OBERNAI

View from our apartment in Obernai. The potted tree is the corner of the central plaza.

June 19:  A new day! We both agreed that stopping in Titisee was a good idea. We awoke refreshed and were refueled by a lovely German breakfast of cold cuts, cheese, rolls, jams, juice and coffee at our gasthaus. None of the people at the gasthaus spoke English, but we communicated. After our fresh start, we drove to Obernai without any problems, but it still took about three more hours! Google forsook us! We only stopped once this morning--at a drugstore located in a cornfield in Germany near the border with France. I don't think we could have mentally or physically driven these three hours last night without getting hopelessly lost again.

One of  my big mistakes was not to bring our GPS. Richard wanted to bring our Garmin, but to do so, we had to download European maps to our device. I had already bought some Michelin and Marco Polo maps, and didn't want to spend $100 on Garmin European maps. I didn't think it would be necessary--I was wrong, so wrong. What we didn't realize, and didn't remember from driving around Europe 30 years ago, was that navigation can be challenging. You can't just get on the A9 and go to Munich because the road signs aren't necessarily labeled as A9, You navigate by city names, not road names, so while going 120 km., all of a sudden, you must chose between going to Stuttgart or Tubingen. Those cities might be 100 km from your current location, so you must quickly find them on the map and chose the city that is in the direction of Munich. Sometimes you follow a sign to a town in the correct direction, but you find yourself on a slow road. You are on a road to Munich, but not the autoroute. Then there are the traffic circles. They are everywhere in the countryside of Germany and France. Instead of intersections with traffic lights, there are big traffic circles with three or four spokes leading in different directions. Occasionally, the signs are askew, and you are confused about where they are pointing. We got to be pretty good with the traffic circles, and if we weren't sure where to get off, we just circled around again. It's actually a good system--you keep moving. Traffic circles also eliminate traffic lights.

We were both taken with the beauty of the countryside. Europeans are smart. They clump their development into cities, towns or villages with vast green spaces of forests, fields and farms in between. We have seen no sprawl. The entire country (and we've seen a lot) is manicured and mowed. Even the forests are gorgeous. Perfection!

Our apartment building

The courtyard of our building

Obernai is a beautiful town, albeit crowded with tourists, and we love our apartment! Veronique accomodated our screwed-up arrival time and welcomed us. We are staying in a modern efficiency in a very old house (hundreds of years old) in the heart of the town. There is literally no better location--we are steps from the central plaza and across from a boulangerie (how convenient). We have a small red Ikea kitchen, a nice bathroom with large shower, a table for eating and writing, a wardrobe, TV and king bed. I love the stone wall. Perfection!

We enjoyed a decadent Alsatian lunch at Les Petites Casseroles. Richard had a traditional Alsatian dish called baeckeoffe. On Mondays, laundry day, women traditionally took a casserole dish filled with potatoes, onions, vegetables and several types of meat, doused with white wine to the town baker to cook in his oven. Baeckeoffe literally means "baker's oven." I had a delicious dish of potatoes cooked in a cream and wine sauce with munster cheese and some sort of crispy smoked pork. It was decadently delicious.

Buildings around the town square of Obernai

We took a walk around town and went to the Simply Market and bought some provisions. We decided, except for parking, Obernai is perfection!

Obernai

Ehn River along the ramparts

Sign outside a restaurant

Passage in Obernai

ODYSSEY

The shore of beautiful Lake Constance

June 18:  Little did we know how bad this day would be. We ate breakfast at the gasthaus and were on the road before 9 a.m. We decided we had to chose between going to Lake Constance or the Vogtsbauernhof or Black Forest Open Air Museum--not both. We both wanted to see Lake Constance, then proceed straight to Obernai, France, where we had a reservation for the next five nights. According to Google, it was less than a four-hour drive, so that would give us some time to explore Lake Constance.

This supposedly four-hour tour turned into a 14-hour ordeal over two days. Some of it was our fault, but some of the delay was beyond anything we could have controlled. Lake Constance is about 40 miles long running east to west, and there are two roads that parallel the lake. One road is next to the water and goes through all the little towns along the lake, the other is perhaps a mile north and bypasses most of the villages. We had a detailed Michelin map of Baden-Wurttemberg, but it was not detailed enough for all the confusing signs along the road. We were going slow and steady with only a few missteps when at the west end of the lake, with no warning, the road was closed because of construction.We had to double back to Sipplingen where a helpful woman at the tourist office told us we needed to go back about five more miles and take another road to Stockach. We missed the road to Stockach, because the signs were akimbo. We turned around, but by this time the traffic was stopped, due to an accident. We waited quite awhile, then started up again and got past the accident, then realized we were going east, the wrong way! At this point, it was impossible to go back, because traffic was backed up several miles going west.

