JOURNEY

With less than three weeks until our departure, I want to reflect upon the purpose of this trip. Of course, it's always fascinating to go to new places and revisit old haunts, but this trip is more than that. Richard and I will be visiting some places we've never seen and going back o La Route des Vins in Alsace--a place we visited in 1984 and absolutely loved.

We're going to begin our journey in Munich, because I found some tickets at a very good price on Google Flights. I dread the flights going and coming, but it's the price one pays for travel. We'll leave on June 13 and arrive on Sunday the 14th after (I predict) not sleeping a wink. In Munich, we'll see some art museums, eat some weisswurst, and walk the city. We're staying in a hotel in the city center near the Viktualienmarkt with its food stalls and beer hall. We also plan to visit the Dachau Memorial. Until researching this trip, I never realized Dachau was a suburb of Munich. 

After three days in Munich we'll continue through southern Bavaria towards Lake Constance. If the weather is good, we'll detour a bit further south and take the cable car up to the top of Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspritze. There's no point in going if visibilty is at 10 meters. We'll have one night on the road before we must arrive in Obernai, Alsace, where we've booked an efficiency apartment right in the center of town. We'll spend five days exploring the region and perhaps visit Colmar and Strasbourg. We're looking forward to visiting vineyards and eating the fantastic Alsatian cuisine--snails, sausages, saurkraut, oh boy!

Next is Lorraine where we'll stay in an old chateau, now an inn, that is right in the middle of the World War I battlefields and very near to where my grandfather Claude (page 259-60) served with the Old Hickory Division of Tennessee and North Carolina--the 2nd Battalion, 114th Field Artillery Regiment, 30th Division--as a wagoner. We plan to visit some of the memorial sites and see where so many men died for so little reason. The American Expeditionary Forces ended a four-year stalemate, but in the process destroyed much of eastern France. Claude fought in St. Mihiel, the Argonne-Meuse and Woevre. My mother and father were shocked when I brought this information to them, because Claude never spoke of it. Even when Claude met my dad, whom he knew was a World War II veteran of D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, he did not divulge that he too had fought in France only thirty years earlier in the "war to end all wars." That tells me all I need to know about the Great War. While in Lorraine, we hope to visit Metz, Nancy and Verdun.

The last leg of our journey will take us on a more northerly path through Baden-Württemberg and back to Munich. The Holzinger family emigrated from this area in the mid 19th century, and we are trying to figure out from which village. This is a land of enchantment with castle fortresses and fairy tale forests.

There is much this trip must leave out. We're basically traveling an 800 mile oval through southern Germany and east-central France. I'd love to go to Hitler's lair at Berchtesgaden or perhaps take a little detour into Switzerland or a fast train to Paris, but we don't want this trip to be "If it's Friday, this must be Luxembourg." We want time to absorb, to observe, to drink it in (while quaffing some German riesling or Alsatian gewürztraminer). I've been brushing up on my French (merci professeur Capretz) and learning some survival German. I feel like there's so much more planning to do, but I just need to let it go. This trip is not a destination, it's a journey.