Germany is awesome! This past fall, I was lucky enough to spend close to three months exploring the country. I stayed in six different cities spread all over both east and west, north and south, and took several day trips to yet other places. After all this time, it is safe to say I learned…
Munich is one of the largest cities in Germany, and the de facto capital of the southern part of the country. It sits along the Isar River, near the foothills of the Alps. It also has one of the largest airports in Germany, making it a reasonably likely entry point for visitors to both Germany…
It is a beautiful fall afternoon in Munich’s English Garden, and the city has come out to enjoy it. An area larger than New York’s Central Park, the English Garden is a vast urban green space of wide lawns, man-made streams created by diverted water from the Isar River, monuments, tall trees, and beer gardens.…
Munich is, comparatively speaking, a modern city. While some cities trace back to Roman times, Munich itself is only mentioned as a city with a bridge over the river Isar from the year 1158. However, over the centuries, it went from a tiny settlement of Benedictine monks to the capital of a Germanic kingdom. Any…
This is my favorite way to travel. I love to find a long-term (at least a few weeks) home base to explore, and to use it as a hub to see some of the region. This trip has been too much of a whirlwind - with too many location changes - to do much of…
The history of Germany is so different from that of most of Western Europe. While countries like Spain, France, and the Netherlands have existed for centuries, in some cases even with relatively unchanged borders, Germany as a country didn’t really exist until 1871, when the German Empire was born, led by the northern kingdom of…
Warning: this article is graphic, and deals with some disturbing subject matter. It is vivid deliberately; the horrors of war - and especially of war prior to guided munitions - is something we must not gloss over. We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs,…
Too often, I find myself guilty of getting distracted while on travel. I become too consumed with learning, with experiencing new cultures, and with seeing things that will inspire articles that I fail to stop and to pay attention to what I am feeling. This trip to Germany gave me a lot of feelings, and…
Dresden, Germany is today a reasonably sized city of about 550,000 known for its low cost of living and tech renaissance (Silicon Saxony). But this belies a centuries-old history worthy of a much more major metropolis. From 1547 until 1918, it was the capital of the Electorate of Saxony (part of the Holy Roman Empire)…
Berlin is huge. It is diverse. It is impossible to truly capture in a month, let along in a week or even less. Monumental museums, incredible architecture, vast green spaces, and vibes that vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, Berlin really offers something for everyone, as cliche as that sounds. But what does a trip here…