Tag: Germany

From TRIPSWITHJAMES.COM: A Request For Your Help

Subject: Exclusive Pre-Sale Offer: “Three Days in Hamburg & Other Stories”

Dear Friends, Family, and Esteemed Subscribers,

I want to thank you for being readers of TripswithJames. I have enjoy writing my articles for you over the years about travel and the film business. I’m truly thrilled to announce the pre-sale launch of my debut book, Three Days in Hamburg & Other Stories. 📚✨ I could use your assistance in making my first book a success.

About the Book:

Three Days in Hamburg & Other Stories is a collection of eleven captivating tales that will transport you to intriguing worlds. From crumbling marriages to lost fortunes, superpowered aliens to Viking zombies, these stories promise excitement, mystery, and unexpected twists.

Why You Should Grab Your Copy:

  1. Early Access: Be among the first to delve into these enchanting narratives before the official release.
  2. Special Price: For a limited time, the e-book is available at an unbeatable price of $0.99.
  3. Support a Dream: By purchasing during the pre-sale, you contribute to making this book a bestseller.

AMAZON LINK – http://amazon.com/author/jrc.128

How You Can Help:

  1. Order Now: Visit Amazon and secure your copy.
  2. Spread the Word: Share this exciting news with your book-loving friends and family.
  3. Leave a Review: After reading, leave an honest review on Amazon—it makes a world of difference!

AMAZON LINK – http://amazon.com/author/jrc.128

Let’s Make It a Bestseller:

Our goal? To achieve bestseller status by May 1, 2024. With your support, we can make it happen!

Thank you for being part of this incredible journey. Let’s celebrate the magic of storytelling together.

Amazon Pre-Sale Link – http://amazon.com/author/jrc.128

Warm regards,

James R. Carey Author, Three Days in Hamburg & Other Stories

P.S. Remember, this special pre-sale price won’t last long. Grab your copy now: Amazon Pre-Sale Link – http://amazon.com/author/jrc.128

MY NEW BOOK – THREE DAYS IN HAMBURG & OTHER STORIES – NOW ON SALE AT AMAZON.COM

James R. Carey’s debut on Amazon at $0.99 at www.amazon.com/author.jrc.128 , the book comprises personal, fantasy, and memory-based stories. The title short story, inspired by his own dissolving marriage amid the pandemic, is a semi-true story based on real life events.

This is my first book – one of several to come I hope. You can find it on Amazon.com for the price of $0.99 as a presale special. I hope that enough people will buy it and make it head for bestseller status. (One can dream).

Follow the link www.amazon.com/author/jrc.128 and that will take you directly to my Author page and you can buy directly from there. An excerpt to the title story follow below.

EXCERPT FROM THREE DAYS IN HAMBURG

“My cell phone rang at exactly 11 PM. I picked it up and looked at the caller ID. It was my wife. The call caught me by surprise as we had been having some tough times for the past few months. She was calling from Hamburg, Germany, where she had gone to visit her mother. There’s a 9-hour time difference between Hamburg and our home in West Adams, an area of Los Angeles where we had lived for 5 years. That made it 8 AM in the morning there. We hadn’t talked on the phone for a week, and our few emails to each other had been very terse.

“Hey, how are you?” I asked as I answered the phone.

Silence.

“Hey, can you hear me… Are you there…?”

“Yes, I’m here,” she answered in her odd combination of American & German accent. Something that I had always found very sexy.

“What’s going on? Everything okay?”

“Look I need to talk to you about something very important,” she said in a very flat voice. Hackles rose on the back of my neck and red flags began to appear. “I have been doing a lot of thinking, and I’m calling to tell you that I’m not coming back.”

“For how long? Is everything okay with your mother?” I asked, still unsure which direction this conversation was going to go.

“Mother is fine. I’m calling to tell you that I’m not coming back to you. I’m going to stay in Hamburg for a few more months, and when I come back, I’ll probably file for divorce.”

“What the fuck?”

“Look I don’t want to fight with you about this, please?” she said in a stern voice, cutting me off. “We just do this all the time. I’m tired of the tension. I’m tired of the arguments. I’m tired of being tired and stressed. I love you very much, but I just can’t go on living like this. So please respect my decision. Don’t call me and don’t write me one of your long angry emails. I just can’t take it. Please. And if you do call me, I’m just not going to respond. Okay? I love you, but I just can’t live like this anymore. I’m sorry.” With that, she hung up.

