone would travel here if they had the choice." I would concede that the main shopping centre is somewhat functional in appearance, rather as in Stuttgart and Mannheim, but the visitor, exploring a little further, will find a city of great charm and interest (I couldn't possibly comment on the partying!) An aid to exploration is Der Rote Faden or 'red thread', literally a painted red line around the city. An accompanying booklet can be purchased for a nominal sum at the tourist office in Ernst-August Platz.

Over the course of my stay I completed the 'red thread'. The first section takes one past the Opera House and the Holocaust Memorial. One discovers just how green a city Hanover is, with its extensive  and attractive parkland and lakes. There is a historic, though admittedly small, Old Town and a 'must do' is to ascend the magnificent Neues Rathaus or 'new town hall'. This is newish (1913) but traditional in style, offering fine views over the city. The ascent is via a curving lift, described by the city authorities as unique.

Wuppertal: I confess to being something of a transport nerd. As such, I had long entertained two ambitions in continental Europe: to travel on (a) the Belgian Coastal Tramway and (b) the Schwebebahn or Monorail in Wuppertal. A year or so previously I had done the first. Now, from my base in Hanover, I fulfilled the other ambition.

When I was growing up monorails were seen as futuristic - though Wuppertal's dates back to 1901 - and sketches of the 'city of the future' would often include one. But today one can count more or less on the fingers of one hand the number that exist. We have been on those in Seattle - a journey lasting all of nine seconds - and Sydney and seen, but not been on, Shanghai's Maglev system, which really does look futuristic. Wuppertal is in the Ruhr but I was surprised on my way there how much countryside there was around the industrial centres of Dortmund and Hagen. Wuppertal itself boasts of being one of the greenest cities in Germany. It has existed only since 1929, the product of a merger between several different communities. It was originally going to be known as Barmen-Elberfeld after the two main constituent towns but in a referendum it was instead named after the river that flows through it hence Wuppertal or 'Wupper Valley'. The Schwebebahn serves the Hauptbahnhof and extends several miles in either direction. One can get a day ticket giving limitless travel. Mostly it is suspended above the Wupper but at one end it is over a street, at eye level with the upper floors of people's homes.

It was necessary at one point to break off for lunch, so I went into the city centre, just a few minutes' walk from the Hauptbahnhof. I was pleased to find a Galerie Kaufhof. Problem of where to have lunch solved. Or rather it wasn't. There was no fourth floor, I discovered, only two - and there was no restaurant. I ended up with a pasta dish in a rather odd place in a nearby shopping mall. I would hazard a guess that, were it not for the Schwebebahn, not many tourists would find their way to Wuppertal.

Hamburg: My final two nights were spent in Germany's second largest city (the largest in former West Germany). There is a direct train link from Hanover but I selected a slightly longer one that goes via Celle. This is said to be a town of great charm and even from the railway station it looks nice. In Hamburg I was staying at another Kempinski hotel, the Atlantic. In the 1913 edition of Bradshaw's, popularized of late by Michael Portillo, there is an advertisement for this hotel, which at that time was new.

Hamburg has a distinctive geography, built as it is around two lakes, the Aussenalster and Binnenalster (Outer and Inner Alster) with the latter flowing into the Elbe. They are joined by the Kennedybrücke (Kennedy Bridge). My hotel was close to the station on one hand and the Aussenalster on the other. I had a look round on my first day and on the second, after my visit to Lübeck, went on a circular bus tour, here as elsewhere a good way of seeing a city. We circumnavigated Aussenalster, where there is some serious wealth, and continued into the centre. Here I alighted, partly so I could go inside the impressive Rathaus (Town Hall) and partly in the hope of having a guide who would offer a livelier and more interesting commentary. I was fortunate in this regard as I now had a charming young lady who engaged with me and others.

I was to see a very different aspect of Hamburg once we'd passed St Michaeliskirche; this baroque church is getting on for 450 feet high and is one of the city's best known landmarks. We came to the Reeperbahn. As we approached it we passed Davidstrasse, which is apparently off limits to all females (not much of an honour for us Davids to have this street named after us!) The Reeperbahn, centre of the red light district, is unlovely, its saving grace being that it is where the Beatles cut their teeth, before they became famous. I think that it is because of this aspect of sleaze that I didn't take to Hamburg as much as I did the other cities I stayed in. True, all cities have their sleaze. But they generally stay quiet about it whereas Hamburg unashamedly publicizes it as one of its main attractions.

On my first evening I dined in the hotel restaurant. A booking was made by reception who then rang me to confirm. Yet, when I arrived, there was no record of my reservation. But the amiable restaurant manager quickly found me a table and we conversed about, of all things, football. As was evident from the sound of car horns outside, Germany had just won another match, on its way to winning the World Cup, its fourth such achievement... or technically its first since on the previous three occasions it was West Germany who won. The manager was suitably diplomatic given he was talking to an Englishman whose team had been, not to mince words, a bit rubbish: the German team, he said, had been very lucky. As Gary Player once said, the harder one practises, the luckier one gets!

On my second evening, and my last in Germany, I switched to the hotel's bar where I had, yes, a hamburger in Hamburg. This may be sad but I like having dishes in their eponymous cities so it's been Beijing duck in Beijing, wiener schnitzel in Vienna, Zurich veal in Zurich and steak bordelaise in Bordeaux. But not Frankfurters in Frankfurt - I don't like them.

Lübeck: On my last full day in Germany I visited one of Germany's loveliest cities, Lübeck. To my delight the trains were double-deck.  It  was still a fairly short journey but somewhat longer than the previous one lasting twelve minutes.

In the Cold War era Lübeck was in the West but right on the Iron Curtain: from its historic centre one could walk in an easterly direction for about three miles, then no further. Lübeck has a fairytale centre but even this was heavily bombed in World War II. It has since been meticulously restored and the visitor, unless primed otherwise, would assume himself to be in a city unchanged since medieval times.

