Germany, with side trips to

Thursday July 22, 1999 -- Garmish

Ginger and Chris picked us up after breakfast and we all drove out to Linderhof Palace. It was built for King Ludwig II in the 1870's and he lived in it as a recluse the last eight years of his life. The palace is fancifully decorated in the French Baroque style with the use of lots of intricately carved gilded gingerbread. It also contains many wall paintings in the French style and porcelain accents. Crystal and porcelain chandeliers and brocade covered furniture with gilded legs completed the fairytale set upon which the King lived.

Saturday July 24, 1999

Yesterday it rained all day and since I was feeling poorly as well, we spent most of the day reading and sleeping in the nice room that we have here. The room is in a bed and breakfast with a door opening to a small patio and a large side lawn. If the clouds would have ever lifted, the view to the mountains would have been spectacular but we were here during cloudy rainy weather.

During breakfast the sky started to brighten and even show some patches of blue. We locked our luggage at the train station and walked to the base of the ski jump. There we got on a gondola going up to Eckbauer Peak. The view from the top would have been better with fewer clouds but the clouds themselves made for an interesting vista. We did some walking around "up top" before riding the gondola down. We then walked to and through a nearby gorge. The gorge was a very narrow passage through the mountain that the stream had cut. It was quite interesting because the rocks forming the gorge were very sheer and the opening was quite narrow all the way to the sky.

The sky continued to clear throughout the day. We decided to try for the tall Zugspitze peak tomorrow with a train ride to its base, a cog rail and gondola to the peak and then another gondola back to the train at its base.

Sunday July 25, 1999

The day dawned with clear skies so we were on the earliest train to the mountain. Before starting to ascend the steep slope we transferred from the more standard train to a cog railway. The track climbed steadily up, passing several small villages before its final push to the ice field. The train entered the mountain and the track the rest of the way up was inside the mountain. We exited the train at a ski lodge on the glacier. Bill and I spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon hiking on the glacier catching various views of the Alps. We then rode the cable car the rest of the way to the top of Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany. There was a massive lodge with several restaurants and lots of deck space overlooking the Alps from all 360 degrees. We had a wonderful view, as the sky was blue and mostly cloud free until late afternoon. We had lunch on one of the patios overlooking the glacier and did lots of looking until the clouds began to return. We then took the cable car back to the base of the mountain and the train back to Garmish.

We decided to hop another train and go to Mittenwald, Austria for dinner. There we enjoyed ice cream and traditional music being performed in honor of the town’s 900^th birthday.

We are now at Chris and Ginger’s. We arrived in Würzburg on the 6:30PM train from Munich and Chris picked us up at the station as we got confused with the bus system.

Yesterday we left Garmish on an early morning train and arrived in Munich late in the morning. There we walked to the nearby Botanical gardens and spent several hours enjoying a beer, lunch, and people watching in the Beer garden before catching one of the fast trains the rest of the way to Würzburg.

Friday July 30, 1999

Bill and I have been enjoying visiting with the kids and relaxing; recovering from our last few weeks of travel. We did make time for some sight seeing in Würzburg the last two days.

Yesterday we visited the Residence, which was the palace built by the Prince Bishop that ruled here for a period in the 1700s. It was a spectacular place especially since it had been heavily damaged at the end of World War II; much of it now has been faithfully restored. We especially enjoyed the green lacquer room with its mirrors. From the center of the room you could see yourself reflected in the four mirrors around the room over and over again.

Today we visited Fortress Marienberg and the historical museum housed there. We found two large models of the city especially interesting. One was a model of the city in the 1500s and the second showed the city in ruins after the World War II fire bombing in 1945. The earlier model showed two complete walls around the town: an inner double wall and an outer one that encircled some farmland as well as homes. The museum also contained some wonderful tapestries and a room full of church vestments, intricately embroidered in bright colors and gold threads. It also contained an assortment of other relics. The fortress itself was interesting too. In the middle of the courtyard we looked down the shaft of the deep well to the water deep down its depths. The well was in a small round building with a decorated cistern outside it for storing the water in. We passed through several layers of fortification on our walk into the fortress, passing through walls in tunnels twice. The view over the city from the upper levels of the walls was expansive and I took a few photos of the city across the river.