Shocked, I sat staring at the wall for what seemed like hours. Yes, we had not been doing well but I didn’t think it was this far gone. She went to Germany about three weeks before to celebrate her mother’s 70th birthday and to take a break from us and the tension in our house. It was the middle of the semester and I had not been able to leave my teaching gig. I had Face-Timed with my mother-in-law on her birthday and had briefly spoken to my wife. Things had seemed to be okay at least for the moment. This came as a major surprise.

Then I got angry. Really angry. I tried to call her back, but of course, it went straight to voicemail. Predictably, I left her an angry message. Then I poured myself a large Jack Daniels and stormed around the house for the next couple of hours holding imaginary conversations between myself and her telling her what a bitch she was, how unfair she was being and defending myself from all the supposed wrongs that I had done to her over the last few years. Finally, at about 1 AM, I took several hits of pot and fell asleep on the couch.

Somewhere I heard the distant ringing of a cell phone and some part of my brain realized that it was mine. Pulling myself from a deep sleep, I reached out for the phone where I had left it last night. Hoping that it was my wife, I looked at the caller ID and saw the number for work. It was 9:45 AM and I was an hour late for work.

In a groggy voice I answered, “Hello?” Lynda, my department head goes, “Where are you? You’re an hour late for your class.”

My thoughts just could not seem to connect last night to this morning, but I knew I had messed up in a major way. I just decided to tell the truth. “Lynda, my wife is leaving me. She’s in Germany and I have to catch the next plane to try and save my marriage.” – End of Excerpt!

(Excerpt from the short story “THREE DAYS IN HAMBURG” by James R. Carey. From the Book, THREE DAYS IN HAMBURG & OTHER STORIES. Copyright© 2024, James R. Carey. All Rights Reserved. Published with arrangement with CareyOn Creative, LLC, Atlanta, GA .)

Can be found at www.amazon.com/author/jrc.128

I HAVE ALWAYS WRITTEN –

My original plan for this book over four years ago was to be a few short stories surrounding a novella called The Ticket that I’ve been writing for about 5 years. It’s a great story in my head but it never has quite come together the way that I wanted it to on the page. So, it has never been finished.

That was the idea and then real life came along changing everything. A crumbling marriage, the pandemic, a move to the other side of the country, and a new city and start all seem to move the stories in another direction. The stories began to take on the form that they wanted to take, and I just kind of followed along.

Some stories are very personal, others are fantasy. Some are memories of people or places, and some are combinations of all the above. Some are new, and some are old. Some came very easily, and some took months to write. This collection of stories is quite different than the one I intended, but it is the one that came to life.

The title story was written in the early days of the pandemic in my home office in Los Angeles as I tried to come to grips with my dissolving marriage. My then wife and I were still speaking, and she was the first to read it. Her appraisal of it was “very hard for me to read but it’s very good”. Not sure if she meant that or not, but I will take it.

As a young boy I wrote ideas for stories and comic books. First it was crazy little stories about flying turtles or other idiotic ideas, but I thought they were funny, and it kept me entertained as I listened to my parents argued downstairs or sitting by myself in the school cafeteria. Later in my teenage years, the stories became dark ones of loneliness, escape, teenaged angst and desire. However, they could never finish because I wasn’t old enough to know where life was supposed to take you. So, if I didn’t throw them away, they got stuck in a drawer.

In college I discovered three things that I loved. First, was girls. The second was music so I wrote a ton of bad poetry and awful songs, truly little of which has survived to this day. The third thing I discovered was theatre so I wrote some unbelievably bad plays and screenplays. Not any of those survived.

Yet, I still continued to write down little ideas, thoughts, dialogue, situations, dramatic conflicts and the best of those got stuck in that drawer.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I had a writing partner for a while, so some of those ideas that had been stuck in the drawer for years came out. They were dusted off, reexamined and rewritten. Some were used, some were thrown away and some got stuck back in the drawer. Later when I opened my own theatre in Los Angeles with my partner Denise Ragan Weihenmayer called the Attic Theatre Ensemble, we had a lot of stage time to fill and actors to keep busy. So, I started adapting short stories and updating old plays to fill that void. The reaction to those adaptations was positive. I continue jotting down ideas and dialogue.