I stumbled across a museum dedicated to one of Lübeck's most famous sons, Willy Brandt, an anti-Nazi who fled after Hitler seized power, in his case to Norway, moving on to Sweden when the Nazis occupied his adopted country. I did make time to look round this since I am interested in Cold War history. Moreover it was free.  It was a fascinating visit.  After World War II Brandt returned to Germany and entered politics. He was the Mayor of West Berlin when the Wall went up, and stood alongside President Kennedy when he declared "Ich bin ein Berliner". Later Brandt became Federal Chancellor, in which capacity he instituted Ostpolitik, the establishment of diplomatic relations with East Germany and other satellite states. He had to resign in 1974 as a result of a spy scandal but had a distinguished political afterlife. He chaired the Independent Commission for International Developmental Issues, hence the Brandt Report in 1980, which called for drastic changes in the global attitude towards development in the Third World. He died in 1992, having lived long enough to see his country, and his adopted city, reunited - one of the great statesmen of the twentieth century.

First published in VISA 132 (April 2017)

Urban Baker's Dozen (part I)

By David Gourley

Frankfurt ('Mainhatten')

Back in the eighties I had the idea that I would like to do a rail trip around Germany.  For various reasons it was not a practical proposition but when, a couple of years ago, I retired, I resurrected the idea.  Or at least thought about doing so.  The proposed trip was not really Cathy’s thing and in any case she was still working.  But she was keen that I go ahead and fulfil my ambition - and, no, it’s not because she wanted to get rid of me!  She urged me to stop thinking about the trip and actually go ahead and do it.

Whilst we did not both go on the trip, we did share an enjoyable afternoon booking it on the internet – something we couldn’t have done in the eighties.  The obvious choice of ticket would have been a German Rail Pass but in fact a Eurail Pass was the better option for it provided greater flexibility: one could use it on ten days, not necessarily consecutive, over the period of a month.  Pushing the boat out a bit, I got a first-class pass.  I realized that there was an opportunity cost if I confined its use to just one country.  So it did occur to me as I stood on Munich Station that I could, with my ticket, be going to Prague or Budapest or south into Italy.  But the ticket was the means to my end, a rail trip around Germany.

Next we booked stays in five hotels – I am not, I’m afraid, the kind of laidback or adventurous person who is happy to arrive in a city without knowing where they are going to stay that night.  The journey was from south to north through the centre of the country.  Only once did I venture west of the Rhine (but a few years previously we had done a Rhine Cruise, VISA 103-4).  And there was one foray into the former East, something else that wouldn’t have been possible, or at any rate would have been difficult, in the eighties since the Berlin Wall didn’t come down until the very end of that decade.  Berlin itself was not on my itinerary.  We had been there (VISA 89) and would like to go back, but it would require a fair bit of time to do it justice and I wanted to get around more.  I put together an itinerary, using Deutsche Bahn timetables, which gave a mix of time in my chosen five cities and rail trips to other cities.  I found the timetables to be very reliable so almost everything went to plan.  Finally we booked flights. 

I had three nights in Munich, as distinct from two elsewhere.  There is an S-bahn link from the airport direct to the Hauptbahnhof (main station) and my hotel was easily found, so near the station that it is virtually on the station.  I had the bright idea of using my pass on the S-bahn where it would have been accepted.  Cathy pointed out that I would thus be doing myself out of one of my ten days of more extensive travel.  My hotel was not the best of this trip, but it was friendly and, for the duration of one’s stay, gives one a complimentary travel pass for the city’s excellent transport system: buses, trams, S-bahn and U-bahn (metro). 

We had been to Munich a number of years previously, when our daughter had a short-term work posting there.  We had packed quite a lot into just a weekend, including a performance of the opera and a trip out to Neuschwanstein, the fairytale castle that inspired Disney, also taking in the historic city of Augsburg.  The castle was one of those built by supposedly “mad” King Ludwig who was deposed and, some believe, murdered by the Bavarian state.  But today Bavarians are surely grateful to him, given all the revenue from tourists flocking to see his castles. 

Munich is a handsome city.  The feel, I would say, is more Central than West European.  It is the capital of Bavaria, which in the nineteenth century was not quite sure that it wanted to be part of a united Germany and to this day maintains a strong sense of independence.

On my first evening there was time before dinner for a quick stroll into the centre.  Here, as in other German cities, the central area is a safe environment which is largely pedestrianized, but there were a couple of minor annoyances.  Firstly, it was necessary, on the way in from my hotel, to cross a busy main road and the wait could seem interminable.  Traffic, here and elsewhere in Germany, is allowed to pass through red lights if there are no pedestrians but the reverse doesn’t apply.  So one waits and waits and, even when the light does at last go green, one waits a bit longer since it seems to be not the done thing immediately to set forth.  Secondly there are more cyclists than back home, above all in Munich.  Yes, I know I should be applauding that since cycling is a healthy and very green form of transport.  And people were riding in responsible manner: no sign of any ‘lycra louts’.  Even so, I did in places feel a bit overwhelmed by the number of cyclists, with the pathway seemingly belonging more to them than to pedestrians. 

I noted on the first evening that one of the two towers of the beautiful main church, the Frauenkirche, was scaffolded up.  I had been intending that, as on my previous visit, I would go up to the top so hoped that it was the unscaffolded tower that was open to the public. 

The next two days followed my normal pattern of trips out of the city, followed by time in the city.  In Munich tram 19, which link the Hauptbahnhof, and thus my hotel, to the Ostbahnhof (or East Station), is a good way of seeing the city centre.  I also did some exploring on foot including a long stroll to the extensive English Garden, so named from the type of landscaping, reminiscent of ‘Capability’ Brown.  Here, for the first time, I came across a phenomenon not to my knowledge found in Britain: ‘love-locks’ or padlocks that can weigh down railings on bridges, romantic but considered by authorities to be something of a nuisance.

There were poignant reminders of World War II on my stroll to the Garden.  The Bürgersaalkirche contains the shrine to Pater Rupert Mayer who was an opponent of the Nazi regime and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1987.  He survived the war, but died of a stroke a few months later.  In the vicinity of the Bavarian Chancellery is a memorial to the White Rose, the Munich-based anti-Nazi group.  Sadly most of its members were executed but one member, Traute Lafrenz, is alive still, having emigrated after the war to the United States.  The White Rose looked forward to a “New Europe”, the bases of which would be “freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the protection of individual citizens from the arbitrary will of criminal regimes of violence”.  Inconceivable though it might have seemed at that time, just such a Europe was to come into being a few years later, thanks to far-sighted statesmen in their own country and elsewhere.  It is a Europe from which Britain, foolishly in my view, has decided to turn its back.