Tuesday August 3, 1999 – Amersfoort, The Netherlands

After a relaxing weekend spent with Ginger and Chris, Bill and I were off on an early train this morning for The Netherlands. We rode in to town with Chris and Ginger on their way to work, expecting to have a hour plus wait at the train station, but the current list showed that the train we wanted left an hour earlier than we had thought it would. We arrived in Amersfoort shortly after 1PM and decided to stop here. We found a hotel room and deposited our bags before heading out on the walking tour of the town. This is another interesting city with a colorful past. Two canals encircle the old city center. The streams, which bring water into and out of these canals, were guarded by gates that could be closed to stop the river traffic and also were used to control the flow of water. Two of these gates still exist. At the city center is a large plaza with small shops and outdoor eateries along its edges. Here we stopped our walk and enjoyed a beer and small sandwich. Beer brewing figures big in the history of the town and several of the older buildings were once small breweries.

Wednesday August 4, 1999 -- Amsterdam

We were up and on the 9:30 train to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is another city of canals and was thoroughly clogged with tourists. It took some effort but we finally found a good map of the old city, with some of the tourist spots marked. Our first stop was to be the Maritime museum. We followed a path along the main waterfront to the Maritime Museum passing the Museum of Science and Technology, which is housed in a new structure resembling the bow of a large ship. The maritime museum is housed in the old armory and contained many wonderful exhibits. The first floor temporary exhibit was of Noah’s ark. It contained many modern representations of the ark as well as ark toys but best of all it contained early representations of an ark as learned men of ages past tried to explain how the story was possible.

The museum contained many old models of sailing ships, early charts and the tools of navigation as well as a few floating real ships. The replica of the East India square-rigged ship that was on display had a costumed crew on board giving demonstrations. We were on the ship for the noon cannon firing. We then climbed onto a herring fisher that was on display and spent some time taking with the docent there. Also of note was a new clipper ship that is being built at the museum and is expected to sail by next summer. Although not technically part of the museum this ship was open for a few hours in the afternoon when tourists could board and see work in progress.

The museum took up the entire day, as it was 16:30 when we finished. We took a long route back to the train station passing through the Dam Plaza area to view the Dam Palace. We did not return to Amersfoort until after 18:30 whereupon we had dinner at the train station before returning to the hotel to crash. We plan to return to Amsterdam tomorrow and cover more of the town but are very glad to be staying in a much quieter town just 30 minutes away.

Thursday August 5, 1999

We spent the day in Amsterdam again. Today we visited three museums: The Amsterdam Historical Museum, The Palace and Our Lord in the Attic. The Palace was a wonderful building. It had started life as government offices during the time when Amsterdam was wealthy being the trading center of Europe. It was an elaborately decorated building both with paintings and with decorative architectural reliefs. The decorative trim around many of the doorways was even representative of what government service occupied the room. The floor of the large central room was an inlaid marble map of the two hemispheres of the world and a central circle in marble and bronze of the northern sky.

Our Lord in the Attic was a restored merchants 17^th century house along the canal that had a Catholic Church hidden in its, and the two adjoining houses, attic. This museum was at the edge of the Red Light district so we walked passed a few of the windows where "girls of the night" were soliciting business.

We returned to the Central Station via a walk along the canal and were soon on a train taking us back to Amersfoort. Back in Amersfoort we walked to one of the central plazas and enjoyed a dinner of pizza and beer at an Italian restaurant.

Friday August 6, 1999 -- Ekhutzen

We decided to visit Ekhutzen today. It is a small town on the Ijsselmeer north of Amsterdam. It used to be one of the fishing villages on the Zuiderzee before that sea was diked off and turned into a freshwater lake. As we left on the train we were not sure what we would find in Ekhutzen. Upon arriving we discovered a pleasant little town with three small port marinas and a large charter fleet of river sailers that arrived in the old harbor in the late afternoon for their new passengers. We also discovered a delightful museum, Zuiderzeemuseum. Actually it was two museums, an outdoor one and an indoor one. The outdoor museum is a collection of old buildings from several nearby towns that were rescued from demolition and set up in the new museum town. The museum town is representative of many of the small fishing villages that existed along the Zuiderzee in the last century. The indoor museum contained a collection of items and displays that explained the history of the area and its fisherman.