Eventually, I got married to a minor television star in Los Angeles and when her TV show got cancelled, I wrote her a play. She never performed in that play because we got divorced before I finished it. I did finish it, however. The play was a full-length comedy with dancing and the Devil, and a lot of food called Dancing in Hell. It got produced twice. Once at a university near Los Angeles, and once at my own theatre. It got complimentary reviews, but when those two productions were over. I put the script in the drawer.

I wrote a couple of short film screenplays that got produced, Owlman and A Cost of Freedom, but this was before the Film Festival circuit had become so big. So, the films and the screenplays went in that drawer.

An opportunity to start doing theatre festivals both in the United States and other parts of the world presented itself. This became a time period where I would write and perform one man shows and tour them around these various venues. The first one called Coming To Zimbabwe which debuted in Africa and was later optioned by a German production company to be done as a radio play for German speaking audiences around the world. It was the story of the first time I ever went to Africa and what a life-changing experience it was for me during a difficult part of my life. My second one-man show was called Mi Casa Su Casa where I talked about my large old house in the West Adams area of Los Angeles where I ran an Airbnb for 11 years and the people from all over the world who stayed with me. That was performed in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New England, and various parts of the United States and won several awards. Yet when those shows had run their course, those scripts got stuck in that drawer.

I married my second wife; a Danish woman and we had a very passionate but turbulent relationship. As our marriage fell apart, the pandemic struck, and I found myself stuck in my house in Los Angeles by myself for months. To keep myself busy I decided to paint a couple of rooms including one that had been my home office for over 15 years. As I was clearing out the room and moving items, I discovered that drawer with all the ideas, conversations, dialogue and scenarios that I had left shut for such an extraordinarily long time. As I read through the material, I realized that I had written a lot of stuff. I had written award-winning screenplays and theatre plays. So, with all this time on my hands, I decided to try and write short stories and see what happened.  I started and finished the first short story that I had written in probably 25 to 30 years and polished it in a couple of days. Then I rewrote a couple of stories that were in that drawer except now I was approaching them from an adult perspective. I changed them around a good bit and they’re in this book as well. With my marriage finally coming to an end, I wrote a fictionalized version of the last trip that we took together to Hamburg, Germany. Parts of the story are absolutely true, and other parts are as they used to say in an old television show, “the names have been changed to protect the innocent”. That story turned out to be Three Days in Hamburg and became the title story of this collection.

Over the past three years I’ve written more short stories, discarded them and written new ones. I have a novel I’ve been trying to finish. A memoir about my time in Africa that I have worked on sometimes. Written three more screenplays and a couple of them have being produced, but this book of short stories was always something I wanted to finish.

Now I have and I hope you enjoy it. I can’t say it was easy to write but it brings me immense joy to see it in its published form. Thank you for taking the time to pick it up.

Can be found at www.amazon.com/author/jrc.128

© Copyright Tripswithjames.com 2024. All rights reserved! Tripswithjames.com is a domain owned by CareyOn Creative, LLC, Atlanta, GA.

The TSA Blues – Opinion

So recently, I went to get my TSA Pre-Check eligibility in Los Angeles. I paid $85 for a 5 year membership to be able to bypass the long security lines at airports in the US. The ability to not have to pull my computer out, have to take my shoes off, or have a surly TSA agent stick their hand in my private areas. That sounded like a really good deal to me if for no other reason than just in terms of sheer time saved.

So I was eager to check out how this would work on my first international flight since receiving my TSA Pre-Check approval. I have been sometimes selected for this program randomly, but not officially. I had already booked a flight to Copenhagen after I had applied for the program (which takes about 3 to 4 weeks) so when I got my KTN # (Known Traveler Number) I called my carrier, Norwegian Airlines to give them my number. I was kindly told in a sing-song Scandinavian voice that Norwegian did not take part in the program so I could not use my KTN for this flight.

OK, I had to stand in line like everyone else again. Ok, I could that. I had done that before – many times if you have read my blog before. However, what follows are the worst two experiences that I or my family have ever had at the hands of the TSA.

I am all for border protection and legal immigration. I am all for the rule of law and applying it equally. I am not however, for a bunch of foul-mouth, self-entitled, rude, self-important jerk-offs yelling at US citizens, legal Green Card holders, and proper visitors to the US with proper visas, especially when those being yelled at are myself and my wife. The TSA feels that they are answerable to no one and that should change ASAP.