A dilemma posed itself on this, the first of my ten days of rail travel.  On double-decker trains I like to sit on the upper deck but on this train it was for second-class passengers, whereas my pass entitled me to first-class travel.  I stuck to first but wasn’t sure this was the right choice.  Odd that on the Continent trains, but not buses, are double-deck, whereas in the UK it’s the other way round.  In fact there once were double-deck trains in the UK.  When I first started work in the sixties, I sometimes commuted to and from London in such a train, one of just two. They ran on the lines out to Dartford, through the area where I lived at that time.  They were regarded as a failed experiment, but were retained for their working lives.

It was pleasant to sit back in my carriage, even if it was lower deck, and enjoy the Bavarian countryside.  Bavaria, I reflected, is a region which has everything, bar a sea coast: lakes, mountains, beautiful countryside, attractive towns and villages, a high standard of living, low unemployment...  what’s not to like?

Regensburg is located on the Danube and its Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It has been described as “Italy’s northernmost city”.   I made the discovery that Galerie Kaufhof, a nationwide chain of department stores, provides good buffet lunches at a reasonable price.  One invariably ascends to the fourth floor, passing the ladieswear and menswear floors.   Here I photographed my plate of chilli con carne.  I wouldn’t normally do such a thing but the reason here was the juxtaposition: this was an al fresco area overlooked by the city’s beautiful spires. 

I wandered through the Old Town, then across what is perhaps the city’s most iconic feature, the twelfth century Stone Bridge, which crosses the Danube.  Unfortunately it was being renovated so there was a lot of scaffolding and for most of the way across one had to use a temporary construction.  I wasn’t having much luck in this regard for, yes, back in Munich the scaffolded tower in the Frauenkirche was the one that is normally open to the public (one could still of course go inside the church).  The walk across the bridge was still worthwhile given the wonderful view back to the Old Town.  Located by the bridge in the Old Town is the historic Sausage Kitchen.  It purports to be the oldest continuously open public restaurant in the world.

My next journey took me out of Bavaria, into Baden-Württemberg and on to its capital, Stuttgart.  At its station there is a tower which one can ascend for free.  From here it is evident that, unlike Munich, this is not an especially beautiful city.  It is by no means an unpleasant city but after World War II, its centre was rebuilt in modern, functional style, apparent in Königstrasse, the main thoroughfare which runs through the centre from the station.

I called in at the tourist office.  Naturally enough local authorities like to blow their trumpets and the city guide eulogizes the main square, the Schlossplatz, claiming it to be “one of Europe’s most beautiful squares”.  Well, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit St Mark’s Square in Venice, Old Town Square in Prague and Grande Place in Brussels and I’m sorry to say to Stuttgarters that their square, pleasant though it might be, does not begin to compare.  Scattered around are a few historic buildings and some parkland.  I enjoyed my time in Stuttgart but soon concluded that the remainder of my day would be better spent seeing more of Munich. 

To get back to the Hauptbahnhof I used the U-bahn.  I was impressed that quite a few cities in Germany have metros: I had used the one in Munich and was also to use those in Frankfurt and in Hanover.  In Britain, by contrast, the only metros outside London are the circular line in Glasgow and the innovative Tyneside Metro in Newcastle.   I think that in Germany cities generally have more power and influence than their British counterparts and, as a result, have greater civic consciousness.   This might be something to do with geopolitics, for the capital of West Germany was a fairly small city, Bonn.  Even though Berlin has resumed its rightful place as capital of a united Germany, I don’t think the other big cities are going to bend the knee any time soon.  England by contrast tends to be fairly ‘Londoncentric’ – something I think that is increasingly recognized, resulting in the proposals for a ‘Northern Powerhouse’. 

I chose the time of my train carefully.  Some trains would simply have repeated yesterday’s journey to Stuttgart and carried on from there.  I wanted to see new territory, so got a train that went north to Nuremberg, then west to Frankfurt.  In Würzburg I was impressed that there were hillside vineyards very close by.  

Ominously, a weather map at Munich Station showed bright sunshine over Bavaria and rain over the rest of Germany.  Sure enough it started to rain when we reached Aschaffenburg.  This city is still in Bavaria, but far closer to Frankfurt than Munich; it is considered by Lonely Planet to be “in style terms more Hessian than Bavarian”.  Fortunately it was dry again by the time I got to Frankfurt and rain was not to give me too much trouble in coming days. 

This was the nicest of my five stays.  My hotel was the Intercontinental, a short walk from the station.  The friendly receptionist offered me a pass that gave use of the top floor lounge for €50 for a 24-hour period.  Usually one doesn’t, as an ordinary client, get a sniff of a hotel lounge.  The deal included complimentary food and drink, including beer or wine.  Given that breakfast, not here included, was over €30, it was a no-brainer.  I enjoyed a light lunch in the lounge, and a good dinner.

The view from my fourteenth floor room was one of my best ever.  I looked straight out at the city’s skyscrapers.  These are an unusual feature for a German, indeed for a Continental European, city and they have earned Frankfurt the sobriquet “Mainhatten”.  I walked into the city.  This entailed a pleasant stroll along the Main.  I crossed over the river to the south side then re-crossed later on using one of the two old pedestrian bridges.  From there it was a short distance to the Old Town, centred on Römerplatz, an area that was lovingly rebuilt after the World War II bombing.  I was pleased that despite my advancing years – I was now heading into my late sixties – I was able without difficulty to ascend the tower of the Cathedral, 328 steps. 

I had wondered whether “Mainhatten” would be a rather cold sort of place, but not so at all.  This is an attractive, cultured and vibrant city that oozes prosperity.  It is also a historic city, its modernity notwithstanding.  In former times it was the place where the kings and emperors of the Holy Roman Empire (which was not, it has been said, holy or Roman or an empire) were crowned.  The Empire, a collection of numerous independent states, included most of present-day Germany so it might be said that Frankfurt was the unofficial German capital.  Immediately after World War II, it was the putative capital of West Germany.  It seemed the obvious choice, roughly in the middle of the country, on the Main so not in South or North Germany, in historic terms the true divide between Germans, rather than the artificial East-West split resulting from the Cold War.  But the wily Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of West Germany, wanted the capital to appear makeshift since he didn’t want it to be thought that the division of Germany was permanent.  Frankfurt, he feared, would settle down to the role too comfortably.  Hence the choice of a much smaller city, Bonn.  Today Frankfurt doesn’t get to be the capital of anything: it is by far the largest town in the Land of Hesse but the kudos of being its capital goes to Wiesbaden.  But, as it houses the HQ of the European Central Bank, it might be regarded as the financial capital of Europe. 