After spending many hours exploring the two museums we returned to the train station via the narrow streets through the town. This town, as everywhere else in this part of The Netherlands, is crisscrossed by canals. The buildings were brick and many were not quite vertical as the land here is mostly sand with a watertable only a few feet below the surface. The old harbor, near the train station, had filled up with weekend boats, both private sailboats and the charter fleet of river sailboats. We spent some time just watching as more sailboats arrived and rafted in the already full marina. We ate at the train station restaurant overlooking the side channel that lead to a second marina, before our 2-hour train ride back to the hotel.

Saturday August 7, 1999

Today dawned rainy and cloudy. It was a good day for exploring the countryside by train and that is what we did. We took the train from Amersfoort to Rotterdam where we boarded the slow train to the port area. After a snack at the cafeteria at the ferry (to London) terminal, we returned to Rotterdam and climbed on the next train heading north. Several trains later we were in Den Holder, a modern city on the North Sea. On the return trip we stopped at the large airport of Schpohl. It is both a large international airport and a large train station as well as a large modern-type shopping mall. We enjoyed dinner at its café watching all the international travelers.

Yesterday we left the Netherlands and returned to Germany. We caught a late morning train in Amersfoort that took us all the way into Berlin where we got off at the Zoo Bahnhof station in the center of downtown.

Today we took a guided walking tour through the old part of the city, which just happened to be in the old East Berlin. We walked past the royal palaces and museums, many of the palaces are now museums too. The tour then went down the main street to Brandenburg Gate and through the gate before returning east to hop on the S-Bahn train for the short ride to the area of Check Point Charley and remnants of The Wall. It was an interesting tour and the guide left us with lots of facts about the tumultuous history of Berlin. Today Berlin is currently a city under construction and we walked by and through lots of construction sites. There is lots of building going on in both the old west and east sectors as the city again becomes the capital of Germany and an economic center of Europe.

Tuesday August 10, 1999

Today was a long busy day. We checked out of the hotel early and moved our bags to a lock box at the train terminal and then took off on another walking tour. This one covered the Third Reich sites. These sites were mostly just sites as most of the buildings were torn down after the war. The tour was again in the historic center just inside the old eastern sector and the tour guide again provided the historical facts that told the story.

After the tour we returned to the train terminal, picked up our bags and returned to Würzburg. The tour group offers other interesting walking tours on different days, but tomorrow in Munich the total eclipse of the sun will be visible so we headed south to Würzburg for the nite.

Wednesday August 11, 1999 -- Total Solar Eclipse

We were off early on the train to Munich. It was quite cloudy but there were just enough breaks in the clouds to give us hope of seeing some of the eclipse. We watched the eclipse from a Beer Garden near the center of town along with about 750 other people. One of the local radio stations had set up in the restaurant and provided entertainment during the two hour show. It was mostly cloudy and even rained on us some but the clouds were thin enough to see the sun through them much of the time that the moon was in front of the sun. We did actually miss the period of totality as that was a period of thicker clouds and rainfall, but it did get dark. We both felt that it was worth the trip. We enjoyed lunch and a few more beers before leaving the Beer Garden and returning to Würzburg.

Friday August 13, 1999 – Würzburg again

We thought that yesterday we would finally get to "sleep in" but we were up even earlier today, to go in to the army base with Chris and Ginger. Chris was involved with some training for a group of soldiers heading out on a peacekeeping mission. They needed some "actors" to help out with a training exercise and we got volunteered. Actually it was loads of fun and real interesting, and as an added benefit we got to watch Chris participate in the morning flag raising ceremony. After a US Burger King lunch, Bill returned to the apartment while I stayed on base to help Ginger in the thrift shop where she works.

Today was a rest day, finally!! We all slept in and then Ginger and I did the laundry before heading out to the base to do a little grocery shopping.

Saturday August 14, 1999

Ginger and I were off for an early morning bike ride. We rode up around the vineyards above their apartment and the view over the town was spectacular in spite of it being a cloudy day.