We made an executive, but ultimately wrong, decision to take a road north to Ravensburg and totally bypass Lake Constance. Again, we ran into road construction as we went through Bad Salgau and Sigmaringen. Our new route was as slow as the old one. We were getting tired and called our host in Obernai and told her we'd be a day late. We made our way to Titisee and found a lovely little gasthaus and spent the night. By the time we arrived there, it was 6:30 p.m. and we had been on the road for 10 hours with about four brief stops. If today were a TV show, it would be either "Gilligan's Island" (three-hour tour) or "Lost." We were exhasted and stressed. We walked into town and ate a good meal at an Italian-German restaurant, then walked home and went to bed.

There was a silver lining to today. We saw lots of southern Germany, and it is very beautiful. The farmland and little villages are picturesque. It was as if the gods had aligned against us in our odyssey, but we knew we could do better tomorrow. We had learned a few things about navigating in Europe. We also understood why people sign up for tours.

ZUGSPITZE

June 17:  After our difficulty in finding the train station yesterday we hired a taxi to pick us up at the hotel. When we arrived at the station, we realized we had been across the street from it yesterday, but did not recognize it as a train station. What idiots! I think we were looking for some sort of monumental granite building with pillars, but it was a sort of nondescript modern building that belonged in an office park. Now we had to figure out where the car rental offices were in the station (hidden on the second floor with no signs), then we had to deal with an officious rental agent, and finally we had to trudge two blocks and up to the sixth floor of a parking garage to find our car in slot 690. Avis did not have a road map to show us how to get out of town, so we had to rely on a map I'd printed out before we left home.

We encountered some road construction several times, but made it to Zugspitze without incident. Zugspitze is the tallest mountain in Germany, and even though it's dwarfed by the peaks of Switzerland and Austria, it has breathtaking views, sometimes all the way to Munich 100 kilometers away. The weather had been cool and comfortable in Munich, but to our delight, Zugspitze was much cooler. We bought some picnic supplies in Garmisch and were hoping that we'd have good visibility at the top of the mountain. The weather report said from 10 meters to 50 kilometers--a rather large range. Unfortunately, the visibility was perhaps 100 meters at best. The ascent on the cable car was thrilling, but once at the top, there wasn't much to do but eat our lunch at the biergarten.


We found snow at another level of Zugspitze, but otherwise the trek was a disappointment. The train trip down the mountain had an extensive safety video about what to do if the train stopped during the 30 minute descent--25 minutes of it were in a tunnel built in the 1930s. At the end of the extensive video, the narrator assured us that "It is very unlikely we'll have to use any of these safety procedures."

It was around 32 degrees, but felt great. 

Richard and I agreed Zugspitze was a mistake, both in time and money. We spent more than 100 euros and almost an entire day on the expedition. We could not drive all the way to Lake Constance that evening, so we stopped at a random gasthaus in Memmingen. I checked online, and the place appeared to have very positive reviews. It turned out the reviews were for the restaurant. The gasthaus wasn't particularly nice, but it was clean and quiet. Our dinners however were fabulous! I had some chili-encrusted pork medallions in a cream sauce and Richard has schnitzel with mushrooms and spaetzle with a pesto sauce.

MUNCHEN

Alexander is the tall guy in black

June 16:  Today was our third day in Munich, but we were jet lagged and brain dead the first day and spent most of the second at Dachau. Today, after our wonderful breakfast, we took a morning walk and thought we'd locate the Avis office, so tomorrow we wouldn't have to traipse there with our luggage not knowing where to go--we'd already done that. The car rental offices are in the train station, so how hard could it be? Well, evidently too hard for us. I had bought an international data plan for my iPhone, but if you walk around with roaming on, your data will soon be gone. We finally gave up and walked over to Marienplatz where we picked up a walking tour with a very knowledgeable guide Alexander who was a native Münchner.

Alexander walked us around the city for almost three hours with some other tourists from the US, Australia and Canada. One of our group was a retired professor of German literature, and he complimented me on my German. Of course, he only heard me say a few things and didn't realize I had spouted my entire repertoire. He'd been to Germany many times, and he too was impressed with Alexander. Alexander didn't shy away from Germany's and Munich's involvement with the Nazis. Munich was actually the "cradle," if you can use that word, of National Socialism. It's a painful subject, but one they confront. I didn't realize it, but Hitler was already agitating in Munich by 1919, less than a year after the end of the Great War. By the mid 1920s, Hitler was head of a movement.