I wandered on into the financial district though not as far as the towers of “Mainhatten”.  The Stock Exchange is in a surprisingly old building.  There is a plaque here commemorating Ludwig Erhard, the Finance Minister who presided over West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder or Economic Miracle.  He succeeded Adenauer as Federal Chancellor but it is thought that he was far less happy in that role.

With dinner that night I had a glass of cider.  I was surprised to find that this is a Frankfurt speciality since, as I have found to my chagrin, cider isn’t generally available on the Continent.  It wasn’t anything like cider back home: something of an acquired taste but, given time, I might have acquired it.

First  Published in VISA 131 (February 2017)

The Refugee Effect

By Glenys Hopkins

Set out on 30 September 2015 to go to Serbia, for the Mensa International AG. And because I hate airports, and hate having to leave in the small hours of the morning, I decided to go by rail. It started off fine, got the Pendolino to Euston, quick sprint to St Pancras for the Eurostar, arrived in Paris in time for a light lunch. Got the TGV to Munich, which is where it all started to go Horribly Wrong. It was about 9.00pm and the station was full of drunks in lederhosen (Oktoberfest), I was supposed to be travelling on the Overnight Sleeper to Budapest, which I was looking forward to; it seemed really exotic, I expected the train to be full of glamorous adventuresses and secret agents. Well it wasn't, it was cancelled. :-(. It was replaced by:

 1. An ordinary train which went almost to the German border.

 2. A bus which went over the German border and on to Salzburg, by which time it was about midnight.

 3. A 3-hour wait in Salzburg Station, which is very clean and modern, but everything was closed and it was Very Cold.

 4. An ordinary train which went almost to the Austrian border.

 5. A bus which went to the border, where we had to write our names on a list, then get out and be glared at by armed Austrian border guards who took our passports which was worrying. The young man who had sat next to me was not let back on the bus. His name was Hassan, which may have had something to do with it. The passports were returned, so that we could be glared at again as we crossed the border into Hungary.

 6. Some time later a rather scruffy train took us to Budapest. Instead of the Sleeper Compartment I had a bunk in a couchette, but I did have the compartment to myself. It was at this point that, in attempt to lock the door, I inadvertently pulled on the emergency brake. I noticed that the train was making funny noises, shrugged, found the bolt and setlled down. Just dropping off when the attendant come banging on the door, told me off, and fixed the brake. So I only got a couple of hours' sleep before we arrived in Budapest at 9.00am the next morning. This was the scheduled time, but it should have been one seamless train ride in comfort if not luxury.

I pottered round Budapest for a bit, the surroundings of the station are not the most appealing area. Then it occurred to me that the train taking me to my destination in Serbia, Novi Sad, was not actually going direct from Buda, but from a little town a couple of hours away. If I'd realised this when I arrived, I could have got an early train and made the connection. But I didn't, so I just got the next train that was going there, and arrived at teatime with 7 hours to wait for the next train to Novi Sad. I strolled up and down the main street, had coffee and a luscious cream cake at a cafe. That took up the first half hour. The station was deader than Salzburg had been. Fortunately there was an Australian woman, similarly stranded. She was going to Serbia to look up family members, and talking about her exploits passed quite a lot of time.

The train arrived at about midnight, and meandered gently across part of Hungary and then Serbia, arriving at Novi Sad at 6.00 am next morning. I was only 12 hours late and had missed the first evening's party and an excursion I had booked on. :-(. So I slept until lunch time and then started catching up on the programme.

First published in VISA 125 (February 2016)

More than Passion

by Sally Branston

This tiny village in the Bavarian Alps, permanent population 5,300, is best known to the outside world for performances, every ten years, of a Passion Play, celebrating the townsfolk’s deliverance from the plague in 1633. But there is a lot more to this small corner of a Bavarian paradise. Every season has something different to offer and although the village has its touristy side, most of the bus parties never venture far from the main street and depart before evening, so there’s never any real difficulty in getting away from them.
On a grey January afternoon, the landscape is composed of dark, fir-clad mountains with a light sprinkling of white snow, the tops invisible under low, grey cloud. It’s a monochromatic day. But in February, two years ago, there were vivid blue skies and the snow was piled in head-height heaps at the sides of the road. In summer, when you walk along well-signposted footpaths to the village of Grasswang, the way leads you through beautiful wildflower meadows, the only sound being the tinkling of bells from the cows grazing on the hillside pastures. In September, as you walk through the marshlands alongside the river, the ground is purple with autumn crocus. Oberammergau is one of my all-year-round favourites.
The village has two claims to fame aside from the Passion Play. Because of its isolated location and long winters, a traditional wood-carving industry grew up. The town now has a wood-carvers’ school where male and female students undertake a three year apprenticeship that starts with carving mirror frames and ends with making exact copies of tiny religious masterpieces. The shops are full of their work and if you want something special for your Christmas tree or crib, this is the place to come. The other tradition is that of Luftmalerei or painted house facades. The best known are the Red Riding Hood House; the Hansel and Gretel House, now a home for children in care, and the Pilatus House. The latter was saved from being demolished to make way for a supermarket, by local subscription. The typical wooden shingled roof has no nails and is weighted down against the wind by rocks.

Except for 1870 and 1940, the six-hour performances of the Passion Play have taken place every ten years since 1634, with a local cast of 2,200. Anyone who was born in Oberammergau or has lived there for over twenty years is eligible to take part and in the run up to the performances, all the men of the town, police and military included, grow beards and long hair. Everyone participates in all the rehearsals – miss three and you’re out. Backstage, the costumes are all arranged in alphabetical order by surname according to whether the wearer is a Roman soldier, an angel, a priest or a member of the crowd. The principal performers need to be able to take leave from their jobs: if you’re in a crowd scene, you turn up at the appointed time, do your bit, then go back to work for the rest of the day. The next performances will take place in 2010 and tickets are already on sale.
When you’ve tired of Oberammergau, you can walk, drive or cycle four kilometres to the neighbouring village of Ettal to visit the amazing pink, white and gold abbey church, with its wonderful rococo interior. The adjoining monastery still contains a community of about fifty to sixty monks who run a boarding school and make a liqueur whilst following the Benedictine rule and avoiding contact with the outside world, especially females.
A little way further out of town lies the wonderful Schloss Linderhof, one of the fantasy concoction castles of the so-called “Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria” and in another direction lies his fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein. Whether the king was indeed mentally ill or merely a misunderstood eccentric remains a matter for debate, and the jury is still out on how his body came to be floating in a lake, shortly after he was deposed. It is known that his family were worried about the drain that his building projects caused on their finances and the government was concerned that he had never married or produced an heir. But he was popular amongst the people, both then and now. In the 19th century, the construction of his three castles (the third is Herrenchiemsee) provided a great deal of local employment and nowadays, they are a major source of tourist revenue for the state of Bavaria. They are a monument to a Romantic, opera-loving king who preferred his Wagnerian fantasy world to the realities of 19th century royal politics.