My wife had gone to Europe to see her family for 3 weeks, and I was joining her for the last 10 days in Hamburg, Germany. We were going to return together on a Norwegian Airline flight from Copenhagen and land in Los Angeles.

I should explain here that my wife is from Denmark. She has lived here for 7 years, and we have been married going on 5 years. Her permanent green card application has taken forever. In older days, the process took about 2 years from applying to receiving your permanent residence card that would be good for up to 10 years before you have to reapply. During that two-year period, the applicant was granted a temporary Green Card which allowed them to stay, and exit or enter the USA. Now because of Obama, Trump, 9/11 and other factors, this process can take up to 4 years and still not be resolved. The people going through this process are not illegal, but that temporary card can be taking away at anytime. And that can and does create a lot of anguish and anxiety for the individuals and their families.

Applying for the card is also an expensive choice costing with legal fees more than 3000 dollars with no guarantee that you will be allowed to stay. You can choose to do this process yourself to save some money, but it will still cost upwards of 1500 dollars. Once you are granted temporary status, it can be taken away at a moment’s notice and you are put on a plane at once and away you go back to your home country, even if you are married to a US citizen. If you are here on a visa of any nature and it runs out and you do not return to your home country, the only other choice you have other than marriage is to go underground. That is what many immigrants used to do, but if you are ever caught you are banned from entering the USA in many cases, forever. So the idea that getting a permanent green card is easy or simple, or that you can fake it by getting married is simply not true. It is a long, hard process that is expensive and is very stressful on a person or family.

Now Los Angeles is one of the busiest entry points into the USA. A TSA customs employee told me that at any one time there are 3000 people standing in line at customs waiting to be processed, and more than that are processed through the security lines. That is every working hour of the day – 7 days a week. That is a lot of people, stress and constant screening to process. It can put an amazing strain on people and a system. Yet, that is no excuse for bad and rude behavior to citizens and visitors alike just because your job is stressful. And TSA is making no excuses for its incredibly awful service and terrible treatment of people.

So I get to the airport and get my e-ticket for my flight to Denmark. I stand in the 45 minute line to get into the security line. One of my complaints is that no airport is the same in terms of how they handle this procedure. Every single one of them does it different, and at LAX which has 7 terminals – they do it all different as well. So there is no standard, no set way. Different places want you do to different things. And with the increase of machines helping with moving the bags and shoes, and new x-ray machine the process is constantly changing. Plus at LAX because of the sheer number of people, the guards scream instructions at you all the time. Someone should train them to understand that humans automatically turn off paying attention when someone screams at them continuously. We just tune out.

This day the message being screamed at us was”…nothing in your pockets at all. No passport, wallet, paper – nothing. Put everything in the container.” I managed to do that, however I always keep my boarding pass with me, so I stuck it in my back pocket. I go through the x-ray machine, and I am immediately pulled out of line and surrounded by two TSA guards.

They showed me the x-ray image where there is something in my back pocket. I pull out my boarding pass. A single piece of paper. But because of this I am now going to experience a full body search instead of a wand. I asked why and they said that it was a new policy. They were professional about it – telling me what they were going to touch and I said ok – meanwhile, my computer, passport, wallet, medicine, shoes were waiting at the end of the collection point where anyone could have taken them.

They checked my waistband, my pockets in the back and felt up my butt. “Now turn around!” I asked why because the x-ray clearly showed that there was nothing in the front part of my body. “Procedure” was the answer has he felt up my legs, grabbed my privates very hard and checked my front pockets. Than I was told to take off my socks? What were they going to find in two sport socks? At this point, I began to complain loudly about the overkill. I have a KTN number, it was a piece of paper, nothing in my socks. The sock check was over so I grabbed them and started away. I was shoved back into place by a large female officer, and when I pointed out that my passport was out in the open for almost 10 minutes now – she literally screamed in my face, “…we have cameras all over the place. No one is going to steal your lousy passport.” This is the same TSA that has failed every major test of their system since testing began. Sure they were going to notice one guy’s passport being pick up at the end of the conveyor belt.