Haus der Kunst now

One of the sights Alexander took us to was the Haus der Kunst, the House of Art, commissioned by Hitler. Of course, the Nazis thought art should serve the state and they purged what they called degenerate art (although they still plundered it) in favor of kitchy depictions of kinder, kuche, und kirche. They celebrated portraits of Teutonic maidens and virile Aryan men. The museum building was interesting, because it was a representation of Nazi monumental architecture. Alexander quipped that it was a shame Hitler, who had studied art in Vienna, had not been a more talented artist, because then he might have gone into painting instead of politics.

Haus der Kunst then

Alexander took us into an enclosed palace courtyard when all of a sudden a man in a business suit, carrying a briefcase, walked to the center fountain and started singing "O Sole Mio" in an beautiful operatic voice. The acoustics were fabulous! I thought it was some sort of street performance, but there was no collection plate. When he finished the song, he picked up his briefcase and left the courtyard with his friends who seemed as surprised as the rest of us. I was enjoying the moment too much to take a picture, but I do have a shot of the courtyard.

Site of the improptu concert.

Just another ornate church door.

After our walking tour, we asked Alexander for a lunch recommendation, and he mentioned Weisses Bauhaus. Alexander said they served real Bavarian food, including offal, and it was one of his favorites. Richard and I found it easily, because it was across the street from where we had eaten the first day, and we had a great lunch. Everyone else seemed to be German, and even though it was mid afternoon, there was lots of beer (and one table was also drinking shots of something). Richard ordered a variety of sausages with sauerkraut and I ordered sauerbraten. I was tempted to order the offal, but went for something more mainstream. I've made sauerbraten before, but I wanted to taste the real thing. As we were settling the bill, the waitress actually counted the number of the big doughy pretzels we ate. The Germans are very precise and thrifty.

Huge sculpture in an urban shopping center

This looked familiar--it is a copy of the Loggia della Signoria in Florence.

Yet another piece of art in Munich

After returning to the Blauer Boch, we walked next door to the Munich Stadtmuseum which is dedicated to the history and culture of Munich. The most interesting wing was the one devoted to National Socialism. The Nazis were masters of propaganda, and you could see the progression of their power and control in the exhibits. I found it very interesting that their depictions of German soldiers on propaganda posters verged on the homoerotic, especially since they persecuted homosexuals.

There are many lessons to be learned from how the Nazis lead so many people to follow their twisted path. History teaches us lessons at a great price, and we should heed them.

Since we had eaten a large, late lunch, we weren't hungry for dinner, but we did have a beer at the Viktualienmarkt biergarten. Alexander told us that by law, beer gardens allow you to bring your own food, as long as you buy beer. What a nice custom! The beer garden has tables under huge trees and was full of people. A very festive place. My pictures did not turn out.

Note to self: Must find out how a model-thin woman ate four slices of heavy German bread at the breakfast buffet.

DACHAU

Sculpture depicting the horrors of Dachau by Nandor Glid 

June 15:  Richard woke me up, and told me it was 9 a.m. Later, when we were the only ones at breakfast, we realized we had awakened at 6 a.m., but that still means we slept for 12 hours (not 15, as we first thought). We have banished the jet lag. Breakfast at Blauer Boch was fantastic! They have an entire room dedicated to the buffet of pickled herring, fried pickled herring (surprisingly delicious), smoked salmon, Bavarian sausages, liverwurst, perfectly-cooked soft-boiled eggs, pastries, croissants, muesli, fruit, yogurt, assortment of superb cheeses, cold cuts, dark German breads, rolls, juices and coffee. Breakfast was really impressive and will keep us going most of the day.

Today we took the S-Bahn to the village of Dachau, north of Munich, to visit the memorial at the site of the Dachau Concentration Camp. Dachau is a typical Bavarian village that 80 years ago became host to one of the Nazi's first prison camps for (in the beginning) political dissidents. It seemed so incongruous--the tall trees, the chirping birds, the neat and tidy German houses--and a killing factory. The people of the village had no say that the camp was placed in their town, however, many hoped to reap economic benefits, and they didn't question what happened inside the walls. The banality of evil.

The memorial site, despite constant rain, was overflowing with visitors, including hundreds of school children. I was not expecting so many people, but am glad this site draws such interest. We signed up for the 11 a.m. English tour and had the good fortune to have Gabriella as our guide. Gabriella was extremely knowledgeable about the camp and the history of the Third Reich. She tried to explain--not apologize for or excuse--the actions or inaction of the German people. We must understand why and how so it can never happen again.