Another popular tourist and pilgrimage destination close to Oberammergau is the Wieskirche or Meadow Church. Lying in an unspoilt area of countryside, the simple exterior does not prepare you for the “wow factor” when you enter. A local farmer’s wife had rescued a neglected statue of Christ and taken it into her house. On 14 June 1738, tears were seen on the statue’s face and as word spread, more and more visitors wanted to witness the miracle. A tiny chapel was built to house the statue, but when this proved inadequate, the present church was constructed. It narrowly escaped dilapidation and destruction during Germany’s secularisation period, but was saved by a consortium of local farmers who converted it to a barn. The only cows you’ll see now, though, are grazing safely in the surrounding meadows.

If you have never visited Bavaria, I can strongly recommend it, at any time of year. Accommodation is of a very high standard and you’ll never go hungry. Oberammergau is only one tiny corner of this fascinating region, but it’s a walker’s, cyclist’s and cross-country skier’s paradise. All routes are clearly marked with the distances, so even the moderately unfit or novice walker should have no difficulty in leaving the car behind and getting out into the countryside. And if you’re old enough to remember what “real” snow was like - as opposed to the couple of inches that fell in the UK in February this year - get your winter woollies on and go in winter!

First published in VISA 84 (Apr 2009)

Samantha goes to Hamburg

by Sally Branston

"Turn around when possible!" "Make a u-turn!" Samantha's tone of voice seemed to be getting more and more exasperated.

Samantha is named after Humphrey Lyttelton's less voluble assistant on I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue on Radio 4. Humph's Samantha says very little. Possibly because she is imaginary. Our Samantha doesn't really exist either. She's our satellite navigation system and she doesn't like it when we deviate from her chosen route.

Samantha's idea was that we would go from Xanten to Soest via the great urban sprawl that is Duisburg, Essen, Bochum and Dortmund whereas we preferred a more rural A-road, passing through a pleasantly wooded and agricultural landscape. What if it took a little longer? We were on holiday. Samantha was not pleased and refused to shut up. "Turn around when possible," she insisted, through gritted microchips.

Xanten has the distinction of being the only place in Germany to begin with the letter "x". It's a pretty town not far from Kleve (Cleves) with cobbled streets, a working windmill, a towered gateway and a historic church. It was settled by the Romans in about 100 AD and there is an archaeological park just outside the town where you can participate in a Roman-style banquet. The church is dedicated to Saint Viktor whose grave was believed to have been amongst those of early Christian martyrs who met their deaths there in the 4th century and who gave their name to the town Ad Sanctos Martyres - now contracted to Xanten. There are lots of cafés and inns around the square. After lunch of the local Westphalian speciality of broad beans and bacon pieces in a white wine sauce, we set off across the Rhine to Soest.

Samantha came into her own when it came to navigating the winding streets of old Soest, delivering us neatly to a car park at the back door of Im Wilden Mann, a traditional German inn. Negotiating the sloping floor of the bedroom, we discovered that we had a nice view of the town square and set off immediately to explore. Quite by accident, we discovered the starting point of a signposted town trail nearby and two and a half hours later, when we ended up at point number thirty-two, a few metres from where we'd started, we felt we had "done" Soest's green-tinged stone buildings sufficiently well to enjoy dinner in the inn's large restaurant.

Next day was Easter Saturday and what a contrast to the quiet day that had preceded it. Arriving in Osnabrück, we did a nightmare tour of the town looking for somewhere to park. All the shops were open and busy, but eventually we found somewhere and headed for the old town. There were a surprising number of beggars, entertainers and punks in the streets. German punks tend to look a little intimidating on account of being about two metres tall, including their Mohicans, and they seemed like some historic, Nordic army of invasion with their studs and studded-collared dogs. In complete contrast was the rather camp, hand-on-hip statue of Frederick Barbarossa outside the historic town hall. Osnabrück's main claim to fame is that the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War in 1648, was declared from the steps of that town hall. The interior has a more contemporary peace dedication and an exhibition showing the town's near total destruction during the Second World War.

We thought we'd give Samantha a treat , so we headed for Hamburg via her preferred motorway route. At 140 kph, or 87 mph, I was one of the slowest on the road. Two-lane German motorways aren't for the faint-hearted. On the rare occasions when I came up behind a slower vehicle, I needed a gap behind me of about half a mile in order to get past without a Mercedes in the boot. I only got flashed twice. At one point where the road became three lanes, a British car in front did the typical British thing and immediately pulled into the centre lane doing exactly 70 mph oblivious to the sudden braking and parting of the ways behind as cars veered to either side to avoid him.

Hamburg is difficult to characterize and not an obvious destination for most British tourists. It's probably worth a stop-off if you're in the area, but not a special trip. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a full thirteen hour day of sightseeing, but you have to seek out its treasures and take advice from a good guide book or, even better, a German friend, in order fully to appreciate it.

We began Easter Sunday morning at the Fish Market. This early morning Sunday market begins at about 6am and is over by 10 and sells everything from live chickens to leather goods. The early finish was the condition extracted by the church when it first gave permission for the market to be held, thus enabling shoppers to go on to Sunday service afterwards. It was interesting to watch the traders filling up baskets of fruit or boxes of house-plants. The eel stall was one of the most entertaining. By 9 o'clock we were in the market hall, drinking hot chocolate and eating doughnuts to the accompaniment of a local rock group. The Germans were mostly drinking beer by then and everybody seemed to be having a good time.