Than they checked my hands of whatever chemicals that they check for – Pass. Than I was dismissively told to “move along.” That did it. His and his partner’s entire attitude was offensive and over the top. I told the officer that he was rude and this entire procedure was a pure power play. That the full body check was entirely unnecessary because of a single piece of paper that they could clearly see in the image screen. He demanded to know if I want to speak to a supervisor. I told him what was the point – 10 minutes had already been wasted, and I would simply be put in another room to file my complaint and more time would be wasted. But I retold them that they were very rude. As I walked away the female officer screamed again, “Did I want to speak to a supervisor?”

As I collected my items that had sat on the conveyor belt for 15 minutes almost and started to check if everything was there, I realized I was extremely upset. I have heard about rude or over the top behavior by TSA agents, but had never experienced myself in all the trips I have taken. I felt like I had been assaulted almost.  A man standing next to me who must have seen part of the exchange stated to me that he had a Pre-Check number and he got pulled out every time. His comment was he did not know why he had gotten the KTN# because it was basically useless. I wondered to myself if the same fate would happen for me now.

Then the return –

So the brief history of my wife. She is a Danish citizen and while waiting for her permanent Green Card to come, her Danish passport expired. So she sent off for another from Denmark which took about 6 weeks, and in the meantime she got an extension placed in her old passport by the local immigration office. We are lucky that we live in LA, so there is a local one. Yet, if during that time a family member or emergency happened in her home country, she could not travel at all. No airline would accept her and no country would receive her until she had proper travel documents.

Plus because the process takes so long now, her temporary green card had expired. But instead of giving her a new card, the US made her travel with an expired temporary green card and a visa extension in her expired Danish passport. Her Danish passport is in her maiden name so each time she travels anywhere, she carries two passports (one old with the extension visa and the new passport), her marriage license with her married name, and her expired Green Card also in her married name.

Now just before her trip, she got notice that her permanent Green Card was approved she was here in the country permanently – but they would send the card in about 3 to 4 weeks. She would receive the card after her return to the country.  So for this trip she carried the 2 passports, the expired Green card, her marriage license and the letter that said she had the permanent card with the ID# on it.

She had done this trip to Denmark about 4 time now, plus trips with me to Cuba, Mexico (twice) and Canada. She is always questioned but not for long and customs is relatively easy.

Recently, her fingerprints ended up in the system, so now she is pulled out of line every time and taken to a sealed TSA room known as “secondary check”. Here she is told to sit for up to an hour while they check her through the computer system. This is always on a first come, first serve basis. There is no allowance for green card holders and people already with the proper visas. The secondary check is for anyone that may appear on the screen of the customs agent at the first check-in. If they see anything that flags you, you are escorted by an armed officer to the secondary check room for the reason they were flagged.

This is not the little room that they show in all the movies with two-way mirrors and agents staring at you trying to figure out which country you are a spy for. This is a large room where everyone is treated like cattle. No one but the officer and the person pulled out of line can go inside. There is no cell phone communication allowed inside. None whatsoever. There is no time limit as to all long they can keep you, they will answer no questions about the person inside from anyone including family. They handle many languages and cultures and constantly have to deal with people who are confused, scared or literally do not speak English. So it is hard on the personnel and the person pulled out of line and can created some very stressful and tense situations. Yet again that does not excuse really rude behavior from anyone or agency.

My wife was in this room for 3 hours (a visit that has always only taken an hour), while I waited outside after a 12 hour flight and 2 hour check in that the Copenhagen airport. I was not allowed to know what was happening with her, and when I asked I was told in no uncertain terms to sit down and be quiet. So I sat in baggage claim for three hours with her bags and no idea if or when she would get out. She did manage to secretly text me a couple of times, but it was just to let me know she was still ok.

While there she witnessed TSA officers threatening legal immigrants with deportation if they did not shut up. Pulling cell phones out of confused foreigners’ hands who did not speak English and screaming at them. Not letting mothers talk to their children. Not letting relatives speak to the people in the room. There were chairs for about 12 people and there were more than 50 people in the room, so people had to sit on the floor. Why does this process need to be so aggressive and ugly?  What is the point of this kind of behavior by professional airport and customs officials?

Now again let me state that I want border protection. I want to feel safe when I fly, but I don’t want officials of my country screaming at me and mine, or legal visitors and residents because they are over worked. There is no excuse for it. I wish someone in Washington would do something about this, but in the current political climate that is not going to happen, and this problem of rude, overworked, over-entitled TSA officers and personnel is only going to get worse.