Bill spent most of the day fixing known Y2K bugs on Chris and Ginger’s computer as well as copying some files between ours and their machine (mostly photos).

Sunday August 15, 1999

First thing this morning Bill and Chris took off on a bike ride. When they returned two hours later we had a brunch and then Ginger and I took off on the bikes. All of us enjoyed our rides even though we ended up quite tired.

Wednesday August 18, 1999 -- Interlaken, Switzerland

Yesterday we left Würzburg on the early train again. This time we headed more southerly and are now in the Swiss Alps. We are staying right across the street from the West train station in the town of Interlaken in the Jungfrau region of the Alps.

Yesterday we purchased a five-day mountain train pass for the local area. We then traveled by rail, regular, cog and funicular to the small town of Murren high up in the Alps. Since the clouds seemed to be lifting, we then took the cable car all the way to the top of Schilthorn, where we had lunch in the rotating round restaurant on top. Bill then decided, after much map study that a hike down to the cable car changeover point would be fun. That point was where one cable car run ended and a second ran the rest of the way to the top. The hike down was fun and not too rugged, but did have a few interesting spots near its upper end. The top section of the hike followed a ridge and then cut down into a high valley complete with snow before intersecting with a wider path for the rest of the trip to the cable car terminal. We then rode the lower cable car the rest of the way down the mountain and trains back to Interlaken. Although we had had great weather while on top and on the hike, the rain arrived on our way down and even provided us with a wonderful rainbow. By the time we reached Interlaken it was raining quite hard. We had some great ice cream at a restaurant in Murren and when finally back in Interlaken, picked up some snacks for supper in our room.

Thursday August 19, 1999

We were off early to the mountains. We took a series of trains all the way up to Jungfraujoch (a glaciated saddle near the peak of the locally highest mountain) where we spent several hours enjoying the scenery and some of the displays. The final 6 kilometers was on a cog train totally inside a tunnel in the mountain, complete with two scenic lookout stops! The weather looked promising when we left Interlaken in the morning but by the time we reached the top the clouds were filling in. The wind was strong on top and it was even snowing some so we stayed away from the outdoor activities but we did explore the ice palace carved into the glacier, the observation area and the little museum, all carved into the rock or the glacier. We did get some fantastic views from the observation tower as the clouds were just blowing by while we were up there. We ate lunch back at the lower level in the cafeteria at the highest train station in Europe.

We then took the train back down to Eigergletscher (at the base of the long tunnel, but still high in the mountains) where we disembarked and hiked across the bottom of the cliff face and down to a lower train station at Alpiglen. The hike was just over two hours and our legs were quite tired from all the downhill climbing when we boarded the train for the trip back to Interlaken. The first half of the hike was across scree slopes and high meadows in cloudy weather. Then it started to rain and the rest of the hike contained spots of slippery rocks and mud but we both made it to the train station without falling in the mud. There were cows along the way and they each had their own bell that jingled as they moved their heads munching on the grasses. One cow even stood in the pathway expecting a pet from the hikers.

We had dinner back at the hotel watching the rain falling outside.

Friday August 20, 1999

It rained all night and was still raining in the morning so we took the opportunity to "sleep in". After breakfast, with the rain still falling outside, we decided that today would be a great day to just ride the train. We were thus on the 10:30 train to Spiez where we caught a train south to Brig. From there we traveled west to Montreux where we caught the scenic Golden Pass train east through the Alps to Zweisimmen where we transferred to the regional train to Spiez and on to Interlaken to complete the loop. Even though it was cloudy and rainy much of the day and we could not see the mountaintops, the clouds were high enough through most of the passages that we could see down into the valleys.

Saturday August 21, 1999

This morning we were back in the local mountains. We did not get up extremely early but by 11:00 we were back up at Kleine Scheidegg after three train transfers. Today was the Inferno Triathlon. At breakfast we watched some of the athletes carry their road bikes up from under the train tracks across the street and take off through the town. The riders started to arrive in Kleine Scheidegg (a high mountain pass) shortly after noon after having changed from road to mountain bikes in Grindelwald. Bill and I watched the riders trickle through Kleine Scheidegg for a few hours and then took off walking down toward Grindelwald ourselves. The walking path was wide and developed but did have some rather steep downhill sections. We hiked for an hour and stopped about half way to Grindelwald at Alpiglen. There we spent some time at an outdoor restaurant before catching the train the rest of the way to Grindelwald and from there down the hill to Interlaken. The weather was wonderful today and although some clouds still drifted across the sky, I picked up some great photos of the mountains with blue sky.