From here, we went to the old tunnel under the Elbe, car-free on a Sunday, and walked under the river to the other side and back again. Both cars and people get down to the tunnel via lifts. Then it was time for Kaffee und Kuchen before taking a boat ride on the Aalster lake and its canals, past the back gardens of some of the wealthy residents of Hamburg. After lunch, we walked through some of the remaining older streets in town. There aren't many: not only because of the War but also because the city was formerly constructed largely of wood, with very narrow streets and therefore prone to burning down from time to time. There is however an interesting warehouse district and an Expressionist office district.

We still wanted to discover more, but whilst the spirit was willing, the flesh was getting weaker, so we jumped on one of the city sight-seeing buses and still managed to see a bit more. Our guide was a well-spoken, informative Portuguese immigrant. There must be quite a few of them because the restaurant area recommended by our hotel desk clerk consisted almost entirely of Portuguese restaurants. As we'd eaten there the previous evening and were trying to conserve resources, I'm afraid to say that we finished the day, courtesy of Burger King, with a hamburger in Hamburg!

Next morning, after a rather good breakfast, we allowed Samantha to have her own way and take us to the motorway. Not for long, however. The traffic was horrendous at the end of the holiday weekend and the motorway that we'd hurtled up two days earlier at 90 mph was reduced to a slow crawl. By early afternoon, we were pleased to get off it and head into Münster for a rest and a wander round.

Münster rivals Osnabrück in its claims to be associated with the Peace of Westphalia and goes one better. Their Town Hall boasts the actual room where the treaty was signed. It's worth a look if you're passing through, as is the astronomical clock in the cathedral. There was an intriguing date plaque fastened to the wall of a house nearby. Just a date a couple of years into the future. Is it the day the owners' mortgage gets paid up? What is its significance? We shall probably never know.

But we enjoyed Easter in northern Germany with Samantha, despite her nagging. I wonder where she'd like to go next?

First published in VISA issue 74 (Aug 2007)

The Rhine is Fine

By David Gourley

Apparently a voyage along the Rhine is the first river cruise that most people do.  Not so in our case as we have previously done cruises into the hinterland of St Petersburg, along the Dnieper in Ukraine (described in Visa 56A-57) and along the greatest of all rivers, the Nile. The Rhine is perhaps less exotic but we wanted to do it nevertheless and finally did so last summer. We started and finished in Cologne, getting as far upstream as Strasbourg.  I had previously been to both these cities but not to anywhere in between.

We started our journey by travelling to Brussels on Eurostar.  We have always upgraded to Leisure Select when travelling Eurostar and did so this time.  I noticed, in the run-up to our trip, that Leisure Select had, rather ominously, been rebranded as Standard Premium.  I was right to be concerned.  The Man in Seat 61 assures us that one is still travelling First Class.  And, yes, the carriage is unchanged.  But in Leisure Select one could enjoy a complimentary four-course meal with a hot main course, all preceded by a glass of champagne.  Not anymore.  In Standard Premium one still gets complimentary wine or beer, but no glass of champagne, and one now gets a cold   “light meal” comprising “a selection of three taster dishes”.  Another way in which the travel experience has been downgraded.  

From Brussels we transferred by coach to Cologne.  This was rather tedious: three hours of pounding along motorways in the dark, for much of the time in driving rain.  The one bit of interest was to find ourselves, to our surprise, in the Netherlands.  When we had travelled by train between Brussels and Cologne, we had crossed from Belgium straight into Germany.  But the motorway is further north so takes one through the southernmost Dutch province, Limburg, which interposes its territory between those two countries.

Just across the border in Germany, we had a comfort stop at a service station.  I don’t much like service stations back home and rather assumed that this was just the sort of thing that the Germans would do better.  Not so if this one is anything to go by.  It was very basic and the toilets were in portakabins outside the main building, meaning one had to go back into the rain. A lady sitting in a cabin nearby expected to be paid for the privilege of using these facilities. Say what one will about British service stations – I could start with the fact that one is charged for using their ATMs – they do accept, at least for now, the obligation to provide decent toilets at no charge.  

Our boat was moored a little upstream from the city centre.  On the whole we were satisfied with it.  We had selected this particular cruise because the boat had hotel-like rooms with a bed rather than bunks and a bath as well as a shower.  Rather luxurious compared to previous cruise experiences.  The meals were generally good.  Our one criticism was that it was free seating, our first experience of this.  To us, it seemed rather impersonal.   And, as a couple travelling on our own, we might find ourselves perched at the end of a table otherwise occupied by a group of friends on holiday together.  But a different point of view was put to us by one of our tour guides.  With assigned places, one can be landed with people one can’t stand.  She recalled a cruise where she had felt, by the end of the tour, like murdering the woman who had shared their table.  

Hardly any of the staff were German.  The captain was Dutch and most of the staff, including at fairly senior level, were from former Communist countries.  In the Cold War era most of these would not have been allowed to travel, let alone work, anywhere near the Rhine which of course flows through former West Germany.

After dinner we ascended to the deck to watch our boat set sail, the rain having finally stopped.  The boat went a little way downstream so we were in sight of the city centre, with its magnificent Cathedral, now floodlit, as we turned full circle.  The first stop was in Koblenz, which lies at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle Rivers.  Some cruise boats turn right here and carry on down the Moselle, which by all accounts is very scenic, as far as Trier, Germany’s oldest city.  A nice story about Trier was told to us by another of our tour guides, who was a WW2 buff.  Towards the end of the War General Patton took the city with two divisions.  Subsequently he received a message from General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, telling him not to take it unless he had four divisions.  “What do you want me to do”, he telegraphed in reply, “give it back?”

It seemed to be our lot that our shore visits coincided with major events.  Koblenz had been chosen as the venue of the Federal Horticultural Show and I am sure it would have been very interesting to have paid a visit.  But the short amount of time on shore did not allow for this and with various streets closed, navigating oneself around the city was not as straightforward as might otherwise have been the case.  

We found our way somehow to the Deutsches Eck (or German Corner), so called because it is at the confluence of the city’s two rivers, an area of great natural beauty.  A massive memorial towers over the site, dedicated to Emperor Wilhelm I, who presided over Germany’s unification in the nineteenth century.  Shortly before the end of WW2 the statue of Wilhelm was destroyed in an American artillery attack.  It was re-established in 1993, following Germany’s second unification.  I was intrigued to see that, around the foot of the monument, the shields of the former West German Länder (including Berlin though much of it was in the East) were depicted, with the exception of the Saar, which was separately listed at the side along with the lost provinces of the East.  Rather odd, I thought, since the Saar was in the West, being indeed the Land furthest away from the ‘interzonal’ border with the East.  The explanation was that the Länder were those that were in the Federal Republic at the time ie the early fifties: the Saar had been occupied by France since WW2 and did not rejoin Germany until 1957, following a plebiscite.  