Gabriella, our guide in tan anouk

The immensity of the site is surprising. More than 40,000 prisoners were at the camp when the war ended, and I believe more than 600,000 people had been through the gates over the dozen years the camp operated. Soon after the camp opened, it began accepting people who had done nothing against the regime, except belong to a group the Nazis despised such as the Jews. According to Gabriella no one ever escaped from Dachau. Only one row of barracks is still standing, but the footprints of the others cover acres of ground. I learned things I wish I hadn't, but will never be able to forget. The Nazi SS were cruel. Some of them undoubtedly sociopaths, but what of the others? How could they live with themselves after Dachau? 

Guard tower

Footprints of barracks--each one almost as long as a football field

Sculpture representing those who died at Dachau

When the camp was liberated by U.S. soldiers, they compelled the citizens of Dachau to come to the camp to see what had been happening in their midst for the past 12 years and made them bury thousands of the dead. The men and women of the village were sobbing at the sight, but it's impossible to believe they didn't know what their regime was doing behind the barbed wire. Gabriella told us that today, 70 years after the liberation of Dachau, mothers go to Munich 30 kilometers away to give birth, so Dachau will not be on their child's birth certificate.

Roll call at Dachau by artist David Ludwig Bloch, a prisoner who was released in 1938. 

We took the train back to Munich and had a light lunch at the Viktuelienmrkt near our hotel. I had weisswurst and Richard had weiners on top of potato salad scattered with watercress. Our big breakfast and late lunch meant we still weren't really hungry at dinner. So we picnicked in our room on cheese, bread, apricots and cherries and a Tuscan barbera, then early to bed.

FLUGZEUG

 June 14:  Humans were not designed to be strapped into a small, hard, upright chair for eight hours in a tube moving 700 miles per hour, but that's what we endured on Air Berlin in order to reach Europe. To say the flight was distressing is to understate the case. The airplane was warm, the food was like something you'd buy at 7-Eleven and cook in the microwave, and the seats felt like torture devices. Richard ate some sort of chicken cutlet, and the pasta I ordered turned out to be mac and cheese. Did I mention it was an overnight flight, and we didn't sleep a wink? At least the wine was drinkable, and the flight crew was very nice, although you realize that they too are suffering. Flying used to be so much fun! How have we allowed it to degenerate into this?

On top of all this, we only had 30 minutes in Dusseldorf to make our flight to Munich, and we had to clear a long line at Passport Control. But, we did it.

Once we arrived at the Munich Airport, we easily found the train into town and bought three-day transportation passes. We're not going to rent a car until we're ready to leave the city. The airport is far from the center, and we passed through farm fields and small villages before getting off at Marienplatz in the heart of Munich.

Our hotel was only a five-minute walk; if only we have walked in the right direction. We ended up walking around Munich for about 45 minutes before we finally found the hotel, so thank goodness for rolling suitcases. This wandering wasn't for naught--we saw some sights and the sunlight helped reset our cicadian rhythms. On our walk, we noticed lots of people wearing lederhosen and dirndls! Later we learned it was the 857th anniversary of the city's founding by the munichen or monks. We later found that this regalia isn't confined to special occasions. There are stores that devoted to Bavaria clothing and some people wear it as everyday attire.

Since our room at the Hotel Blauer Boch wasn't quite ready, we left our bags with the desk and walked across the street to Der Pschorr and enjoyed a beer on their patio and people watched. We soon were able to check into our hotel and were very pleased with our accomodations. The location is perfect and the hotel is very comfortable.

Later, we decided to go for an early dinner (3 p.m.) at Paulaner im Tal which was recommended by the desk clerk at the hotel. I had weiner schnitzel that was crispy and redolent of sweet butter, and Richard ordered pork belly that was unbelievable. After dinner, a shower and bed. It wasn't even 6 p.m., but we'd been awake for 30 hours.

When I retire, we're taking a boat to Europe.

Flower stall at the Viktualienmarkt of Munich (an open air market) 

ANTICIPATION

Just over a week until our adventure begins! I don't feel prepared--there's so much to do, and I have to do it while working the entire time. Perhaps our lack of preparation can be turned to our advantage by letting the trip meander a bit without every second being planned. However, there are Logistics! For instance, we want to spend a day in Nancy on road from Obernai to Puxe. I spent about an hour yesterday figuring out that we can park our car at the southernmost station in Nancy for the tram at very low cost, then be in the center of town in 10 minutes (trams are every 15 minutes). If you don't research things like this ahead of time, you end up spending $25 to park in town, or even worse, getting towed.

The Holzinger village still eludes me. Oh well, if we ever discover its identity, we'll just go back.