Discover Germany Tour: Weimar & Thuringia

Yesterday I arrived in Eisenach, Thuringia, where my grandparents live. Eisenach is famous for the castle Wartburg - here Martin Luther hid and translated the bible to German. Also the automotive industry is quite known for - first the Wartburg (a GDR car, my parents drove one a long time ago) and then Opel - due to the crisis live is not easy for the workers right now.

After helping my grandma with the groceries, the obligatory visit at my favorite shoe store and being fed many delicious things, I left to Ilmenau about an hour away from Eisenach where I met my friend Anita. We went together to grammar school and now she is married and has a kid (Jarle - two and a half years).

My next stop in Thuringia was Weimar - the city of poets and philosophers. I visited the houses of the poets Goethe and Schiller, the Anna-Amalia-Library which was restored to her beauty after a fire some years ago. The night I spent in a hostel which is very beautiful from outside and very cramped and alternative on the inside.

Goethe & Schiller monument

City Hall

Goethe's house

Rokkoko Hall of the Anna-Amalia-Library


Schiller's house


my hostel

my lunch - typical Thuringian sausage

After Weimar I made a last detour to Reichenbach in Saxony to visit a colleague before I returned home having done more than 2,000 km in 14 days.

Discover Germany Tour: Quedlinburg

I arrived in Quedlinburg in late afternoon and all the beds at the youth hostel were already gone, so I walked to the tourist information and booked a room in a bed & breakfast. After I checked-in there, I made a long walk through the city from the city hall to the Word Garden to the castle hill and back. As it was Monday most of the museums and restaurants were closed anyway, but finally I found an open spot: Cafe Roland that stretches over several houses.

City Hall

Quedlinburg belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage because of its 1300 still standing houses of wood frame-work construction. Since reunification more than two thirds of the houses have been restored and there are more people living in there houses than in modern ones.

frame-work house

The next morning, I went on a special tour about the first kings of Saxony (Germany) in 919. It was in the bird garden here in Quedlinburg where Henry I. was informed that he would be king (he was then coronated in Fritzlar). It's important to know that in those times the kings did not live steadily at the same place but travelled through the whole country for two reasons:

first, they brought order and arbitration to all the parts and reigned so the country and

second, none of the castles and surrounding counties were able to afford the kingly court for then three days with food.

There is saying that the arrival of the court is like a swarm of locusts (grasshoppers) and it's better to see them leaving then to see them coming.

Castle

When in town, the king lived in this castle, later his son wife transferred it into a community for women (Frauenstift). Here daughters of noble families were educated. In the abbey the women also prayed for the memory of king Henry and his followers. The abbey saw 39 abbesses before it was closed in 1802 by the German Mediatisation and Quedlinburg passed to the King of Prussia.

View of the city with church St. Nicholas

Most of the roads, are still paved in the old style and you should take care where you step.

Discover Germany Tour: Berlin

The next days I spent walking around Berlin and doing a preparation seminar for people who wanna go on a traineeship abroad with AIESEC. I visited all my favorite sights and also some new. So here we go:

World Clock on Alexanderplatz

Berlin Dome

Also as usual, I took a bus ride with the 100 bus. It's MAN A39 meaning a double-deck city bus produced by the company I'm working for. Berlin has ordered a lot of them and nowadays you can not only enjoy them on line 100, but also 200, 248 and many more.

MAN double-deck bus with ad for the World Championship of Athlethics

Friday we went on an alternative city tour in the centre which was focusing on Jews, 2nd World War and live then. We heard many interesting stories from contempory witnesses on an audioguide which you can download on http://www.hoerpol.de/ . Unfortunately, it's only in German.

On this tour we discovered a lot of backyards with art, cafés and cinemas. Here a picture asking for an empty wall:

Also Friday, I had visited the Picture Gallery with all the old pictures from European artists. In contrast to this, on Sunday afternoon I visited the Museum of Contemporary in the Hamburger Bahnhof. There were a lot of pictures of Andy Warhol on display:



In Berlin, I stayed with a friend from university. In the evenings, we chitchatted and tried out a real good Sushi shop and relaxed: Konni from work and I from sightseeing.

