Across the Border: Strasbourg

... Except there is no real border anymore when you cross over from Germany into France, only a sign saying: “ You now entered France!"  and that the speed limit is 120 km/h on motorways and 90 km/h on national roads. Strasbourg is merely 50 minutes away from where we were staying in Baden- Baden and well worth a visit. In fact, Alsace is one of my favorite destinations for quick day visits. The best time to avoid huge crowds that are almost always present, is when summer school holidays are over in September. Truth be told that the month of October is indeed the best for gourmet travelers because the first fresh wines are available, all types of venison and mushrooms.

The whole region is well renowned and loved for its quaint, picturesque and medieval towns, dotted with timber framed houses which all seem to have an abundance of window boxes with flowers spilling out. Whether you drive to Riquewihr, Kaysersberg (birthplace of Albert Schweitzer), Obernai or Colmar ─ you are always in for a treat. The year before, our choice was Colmar, my all-time favorite, smaller than Strasbourg but with equally big crowds of tourists vying for sightseeing spots and restaurant tables.

Since my hubby had not seen the capital of the Alsace region and the seat of the European Parliament as well as the European Court of Human Rights. The city’s population has almost doubled in the last decade, with the greater urban area now comprising just under 1 million inhabitants.

The adjacent area to the northwest covers the magnificent natural park and mountain region of the “Vosges”, an ideal location for hikers, bikers and nature lovers. You will find fewer tourists there. I spent a whole week during my college years on a very isolated but romantic “gite”, i.e. a cottage.

We had tried to find home swapping partners on the French site, in vain. We almost made a deal, i.e. signed the exchange contract, when the French found out that it’s likely to be very hot in Florida in the month of August. Indeed. Though there are many picturesque towns of a similar nature on the German side of the border, the French has a more exotic feel to me, being German. And the food in the restaurants is different, even the baguettes are better…although a bit more expensive. Strasbourg, by the way, is very expensive territory with a normal iceream sundae I enjoy in Germany on a regular basis costing here almost twice as much.

With this being our last excursion of this year’s European stay, we enjoyed every minute in spite of the crowds, and we took plenty of photos. The weather was only glorious. We wished we could have stayed along the banks of the river Rhine which runs almost all the length of the border between the two countries. We brought home some regional delicacies like “foie gras” and wine. We skipped the pottery that is typical for this region, colorful stoneware, but just too heavy  to bring back on a plane. Hubby and I, both agreed that Colmar had a more intimate feel to it. But now we had “done” the entire Alsace.
All there was left to do after this excursion was pack up or numerous gigantic bags and clean the house we had spent 3 happy weeks in for our departure back to the US.

Touring the Black Forest

                                                  (View from our bedroom window over the mountains)

Our last two weeks of our trip had approached. Although we stay for 6-8 weeks at a time on our trips, my hubby hardly gets any vacation time: 2 weeks. In contrast to European employers- and in particular German ones- corporate America doesn’t allow for 4 weeks paid holidays. The good news is that it doesn’t matter to my better half or his company where he sits with his laptop and phone connection. He just has to adjust to American work times…that is not always easy but often results in even longer work hours. One week of his precious vacation time was basically spent traveling from north to south seeing relatives. Now he was ready to use up his second week for real relaxation!

We enjoyed the surrounding by making trips into the Black Forest. Many names come to mind, Freiburg, Tűbingen, both old University towns with a lot of character and medieval town centers that we both enjoy visiting.

We had picked one town in particular, Bad Herrenalb, because I have a dear friend there whom I once met on a flight to Atlanta. It’s yet another spa town, not of such upscale renown as Baden-Baden; definitely more for seniors, quiet and picturesque. All these towns have exquisite restaurants and a big number of beer gardens if you like that kind of thing.

Since the temperature were well above 30 degrees Celsius, the altitude of Bad Herrenalb made it very pleasant. Hiking up hills in shady green unspoilt forests and even drives thru winding country lanes up and down the hills, taking in a castle or two is what we loved most. 

I was delighted because my friend had kept me a big portion of white asparagus in the freezer. The season was officially over since 21 June. It must not be cut after that date anymore. But she had bought and peeled it for me as a surprise. That’s what friends are for! (I already mentioned the difference to green asparagus in Season 1 and my penchant for the white one). That with Parma ham and maybe a sauce Hollandaise and fresh potatoes and I’m in heaven!

