Germany
See our Germany photo album
[Posted by Susanne]
Germany was a welcome relief of western familiarity after our (at times) very foreign experience in China. After the China/Tibet debacle we only had about a week to book new tickets from Beijing to Frankfurt so despite some lukewarm reviews of Turkish Airways we jumped on their flight from Beijing to Dusseldorf. We were pleasantly surprised with the new A340(?) and other amenities on the flight. Similar to other airlines that we’ve liked such as Japan Airlines and Korean Air, Turkish Airways had individual TV screens with tons of in-flight entertainment options. Both legs of our flight were on time and we even scored exit row seats despite our last minute booking!
We were greeted in Dusseldorf by Kurt’s sister Adele. She and her husband Uli live 30 km away in a suburb of Mülheim and they took us home to spoil us with home-cooked meals and family hospitality! Mülheim is in a coal mining region and there are several sites to visit which elaborate on the history of this industry. In nearby Essen, we went to Zeche Zollverein. This former colliery was once considered a technical and architectural masterpiece due to its efficiency and aesthetics. Today it is a designated World Heritage Site and houses several museums including the Red Dot Design Museum which was my favorite part of the complex. We also visited Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (German Mining Museum). One of the main attractions here is a replica mine located 20 meters underground where we explored 2.5 km of drifts containing huge drills, cutters, conveyers and other mining equipment.
Since we were only a 2 hour drive away from the Netherlands we decided to spend a day in Amsterdam. Our first stop was the Van Gogh Museum. This collection is put together very nicely with his works organized chronologically and then separated into the different stages of his career which seem directed by his geographical location at the time. Other than those few hours dedicated to art we spent the majority of the day shopping. Amsterdam is a great shopping city! Like in New York or Tokyo I was content to do that all day long…and I pretty much did.
After a few days of exploring around Mulheim and a day trip to Cologne the four of us decided to go on a road trip. We headed south on the Autobahn and based ourselves at Uli’s family home in Untersulmetingen, a small village about 30 minutes outside of Ulm. In addition to amazing hospitality from Uli’s parents this gave us a good jumping off point for daytrips to Rothenberg, Nuremberg, Lake Constance and Ludwigsburg.
Hitler apparently identified Rothenberg as “the” ideal German town and when we arrived it was easy to see why – the walled city truly is a model medieval village complete with drawbridge, towers and gates. We headed straight for the clock tower located at the city’s center and were just in time to watch the wooden people figurines pop out at the top of the hour. After a few minutes of watching their mechanized motions we moved onto some window shopping. Trinket shops abound but we found ourselves amused by toy store windows filled with wooden train sets, antique-looking rocking horses and puppets. It only takes a bit of imagination to see a toymaker in the back carving Pinocchio.
After seeing the town of Rothenberg we moved on to the much larger Nuremberg and found it to have a nice balance between contemporary and traditional attractions. While shopping, I was reunited with my favorite clothing stores. I became a repeat-offender of slipping into kitchen stores carrying cooking accessories injected with fun colors and sleek design and I was also introduced to an array of German Christmas shops featuring the traditional wooden candle carousels that I pored over only to walk away without buying one in the end. To round out our quintessentially German experience we walked around the Nuremberg Castle and then lunched on very tasty sausages, sauerkraut and white asparagus served on simple tin plates at a casual eatery with wooden benches and tables surrounding a big open grill in the middle of the dining room.
In the area around Lake Constance we discovered the demise of our recently acquired calorie conscience diet. It’s called spaghetti ice. Because it rained almost the entire afternoon we were out our day was spent going from one café to the next ordering hot drinks and dessert. Spaghetti ice, as we discovered, is like an ice cream sundae on steroids with the unique twist of the ice cream resembling spaghetti noodles. Wet, cold and uncomfortably full from eating sweets all day we headed back for a lazy evening at home.
For the last destination of our tour of the south we went to Ludwigsburg Castle. This very large and opulent estate was originally a hunting lodge in the 18th century. It fell into disrepair for a while before later monarchs revived it and used it as their primary residence. We took the official guided tour and thought it was well-worth our time. Unlike other estate tours that we’ve taken this one seemed to cover most of the grounds and left us feeling like we’d seen the majority of this “home.”
Aside from the very touristy parts of our trip the highlight was spending time with Adele, Uli and the rest of the Woerz family. At their home in Untersulmetingen Adele and I feasted on the blackberries, raspberries and currant berries we picked in the backyard and Kurt can now pour beer like a real German bartender thanks to Uli’s dad’s patient instructions!
After 6 weeks in Southeast Asia and China, spending a week off the tourist track with family in Germany was just the thing we needed. By the week’s end we had gained back any weight that we had lost while in Asia and we were fully recharged for our next adventure in Tanzania.