Discover Germany Tour: Potsdam

On my first day in Berlin, I left the town by train toa neary city called Potsdam that was the Residence City of th Prussian kings until 1918. King Frederick II the Great let built a park and the castle Sans Souci (without worries) to live there in summer. It's about 2 km from the city centre and train station.

Even though, he worshipped the outline of Versailles, this summer residence was quite small and only close family, friends and some guests could be entertained there. The side of Sans Souci on the picture is facing the garden and the vineyard (see pic below).

I bought a ticket for the castle at 2 pm but my entry time was more than two hours away, so I started roaming the park of Sans Souci which is filled with trees, flowers and fountains.

foot of the vineyard

Chinese Tea House

Flower bed

Discover Germany Tour: Leipzig & Dresden

Next stop on my tour was to my home town: Leipzig. Last friday, I met a lot of my mates from the Class of '99 for our 10 years' reunion. About half of them were present and it was interesting to see where everybody is, what they do and how many have kids and/ or are married.
Anja lives quite near me, at the Lake of Starnberg so we will see us more often in the future.

Class Picture to come

...

The next days, I spent in Leipzig walking around the city, going to cinema and swimming in the lakes.

Augustusplatz

(city centre with the construction site of the university)

In Markkleeberg, small town next to Leipzig, where I went to school, I visited my aunt and uncle and even though I did not see my cousin in person - his picture was everywhere in as he is a candidate for the upcoming elections for the Landtag (state assembly of Saxony).

my cousin

Yesterday morning, I left for the capital of Saxony: Dresden - it's about 120 km east of Leipzig. There I visited the Zwinger - a complex of baroque buildings surrounding a garden. On a roof top terrace you can nearly walk around the whlole complex having a spectacluar view. Nearby you will find the Semper opera, Taschenbergpalais, the castle and many more landmarks. The Zwinger was commissioned by Augustus the Strong (1670-1733) - elector of Saxony (from 1694) and King of Poland (from 1697) who wanted a palace equal to Versailles.

The Zwinger houses several collections today: Old Masters Picture Gallery, collections of fine art and scientific treasures, Armory, and the collection of Porcelain from China, Japan and Meissen.

Meissen porcelain is the first European hard-paste porcelain that was developed from 1708. The production of porcelain at Meissen, near Dresden, started in 1710 and attracted artists and artisans to establish one of the most famous porcelain manufacturers, still in business today as Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen GmbH. Its signature logo, the crossed swords, was introduced in 1720 to protect its production; the mark of the crossed swords is one of the oldest trademarks in existence. It dominated the style of European porcelain until 1756.

After lunch with Oli from my first executive board in AIESEC Leipzig, I returned to the old city and walked along side the river Elbe and the river bank Terrassenufer. When the rain started, I left in the direction of Berlin.

Discover Germany Tour: Lake Constance

Economic crisis also hit my employer, so they decided to give us a summer break of 3 weeks in August - as we won't earn our usual salary in this difficult times a real fancy foreign country tour is out of question. So I decided to travel around Germany in my car, visiting old friends at new and old places and to run some exchange preparation seminars for AIESEC.

So that's my car - Ford Mondeo - done more then 125,000 km (at least 50,000 by me).

First stop was Constance & Lake Constance in the total south of Germany bordering Austria and Switzerland. To shorten the trip to Constance, I took a car ferry from Meersburg over the lake.

Meersburg

The ferry crosses the lake in less than 20 min, but it's the narrowest point. Lake Constance has 260km of shoreline, has a maximum depth of 250 m and has several islands. The most famous is the island of Mainau - also called the garden island. Count Bernadotte created the parks, green houses and now tourists can walk around the flourishing greenery and butterflies.

Harbor of Constance

From Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, Julia from Regensburg and me were running a preparation seminar with 10 delegates - here they were sitting and preparing a presentation about cultural dimensions. As the weather was really nice, we stayed outside most of the time, but from time to time we were hiding in the shadow.

Saturday evening after dinner, we walked to the lake where a ship was already waiting for us and on which we partied until 2 in the morning.

Julia (my co-trainer) and me