Our next stop was Boppard.  Here a dilemma presented itself: whether to take a chairlift or go into the picturesque town centre, mutually exclusive options as they were in opposite directions from our landing point.  We went for the former, reasoning that, as it was June, we could still take a stroll into the town in daylight after dinner.  We made the right choice.  We were rewarded with two distinctive views over the Rhine and its Valley.  One is from Gideonseck (Gideon’s Corner) from which one sees the whole of the River as it loops through the area.  In complete contrast, though only a short walk away, is the Four Lakes View, so called because of an optical illusion: one is still looking down at the Rhine but, because of the configuration of the surrounding hills, there is the appearance of looking at four separate lakes.  Our walk after dinner gave just about enough time to take in the historic centre. 

We moored in Boppard overnight.  The following morning we cruised the most scenic part of the River, the celebrated Gorge.  We were lucky with the weather.  Later on during the day the heavens opened up but it stayed dry, albeit very overcast, in the morning.  This really is the Romantic Rhine, towering cliffs and a fair few castles.  A recurring theme was how the castles had over the centuries been battled over by the French and Germans.  Culminating in WW2, France and Germany went to war three times in the space of seventy years.  Germany was indisputably the aggressor on all three occasions but in earlier history the reverse might have been the case.  

The famed Lorelei Rock is passed on this section.  Somewhere on the cliff face is a small statue of said maiden and I looked for it in vain.  My focus is not great.  On a drive round  a national park in Alaska there was great excitement in our bus when a moose was espied.  Rather like elephants in Africa, the moose is the animal everyone wants to see in Alaska.  Trouble was, the animal was in the distance and so small I couldn’t make it out.  The whole bus was willing me to see it.  “You could have pretended to see it”, Cathy later admonished.  (The happy sequel was that a moose wandered across the road directly ahead of our bus; even I saw that one.)

From now on the Rhine is a border.  We had been sailing through the Land of Rhineland Palatinate  and this continues for many miles on the west side of the river.  On the east side one comes first to the Land of Hesse and later on to Baden-Wurttemberg.  Further south again the river forms the international border between Germany and France.  Confusingly some of the territory on the west side, including the Palatinate’s capital Mainz, is known as Rheinhesse, albeit it is not in the Land of Hesse.  Historically though it was part of the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, one of the numerous independent entities that existed before German unification.  Evidently there are some in Hesse who still think the area is rightfully part of their Land.  

Our afternoon stop  was in Mainz.  By now it was pouring and some opted to stay on board.  But we don’t like letting the weather get in the way of seeing new sights.  In particular we wanted to visit the Gutenberg Museum which entailed a fairly quick sprint through the rain.  A good place to go on a rainy day but also one we would have wanted to go to anyway.  Johannes Gutenberg was the inventor of the printing press.  Mainz and Strasbourg both claim to be the place where he did this; what is not in dispute is that he was born in Mainz.  The Museum is fascinating.   An original Gutenberg press is there and one is given a demonstration.  Its most precious exhibits are the two Gutenberg  Bibles.

The rain obligingly left off as we were coming to the end of our visit.  So in the remaining time left we could explore Mainz in the dry.  The special events jinx followed us here.  There was some sort of festival in progress meaning that the city’s handsome streets were in part obscured by marquees.  I suppose that visitors should not complain if townspeople want to enjoy a festival but I still wonder why on earth the authorities permitted a marquee to be erected immediately alongside a beautiful and historic fountain, causing it to be turned off.  

The following day we were due to land in Mannheim and from there be driven to Heidelberg.  We were informed however that due to some problem or another in Mannheim, we would instead land in Speyer.  This, it turned out, was something of a bonus.  Speyer is a gem whereas Mannheim, worthy place though it doubtless is, is essentially an industrial city and not really a tourist destination.  

Heidelberg is one of the highlights of any Rhineland tour and one of our reasons for choosing this particular holiday: we had both long hankered after going there.   Sometimes one ends up disappointed when one finally gets to a place that has been on the wish list but not so here.  This is a historic university city that has close ties to Cambridge.  On the way into the city we saw many fine residences and our guide pointed out a couple of these.  One of these belongs to Mannheim born tennis star Steffi Graf and her husband Andre Agassi and the other to Chancellor Angela Merkel.  I was rather surprised for, as is well known, Frau Merkel hails from the former East  and her usual place of abode is near Berlin.  But she has also acquired this bolthole in the far southwest of Germany.  

The main thoroughfare running alongside the Rhine is named from Konrad Adenauer, a Rhinelander and first Chancellor of postwar (West) Germany.  Well into his eighties by the time he stepped down in 1963 – he was known as Der Älter, or the Old Man – he presided over the Wirtschschaftswunder (or Economic Miracle) and, after the horrors of Nazism, played a lead role in re-establishing Germany, in the Western Länder at least, as a peaceful, democratic and essentially decent country.  Some, including the then prime Minister of Britain, feared that a reunified Germany might not be like that.  One French observer opined that he liked Germany so much that he was glad there were two of them.  After all, if West Germany was essentially a Rhenish-Bavarian-Hanoverian republic, East Germany was, well, Prussian.  But the Germany of today is still very much the one that Adenauer founded.  

There was a bit of free time after we’d had a walking tour of the city centre.  We used it to ascend the cable car.  From the top were fine views that inter alia took in the whole of nearby Mannheim.  So we were seeing the city even though we had not actually been in it.  On the way down we paused our journey to look round the castle, or rather the small part of it that can be visited without having a guided tour.  We admired the Heidelberg Tun, a massive wine barrel whose construction entailed the use of 130 oak trees.  

We were driven back to Speyer and had a bit of time to look round this beautiful city.  Most first time visitors will, like us, make for the Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage site.  But there is plenty else here to enjoy.  We strolled down the main street and racked up four churches, including the Cathedral.  Our last one was the Memorial Church of the Protestation, a Protestant church that was constructed in memory of the protest that took place at the Diet of Speyer by the Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire in 1529.  Despite this early association with Protestantism, Speyer, like the Rhineland generally, is today strongly Catholic.  Due to the Rhineland, and also Bavaria, the Catholic: Protestant split in former West Germany was around 50:50.  In unified Germany Protestants are in the majority due to their preponderance in the Eastern Länder.   