Berlin’s Holocaust Memorials – Berlin, Germany

In the last 80 years, the city of Berlin may have gone through more changes than anywhere else in Europe. First, the capital of a struggling and failing democracy, then the capital of a monstrous totalitarian regime, then an invaded city, then a divided city, then the epicenter of a political battle of the two most powerful entities in the world, then a united city, and now like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the capital of the most powerful democracy in Europe. That is a lot of history both good and bad, and Berlin faces that history in both celebration and somber recollection.

Two of the most somber places to face some of that dark history are the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Jewish Holocaust Memorial, and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism. The first is a memorial to the murdered Jewish people throughout Europe during the Nazis’ reign of terror, and the second is a memorial to that minority that Hitler almost eliminated in his racial purges, the Sinti and Roma peoples. The Sinti and Roma are nomadic people found throughout Europe and the United States. Often both groups are referred to as Roma, collectively, they are popularly referred to as Gypsies.

Before the Second World War, Berlin had one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe, and the Murdered Jews memorial seems to speak to that history. With its location in the city centre directly across from Tiergarten, Berlin’s large main park, and near to both the Reichstag building and the Brandenburg Gate, the monument provides a central reference point for visitors.

The monument is composed of 2711 rectangular concrete blocks, laid out in a grid formation, the monument is organized into a rectangle-like array covering about 5 acres. The design allows for long, straight, and narrow alleys between them while the ground below them undulates in dips and rises. Designed by American architect Peter Eisenman, the number of slabs (or stelaes) is not symbolic, but rather fit the dimensions designed by Eisenman. The slabs are made of gray concrete treated with a protective chemical coating that allows for the easy removal of graffiti and other forms of defacement.

There are many interpretations to the memorial design. Eisenman’s own description states, “the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.” The most common is that of a graveyard. And another is that the size, scale and straight lines of the design evoke the discipline and unquestioning bureaucratic order that kept the killing machine grinding along. There are parts of the memorial where you entered a dip and you are surrounded by massive blocks that cut you off from the sights and sounds of the city around you.

Beneath the slabs, is the real center of the memorial. The information center, which is located underground at the site’s eastern edge, begins with a timeline that lays out the history of the Final Solution, from when the National Socialists (Nazis) took power in 1933 through the murder of 500,000 Soviet Jews in 1941. The rest of the exhibition is divided into four rooms dedicated to personal aspects of the tragedy, like reading of the letters thrown from the trains that transported the Jews to the death camps, or The Room of Families which focuses on the fates of 15 specific Jewish families from different parts of Europe, or the Room of Names, where names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims obtained from the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel are read out loud.

To walk through these rooms is both humbling and horrifying. Humbling in the realization of the millions of people who suffered just because of their race, religion or sexual orientation. And horrifying when you realize the sheer scale of the Final Solution, and its amazing ability and efficiency to care out that goal.  You have to look for the information center, and many critics have questioned the placement of the center. It is underground and not well-marked, but while the above slabs of concrete evoke a graveyard, the personal stories you hear of ruined lives and families and survival in the information center will break your heart.

The complete opposite of the Jewish Holocaust Memorial is the small, quiet, almost hidden Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism. The memorial is located inside Tiergarten just north of the Brandenburg Gate. This monument is dedicated to the memory of the 220,000 – 500,000 people murdered in the Porajmos – the Nazi genocide of the European Sinti and Roma peoples.

The memorial was designed by Israeli artist Dani Karavan and consists of a dark, circular pool of water at the centre of which there is a triangular stone. The triangular shape of the stone is in reference to the badges that had to be worn by concentration camp prisoners. The stone is retractable, and a fresh flower is placed upon it daily. In bronze letters around the edge of the pool is the poem ‘Auschwitz’ by Roma poet Santino Spinelli.

While thousands stream through the other memorial because of its location and unique design, this quiet pool attracts far fewer people, but the message is no less powerful. The pool, the poem written along the pool, and the quiet respect people show give this small memorial a power that truly moves you.

There are certainly more fun thinks to do in Berlin, but importance that the city itself places on these memorials in the heart of Berlin make them essential places to visit. Not only to reflect on those who have gone, but to make sure horrors like this near occur again.

(Many of the facts about the Memorials were supplied by Wikipedia and other sources.)

