Trip To Germany Outline

Aviva and I will be travelling to Germany at the very end of April through mid-May for 12 nights. At long last, a trip I had been wanting to make since 2002 is coming to fruition, and I am very excited about it. I wish I could make this a nice, leisurely four-week trip, but, alas, I am not independently wealthy, so I have to make do with what I got. I'll describe what I wish I could see once I am done describing what I will be seeing.

Here are the details:

We will be flying from Newark International Airport on Continental flight 96 at 5:55 PM on Saturday, April 28, 2007 and landing at Tegel International Airport in Berlin at 8:05 on Sunday, 29 April.

Sunday, 29 April
We will immediately make our way to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof and take the train to Weimar, in Thuringia, where, if we're not completely wiped out by jetlag, we will stroll the streets once home to Goethe and spend some time in the Bauhaus Museum. Once we're ready for bed, we'll check in to the Hotel Elephant in the center of town and rest for what will be a busy 12 days.

Monday, 30 April
The next day, we'll take the #6 bus to Buchanwald to look over the grounds and look at the memorials. The buildings of the complex will not be open, as they are closed every Monday, but the areas outside will be accessible, meaning we will be able to see a nice DDR-era memorial put up to commemorate the victims of this particular concentration camp.

After we're done with Buchenwald, and if there's time, we'll head for Leipzig, in Sachsen, to look at the Thomaskirche, where J.S. Bach served as cantor from 1723-1750, and perhaps to look at a couple more DDR-era socialist murals. Once we're done, we'll get on a train and head directly for Munich, in Bavaria, for the first of three nights at the Le Meridien.

Tuesday, 1 May
May 1st is Labour Day throughout much of Europe, including Bavaria, so there is sure to be a good amount of revalry in Munich that day. We're going to join in the festivities by going to Dachau, which lies just outside the city, to take a look at the Nazis' very first concentration camp.

Wednesday, 2 May
It's back to work for the Muencheners, but Aviva and I will still have another nine days of vacation left to go. The main course for today is a visit to the Deutsches Museum, located on an island in the Isar river, which is six floors of exhibitions dedicated to the sciences. My parents had visited the museum back in 1972 and to this day recount over how impressed they were with it.

Obviously, Dachau and the Deutsches Museum cannot fill up two full days by themselves, and there are other places we would like to see and things we would like to do during the rest of the time. My grandmother is a native Muenchener, growing up in the city during the 20s, 30s, and 40s, leaving after marrying my grandfather, an American GI, in 1948. A few years ago I sat with her and marked down the areas where she worked and grew up, and I plan to see as many of these places as I can. These include her early childhood home on Quellenstrasse, her late childhood home on Nymphenburgstrasse, the hospital where she was born, the church where she was baptized, and Dallmayr, the regal delicatessen where she worked as a youth, before the war started going bad for Germany. I also hope to find the graves of my Great-Grandparents in the Westfriedhof, a large cemetery to the northwest of the city center. In addition to places related to my grandmother, I hope to see a bit of Nymphenburg, the Olympia Park, and the Englischer Garten, plus experience some good Bavarian Gemütlichkeit at a Biergarten or two. Thankfully we need not worry about driving as we'll be getting around entirely by train and on foot, so I can down as much hefeweizen as I see fit.

Thursday, 3 May
Once we're done with Munich, we'll get on a train and head on down to for Füssen. The word füssen means "feet" in German, which literally describes this town as it lies at the feet of the Alps. This town also is within sight of Austria.

Whether or not we do it this day or the next, the sole reason for coming to this town is so that we can take a bus to Hohenschwangau and walk up to Neuschawnstein, the most photographed building in the world and the most popular tourist site in all Germany. I don't think I could forgive myself if I were to spend 12 days in Germany and not see this lovely Schloss.

Tonight, regardless of what we do during the day, we will place our heads on pillows found at the Hotel Kurcafe this night and sleep.

Friday, 4 May
Originally our plans were to awake in Füssen (awaking in any other location would mean something quite odd has happened), and later in the day hop on a train, changing several times to wind up in Mainz, in Rheinland-Pfalz. However, after wisely considering the amount of time involved, I cancelled the reservation I made at the Hilton Mainz City and instead made a reservation at the Le Mériden in Stuttgart, in Baden-Württemberg, saving us a good 100 minutes of train that we are going to take tomorrow anyway! On the way to ye old Stud Garden we will be passing through Augsburg, in Bavaria, and Ulm, in Baden-Württemberg, though I doubt we will be spending any time in those places, forsaking both Emperor Augustus and Albert Einstein as we head down the tracks.