We awoke the next morning in a different country, France, and in the city of Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace.  This province, along with its neighbour to the west, Lorraine, was long in dispute between France and Germany and they have changed hands on various occasions, most recently in 1945 when they were restored to France after having been forcibly incorporated into the Third Reich.  After WW2 Western Europe was blessed with some wise and far-sighted statesmen and those in France and (West) Germany resolved not only that their countries would cease to be enemies, but that they would become steadfast friends.  Germany accordingly renounced any further claim to Alsace-Lorraine whose inhabitants consider themselves to be every bit as French as Les Parisiennes, albeit they might have a fondness for sauerkraut.  They might though call it choucroute.   

Another outcome of postwar statesmanship was that Strasbourg, for so long a symbol of conflict instead became a symbol of European unity.  Indeed it is the unofficial ‘capital of Europe’.  Clustered in an area a mile or so north of the centre are major European institutions: the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the European Court of Human Rights.  

For all that it was fought over, Strasbourg remains a lovely city with a historic medieval centre.   We were driven into the centre and had the morning to ourselves. We immediately went inside the Cathedral and were glad we did for we would have been disappointed if we had left doing so to late morning for the Cathedral closes for  a while as there is a pre-booked demonstration of its celebrated Astronomical Clock.  The Cathedral is massive.  In fact for a couple of centuries or so it was the world’s tallest building until, in 1874, it was surpassed by St Nikolai’s Church in Hamburg.  Johannes Gutenberg is remembered: close by the main square is named from him as is a hotel.

A good way of seeing Strasbourg, if one only has  a short time there, is to take a boat trip.  This takes one through the picturesque Petite France area.  An appealing name though the origin is decidedly unromantic: it was once a place where people with syphilis, or the “French disease” as it was known in German, were treated.  As well as taking one around the central waterway system, the boat diverts north to give a view of the European institutions before returning to the boarding point.  

We then had  a last wander round the centre.  The only thing here that jarred was a group navigating their Segways through the pedestrianized area, looking to a man and woman like zombies as they concentrated on their vehicles, oblivious to their beautiful surrounds.  Is this to be a new form of harassment for pedestrians along with the ‘lycra lout’ variety of cyclists?  I understand though that segways are not allowed in public areas in the UK.  Phew!

After lunch on the boat, we saw more of Alsace, this time heading south to Colmar, for a while travelling along the historic Wine Route, which takes one through delightful villages in idyllic countryside framed in the distance by the Vosges Mountains on one side and the hills of the Black Forest on the other.  On the way in to the town we passed a replica of the Statue of Liberty, the original of course having been a gift from France to the USA.  After parking, we walked through an unprepossessing shopping mall.  Then, as we exited, all changed.  We had travelled not just through space but through time.  Colmar is an unspoilt and very beautiful medieval city.  If a boat trip is the best way of ‘doing’ Strasbourg in a short visit, a noddy train is the way to see Colmar.  An annoying name but they are for adults and the way to see as much as possible of its historic centre, including an area known as Little Venice.  

Our return journey to Cologne now started.  There was just one stop en route, in the town of R?desheim.  Whereas Boppard is just to the north of the Rhine Gorge, R?desheim is just to the south and again we moored overnight.  The special events jinx returned.  We were forewarned that Motorbike Week was in progress.  We were thrilled, not.  Sure enough the place was swarming with bikers.  But the atmosphere was congenial.  Mainly middle-aged men whose pride and joy was their Harley Davison.  No excessive noise and not a Hell’s Angel in sight.  

Rudesheim , with its  picturesque and narrow main street, the Drosselgasse, is one of the Rhine’s tourist hotspots so one can expect it to be teeming with visitors even without the bikers.  Lonely Planet is a bit sniffy: “if you’re looking for a tourist thimble, this is definitely the place to come”.   But we liked it and one can very easily escape the crowds as it small and surrounded by beautiful countryside.  We boarded a cable car which took us over a vineyard and then up to the top of a hill from which fine views over the Rhine Valley, stretching as far as Mainz, could be enjoyed.   Here is located the striking Germania monument, which commemorates the creation of unified Germany in 1871.

Now that we were doing the journey by day we were able to appreciate how beautiful the stretch of the river north of Koblenz is.  Here was the famous bridge at Remagen.   In WW2 the advancing Allies were surprised to find that the Bridge was intact and that they could therefore cross the river unimpeded, hastening their drive eastwards which took them to their rendezvous on the Elbe with the Red Army.  The Bridge is no more as it collapsed soon after capture . Its western end houses a memorial.  

On the final stretch before reaching Cologne, we passed Bonn which was for some forty years the capital of West, and then for a brief while reunited, Germany, before Berlin resumed this role.  There was some surprise that this relatively small city was selected as the capital of the Federal Republic rather than, say, centrally located Frankfurt.  It’s rather as if Britain had been divided in like fashion to Germany and Bath had been made the capital of the non-communist west.  The fact that Konrad Adenauer was a native of Bonn just might have had something to do with it.  But not for nothing was Der Älter known for his shrewdness.  He believed, correctly as it turned out, that the division of Germany would be temporary and he wanted the capital to have a temporary look and feel so not be an obvious choice.  Frankfurt might have settled down too comfortably in the role.  

Finally we came to Cologne but we had one more night on board and an afternoon in which to explore the city.  The city was devastated by WW2 bombing but it was right at the heart of the Wirtschaftswunder and has long been a prosperous place.  Running down to the banks of  the Rhine is the pleasant Old Town area and there is of course the magnificent Cathedral which, like St Paul's in London, survived the bombing.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  And it has a tower.  Give me a tower and I want to climb it so I duly bought  a ticket not realizing it involved a climb of over 300 feet and 509 steps.  A bit of a challenge for a sixty something gent but there could be no turning back.  On leaving the Cathedral I espied our three tour guides and, somewhat uncharacteristically, went over to them and announced that I had climbed Cologne Cathedral.  After dinner one called me aside: she presented me with a commemorative scroll.

First Published in VISA 103 and 104 (June - August 2012)