That weekend we were in Bad Herrenalb, they had their traditional summer fest/ town fest. In the southern regions, summer fests and later on in the summer wine fests abound. Any excuse celebrating and drinking their local wines. Wine fests even crown their own Queen of Wine for the Year! Normally a rather quiet town, festivities lasted till well after midnight.

Last Stop: Baden-Baden

Our next stop: Baden- Baden. Eventually we arrived at our final destination and second exchange partner near Baden-Baden. There is always some excitement when you reach your new exchange destination. You have a certain picture in your head from the description of the owners on that website and pictures that you have seen. One has to be prepared that once expectations aren’t always met. In this case we got lucky again. The townhouse was a lovely abode with a small garden in the back and the balcony on the first floor. This time our abode is a little smaller, a duplex as we say in Ireland, but sufficient for our needs. The location nestled against a hillside and its views over the beginnings of the Black Forest were priceless. It being a lovely summer day, we opened all doors and windows to air the place and feel the fresh mountain the breeze rush through it. Most German private homes have no AC. Fresh mountain air cleared the house at night even on the hottest days when the barometer nearly reached 40 degrees Celsius.
There were no unpleasnat surprises, no missing light bulbs like in France last year or broken sinks. Neither did we have to feeed unannounced pets like fish or guinea pigs! 

One downside, however, needs mentioning and that was a bad Internet connection due to the surrounding hills.

Baden- Baden is a world renowned spa resort and also famous for its high-end casino. 

The German word Baden means  to bathe.  In the last century, the elite of European countries came here for the "cure". This mostly consisted of drinking certain water from mineral wells that are still being  made available to ailing people who want to improve their health -- for a few Euro now. Then it was most glitzy. Even the Roman used that already during Roman times. From here, it’s easy to get to the French border into Alsace, France.

The Kurgarten (spa garden) at the Kurhaus annually hosts Baden-Baden Summer Nights, an outdoor event featuring live classical music concerts. I was looking forward to spending time in the Fabergé Museum. Maybe a trip to the Therme (Thermalbad), hot mineral waters you can swim in; good for arthritis but  a bit much on a hot summer’s day. 

The Peace Treaty of Műnster and Osnabrűck

When traveling through Germany from North to South, the most convenient motorway is the A1. It takes you straight from Hamburg down 732km to the State of Saarland in the southwest on the french border. After leaving Bremen, the next two stops of interests are the cities of Osnabrűck and Műnster. They're medium-sized towns of about 200,000 inhabitants surrounded by agricultural countryside and hilly forests are well suitable to bicycle rides. Both have a lovely old city center with the typical timber framed houses you find in many in German towns, pedestrianized areas where you can hang out in a street cafe and watch the world go by -- something I so miss about life in a city. When one is mentioned the other one comes up as well, like twins,because it was here, in these two cities, where the peace treaty ending the third the year war was signed. It was a religious war that raged from 1618 to 1648 dividing almost the whole of Europe between Protestants and Catholics. The Protestants occupied the Netherlands, the northern territories up to Sweden and along the Baltic coastline. The Catholics had their allies among the Spanish and French nations.It also marked the 80 year long war of independece of the Netherlands. 

The town halls in both cities are well worth the visit to see the artifacts deriving from that. The documents signed to end a horrible time and in European history that plagued the whole continent. Both sides had utterly spent their resources. Millions of people had died, farmers were destitute and the land had been pilfered by marauding soldiers. Peace negotiations had taken five years.

In this Treaty, the whole of northern Germany, including the eastern parts I wrote about on our travels (Mecklenburg, Pommern, Brandenburg) and the area down to Bremen were handed over to Sweden and became Swedish territory. Even the town outside Bremen where my family is still living belonged to Sweden for over 100 years after the armistice. This peace treaty  is also called  The Westphalian Peace.

The land south of Műnster became part the holy Roman  Empire of German nations . Coincidentally, Műnster was my hometown and where I went to university (WWU) and Osnabrűck is where my parents lived during my college years.  It used to have the second biggest university before Reunification in 1990. Műnster is the town where I spent the first ten years of may married life, had two babies and from where we emigrated to Ireland. You can read about that on another blog of mine: www.InandoutofIreland.blogspot.com.

Bremen- A Hanseatic City & Free State

…And my hometown where I grew up. I still have an aunt and cousins there but our former granny flat is no longer available. Therefore we needed a hotel. That plus the rental car we picked up in Hamburg were the first real costs after our transatlantic flight. 

Bremen, with a population of over 500,000 is one of  the 16 Bundeslaender (states) in the German federation. The only other "free town-state" is Hamburg, also part of the Hanseatic League. Its main claim to fame is that it's the home of the Town Musicians of Bremen, a fairytale recorded by the Brothers Grimm.

