SUMMING UP: A TALE OF 2 CONTINENTS

What are the two continents that are being juxtaposed? First off,  Europe v America. Secondly, Europe v Russia. It seems to me that both America and Russia have had this odd love-hate relationship with Europe. Theoretically Russia is part of Europe; but then 2/3 of its land-mass is part of Asia. America broke from Europe 235 years ago, but we continue to be heavily involved with… Read More...

DALLAS am MAIN

The Romantic Road was far behind us now. Instead, we were on the S2259 highway, heading into the megalopolis of Frankfurt, the center of Germany’s second-largest metropolitan region, and continental Europe’s largest financial center, home to 5-and-a-half million diverse people. We had left in 1964 from a city of 600 thousand still recovering from the devastation of the War. And returning in 2010 to a huge city known as… Read More...

A DIET OF WORMS AND DOCTOR PEPPER

We both had rather fond memories of Heidelberg from back ‘in the day’ – December of 1962, the first snow-fall, our first trip out of Frankfurt on the train. We walked from the train station to a picturesque gasthaus at the foot of the schloss mountain. Inside, were picnic-styled wooden benches in a large hall with wrought-iron chandeliers. We hadn’t eaten at all that morning;… Read More...

XIV

JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG, REDEMPTION  AT ROTHENBURG

In a sense, Nuremberg had ‘three strikes’ against it when World War II ended. First, it was the site for Richard Wagner’s famous opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg; Wagner was Hitler’s favorite composer, and the opera (both the libretto and music written by Wagner) would become a patriotic, symbolic and nationalistic epic for Germany soon after its first performance in 1868.

When the Third… Read More...

THE ROMANTIC ROAD IN REVERSE

Germany’s “Romantic Road” starts in Wurzburg, about 60 miles south of Frankfurt, and terminates in Füssen (or Fuessen – if you can’t find an umlaut on your key-board), just a few miles north of the Austrian border. While the beautiful and historic towns, churches and castles along this old trade route have always been there, the term itself was coined in 1950, to rejuvenate the tourist industry in now-peaceful… Read More...

THE PLAY’S THE THING

In the early decades of the 17^th Century, another outbreak of the nefarious bubonic plague occurred in Central Europe; this was not as virulent a strain nor as wide-spread as the plague known as the Black Death that killed a third of Europe’s entire population in the 14^th Century. But it was a gruesome way to die, and sanitary conditions of the time made it virtually untreatable. This particular pandemic… Read More...

WILLKOMMEN AUF DEUTSCHLAND

The German border was not far away, and there was almost nothing there to identify the separation between the two countries: just two blue-and-yellow Eurosigns facing in opposite directions. Like Italy, Austria and Germany are also relatively new nation-states, even though their historical existence is much, much older. Germany became a modern nation in 1871 under Bismarck and the Kaiser; Austria in 1919 with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following… Read More...

X

SOUNDS LIKE GERMAN TO ME

As we headed back across the Lagoon, we saw several enormous Cruise Ships heading toward Venice; these were those multi-tiered vessels that carry thousands of passengers, and threaten to take-over the entire Vacation/ Tourism industry. The “floating condominiums” bring not only a lot of tourists to Venice’s narrow streets and canals, but also noise and pollution; and it is widely believed that the vibrations they… Read More...

IX

LIFE IN VENICE

Venice is one of the more unique cities in the world – of all the cities famous for canals (Amsterdam, St Petersburg, Bangkok, Fort Lauderdale, L.A.’s Venice), it is easily the oldest and most famous. The city is named for the Veneti people, who first settled the area several centuries before Christ. In Roman times, it became a sanctuary for people seeking shelter from marauding… Read More...

VIII

A LEANING TOWER AND A ROMANTIC BALCONY

In the morning we said good-bye to Montecatini Terme, and its hilly locust-tree-lined streets. And headed west, back toward the Mediterranean and Ligurian Sea. Our first destination was Pisa; we had been there many years ago – 46 to be exact –-coming from a different direction then-– south from Switzerland and the Alps. Then we took the newly-opened coastal Autostrada directly to… Read More...