Saturday, 5 May
This morning we head out of Stuttgart and celebrate Renaissance day, with our first stop in the university town of Heidelburg, in Baden-Wurttemburg. Founded in 1386, it is the oldest university in Germany, giving rise to the Bunsen burner, among other things.

Onward we go through Mannheim, to Worms, the place where Martin Luther was declared a heretic by the Catholic Church in 1521 and a former residence for Rashi, aka Rabbi Shlomo Yitzaqi, and the location of the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe, dating to the 11th century. We complete the Renaissance and learning tour in Mainz, home to Johannes Guttenburg, inventor of the printing press before heading onward to the final destination of the day

Originally we were planning on bedding down in Mainz this night, but instead we will be spending one night in the Hilton in Bonn, in Nordrhein-Westfalen, as the night of 5 May will see Rhein in Flammen. 60 fireworks-bearing ships will depart from Linz, some ways down the Rhine, and end with a 20-minute display in front of the Rheinaue park in Bonn. This happens once a year, so if we have a chance to see it why miss it?

Sunday, 6 May
Once we wake up in Bonn, we have all day to make our way about 30 km north to Cologne, in Nordrhein-Westfalen. One unlikely possibility is to make our way to Trier, in Rheinland-Pfalz, just inside Germany from Luxembourg. It is the oldest city in Germany and home to many Roman remains, including the Porta Nigra. The history in Trier has a very strong allure, but it's more likely we will do some Beethoven exploration in Bonn before ending the night at the Dom Hotel in Cologne.

Monday, 7 May
The big attraction for me in Cologne is the Cathedral, once the tallest building in the world and still the greatest extant Gothic cathedral, which makes the hotel location quite convenient as it's literally across the street. We will forsake Cologne for much of the day, however, as we will head west to Aachen, in Nordrhein-Westfalen, to be near the hot springs that helped convince Charlemagne to make it his capital. We'll also be very near to the border with both Belgium and the Netherlands, which makes an entcing three-country walk possible. Once we're done with Carlemagne's church, we'll head back to Cologne and guzzle down some Kölsch.

Tuesday, 8 May
Today is the day we head from Cologne back to Berlin. The train ride between the two cities in 4:21, which leaves a good chunk of the day open to spend time at either end or somewhere in the middle. The performance of "As Slow As Possible" in Halberstadt, in Sachsen-Anhalt, is a bit too far out of the way, unfortunately, so if we stop anywhere along the way, it'll likely be Hannover, in Niedersachsen. Fortunately, Hannover sports the Herrenhäuser Gärten, a complex of landscaped gardens that should make for a pleasant ourdoor day, as long as the day itself is pleasant. Other possibilities include Wolfsburg, in Niedersachsen, and its Autostadt, or Madgeburg, capital of Sachsen-Anhalt, known for its socialist architecture. At the end of the day, we will find ourselves sleeping in the Berlin Marriott in Potsdamer Platz.

Wednesday, 9 May
Thursday, 10 May
We have two days to kill in Berlin without much actually planned out. We will definitely take the time to see the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Brandenburg gate, the Reichstag, and the Weltzeituhr and Fernsehturm in Alexanderplatz. I'd also like to explore the Tiergarten, including the Berlin Zoo at the far western end. We will assuredly spend some of our time relaxing, as we will be at the end of our long trip and will need to get up very early in the morning on

Friday, 11 May
We will need to get up early to make Continental flight 97, departing from Tegel at 9:35, landing back at Newark International Airport at 12:50 PM, where Aviva's mother will pick us up and bring is back to Highland Mills, where we can recover, ready to face a new workweek on May 14th.

In Summary, these are the cities we will definitely see:
Berlin
Weimar
Munich
Füssen
Mainz
Worms
Bonn
Cologne
Aachen

We will probably stop by these cities as well:
Leipzig
Heidelberg
Hannover

There's a chance we might see these cities:
Trier
Augsburg
Ulm
Stuttgart
Nuremburg
Magdeburg

We very likely will not see these cities:
Hamburg
Frankfurt
Dresden
Chemnitz
Lübeck
Rostock
Bremen
Düsseldorf
Essen
Karlsruhe
Baden-Baden
Potsdam
Halberstadt
Rothenburg
Erfurt
Saarbrücken
Salzburg (yes, it's in Austria, but it's available as part of the Germany Rail Pass)

In my opinion, Salzburg is the biggest thing we will not be seeing, as we won't be adding Mozart to Beethoven and Bach, but the other cities definiely have a lot of history to miss. One thing for sure is that we will come home with many more kitchen magnets to add to our collection.