In case you don't remember it from your childhood: “In the story a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster, all past their prime years in life and usefulness on their respective farms, were soon to be discarded or mistreated by their masters. One by one they leave their homes and set out together. They decide to go to Bremen, known for its freedom, to live without owners and become musicians there. ("Something better than death we can find anywhere.") Thank you, Wikipedia!

Its famous sculpture of these 4 animals stands in its main square adjacent to the city’s magnificent Rathaus (town hall) and Dom (Cathedral). The main hall in the Rathaus is most impressive with its heavy woodwork carved hundreds of years ago showing the splendor of the Hanseatic League’s hayday.  

The Cathedral , a Gothic building built between 11^th-13^th century revealed a gruesome find in 1698. In its basement, two mummified corpses were found: presumably roofers who had fallen off the roof a long time before, maybe even during its construction. For a long time, scientist thought that the lead used for roofing and the radioactivity that it gave off were responsible for their mummification. Current thinking is that it was a natural desiccation process of the two corpses that were forgotten there.

When I was a child, they were still on show in the cellar, now they are housed in the Dom’s museum.

The old part of the city is a real medieval town in itself: It’s called The Schnoor, and well worth the walk through it over by the side of the river Weser: Full if intriguing artisan shop and boutiques as well as coffee shops and restaurants. No surprise, you’ll encounter many tourists.

The Hanseatic League & a visit to Luebeck

Driving along the northern coast from the Baltic, where we spent 4 weeks, to Bremen where my family lives you pass several cities that belong to a league of their own: Hansestaedte. Hanse or the Hanseatic League was founded as  a commercial confederation of towns doing business together, in the Late Medieval Ages and Modern Times (13th-17th century). A trade group that also served the purpose for defense. It stretches from the Baltic the north Sea. There are also some in England (Yarnouth) and in the Netherlands (Groningen). I mentioned Stralsund and Wismar before, another in the East is Danzig. In the former West or Federal Republic of Germany there are Luebeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Braunschweig, even some further inland like Osnabrueck and Cologne.
This name still exists in the official German's airline's name: Lufthansa and reflects the importance they once had.
So on our way to Hamburg Airport to drop of our exchange car, we got stuck in Saturday afternoon/end of summer holidays traffic outside Luebeck.

No better time to leave the motorway and do some sightseeing, maybe combined with a nice dinner, hubby suggested. Luebeck is well known for its Tor (Gate) and well liked for its Niederegger Marzipan. A walk into the old town center was a joy-- seeing all these medieval buildings, mostly timber-framed houses. We had dinner in a wonderful old restaurant: its interior remarkable for Medieval shipping paraphernalia called "Luebecker Hanse". Spot on- we were right in the middle. The food was gorgeous too, freshly prepared and slow cuisine which speaks for its quality. However, the day was getting longer and we  were in a bit of a rush because we still had over 150 miles to go and still drop of the car and pick up a rental instead.

Opposite Retaurant Hanse is an old Puppet theater, still active, bit there was no tome too view it. Definitely worth another visit.
With another major traffic jam on the A1 just outside Bremen, it was almost 23.00 hours by the time we reached our destination. Thank goodness for the car's GPS system. We might still be standing there....

Eye-candy for the Road

 

We spent the next week more or less on the road doing stops only to visit family and friends. We drove about 800 miles  and stayed in a number of hotels. Now  that's the part of our organized trips I like the least. Staying in a hotel sounds fine and dandy until you see us arrive with our enormous amount of luggage. Most European hotels aren't geared to  long term trippers like us. And we can't afford the de-luxe suite every time. The other consideration is when you only stay a night or two....which bags to bring i? What is actually in which bag? Sometimes there is some undercover repacking going on in hotel car parks. In addition we needed a rental car for that part of the trip. The only real costs besides the room, obviously our home swapping usually includes a loaner.

Schwerin Castle.

While I want to go from A to B in a direct line, hubby likes to take his time and meander, take in views on route."When will we ever come back here?" he usually asks. So it's now or never.
Eastern Germany has a lot to offer. It has retained some old world charm in those places that haven't been fully restored. The vast green landscapes, dotted with impressive, soothing waterways and lakes a definitely worth a visit. If it wasn't for my family who lives far from there, we'd like to go back and explore more. Ruegen Island, Fehmarn and other Baltic Seaside resorts are a must and require several weeks of relaxed exploration.