Sunday August 22,1999

Today was our long hike day. We were not up particularly early. After breakfast we took the trains to nearby Wilderswil where we transferred to a narrow gage train to go up the mountain. The trip was a very steep uphill ride to Schydig Platte from where we left on our hike. We hiked along the ridge with spectacular views to the saddle below Faulhorn Peak, almost three hours of gradual up hill. The day was sunny with only some clouds so the views were expansive and we could even see down to the Interlaken area with its two lakes from parts of the ridge. There was a mountain hut in the saddle where we ate lunch before we started the long hike down.

After lunch we started down and it was a steep long down to Burglauenen (the nearest train). The first part was down a steep valley with sheep grazing in the upper reaches and cows in the lower. Then it joined with a narrow road and followed it down steeply still. We did have to wait for a time while a farmer rounded up his cows and chased them into the milking shed. The cows, sheep and goats here all seem to wear bells, larger ones for the cows and smaller bells on the sheep and goats. The herding up of the cows was therefore quite musical it was also fun to hear the bells in the distance as we hiked along the trails. We made it to the train station just after 6:30PM, totally exhausted and somewhat sore in the legs and feet. There we enjoyed a large beer while waiting for the next train to return us back to Interlaken.

Monday August 23, 1999

Today dawned clear and beautiful. Today we joined a group from "Adventure" and rafted down one of the rivers that drained from the local mountains into the lake. The water being glacier melt was very cold but we were all provided with wetsuits, life jackets and helmets for the trip. Toward the end of the run, as we were approaching the lake, we all jumped out of the rafts for a quick swim but none of us stayed very long in the water, it was too cold and also quite shallow. We ended with a paddle in the lake to the take-out place and then were all ferried back to "Adventure’s" facilities for a shower and a beer. We hung around for a second beer and an excellent long lunch.

Bill and I returned to the hotel about 4PM. After hanging out the wet clothes to dry, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking through town and purchased a few gifts to take home with us.

Thursday August 26, 1999 -- Würzburg again

We are back in Würzburg. We arrived late last night after two days of train travel. We left Interlaken on Tuesday morning and took a round about path into Italy and back into Switzerland through the Alps and ended up in Luzern. Luzern is a lovely city with a peaceful river running through its center. For dinner we finally had Swiss Cheese fondue. We ate outdoors at a table along the riverside, very peaceful and with a fun dish to share.

Wednesday we were back on the trains and heading off to the Black Forest area. We entered the Black Forest area at Freiburrg, Germany. There we visited the cathedral, which was under repair as are so many other churches that we visited this summer. It was a grand old building constructed during the latter half of the 13^th century. We then boarded a regional train into the Black Forest. This is an area of Germany containing many pine forests with a few farms tucked into clearings. There are also many small towns and villages that the train stopped at along the way. After several train changes we arrived in Stuttgart around 6:30PM. We grabbed a quick sandwich to eat on the next leg of our journey that took us to Würzburg on a fast train.

Friday August 27, 1999

Today Ginger drove Bill and I to the walled city of Rothenburg, which is not far from Würzburg. We all had a wonderful day walking the wall, which had a walkway near its top that was just barely wide enough for two people to pass, and then exploring some of the streets of the city. The wall is a rock wall about two stories high above the street with a walkway about 1½ stories up. All of this is roofed over with the same red tiles that are used to roof most of the buildings in the town.

Less than half of this city had been destroyed in the 1945 bombings but they took advantage of the destruction to return the city to its medieval looks. The rock and half-timbered buildings are all roofed in red fishscale tiles and the streets are paved with cobblestones. We spent much of the day in this city but returned to Veitshochheim (a suburb of Würzburg) for dinner at a Beer Garden near the river.

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