Fabulous Berlin – Germany

Which Berlin do you want to visit? Because there are so many Berlins all rolled into one. There is the modern capital Berlin building itself into the 21st Century with construction going on everywhere. There is the nightlife and decadent Berlin with endless clubs, fetish bars and late-night raves where 100’s of people line up to get into private places thumping to the endless electronic beat that Germany seems to love so much. There is the cultured Berlin filled with museums and historic buildings plus the exciting avant-garde music, theatre, art and film scenes exploring everything at the same time. Or the quiet, circumspect Berlin paying homage to the victims of its turbulent past with memorials and exhibits to the past and hoping for the future.

Berlin Wall Walking Museum

Which one do you want? But why choose, because you can have them all at the same time. You can experience many, many things in the wonderful and exciting city that is grounded in the past but reaching for the future with both hands.

Over the last couple of decades, Berlin has become a construction zone with ripped up streets and giant cranes overhead in every part of the city. It is the rebirth of a great European capital right in front of your eyes. City planners seized on the opportunity of the city’s reunification and the return of the central government to completely rebuild Berlin. What used to be rundown, Soviet East Berlin is now the new, modern, vibrant heart of the city filled with shops, hotels, clubs, and soaring modern buildings and plazas. While what used to be West Berlin feels more residential like a very chic suburb. And this is all linked by one of the best metro systems in Europe. You can get anywhere in Berlin in a matter of minutes by train, metro, tram, bus and using your feet.

Remains of the Anhalter Branhof

I stayed in Central Berlin for a week in an AirBnb apartment located across the street from the S. Anhalter Bahnhof (an old pre-WW II train station), now a subway station. The amount of nightlife, clubs and bars that I could walk to in a few blocks was pretty amazing. While I was technically in West Berlin, I was only a few blocks from Checkpoint Charlie (where East Berlin used to begin) and Friedrichstrasse. Along Friedrichstrasse, there are literally hundreds of clubs, cafes, hotel bars, restaurants and other night spots that stretch for blocks from the Checkpoint north up to the Spree River. Yet, all over Berlin there are neighbor restaurants, cafes and bars. Right in the same building complex that I was staying in was the well-known Solar Sky Bar, very upscale bar visited by tourists and locals alike.

If you followed Friedrichstrasse up to the Spree River as you cross the bridge there, you come to Murphey’s Irish Bar, a true Irish bar (full of real Irishmen) right in the heart of Berlin. Turn right as you walk out the front door of Murphey’s and walk one block to come to a whole string of bistros with outdoor eating areas set up along the river serving all kinds of food from German, French, Italian and Turkish. And nothing in Berlin tastes better after some late-night drinking than stopping at a Turkish food stand and getting a hot, fresh kebap which is a large mix of chicken, lamb or beef with herbs and tomatoes, onions and peppers wrapped in a large pita bread. And yes, you have probably had something similar, but somehow it tastes better made by a real Turk cook in Berlin. My personal favorite was Prime Kebap, Friedrichstrasse 100, 10117 Berlin.

 

Modern Berlin

On the weekends, if you stay up long enough you will find one the late-night raves that open all over Berlin in the early morning hours. The one that I ran into on Friedrichstasse on my second night in Berlin had about 500 young people all dressed in various forms of black trying to get into store front while thundering electronic music boomed out of the outdoor speakers. Or if your personal taste run to the more exotic, you could try one of Berlin’s fetish clubs like the world-famous Kitt-Katt Klub located in central Berlin. Berlin has long been known since the 1920’s as one of Europe’s most decadent cities, and it is all on display in Berlin if you just try to look for it.

A couple of websites that offer a non-stop list of events happening every day in Berlin would be;

  1. Berlin Programm – berlinprogramm.de
  2. Exberliner Magazine – exberliner.com

Also, a place to buy same day half-priced tickets to any event in the city would be as Hekticket, located at Alexnderplatz at Karl-Libknecht-Strasse.

Museum Island

If museums and art galleries are your thing – then Berlin has entire island in the middle of the Spree River dedicated to that. Literally called Museum Island, the island houses 5 world class museums and art galleries, the ornate Protestant Berlin Cathedral, and one of Berlin’s best open space parks, Lustgarten. Plus now where the old palace of the Hohenzollern dynasty stood, that the Communists tore down to be the East German Parliament building, that the city of Berlin tore down – there a huge public venue known as the Humboldt-Forum Berliner Schloss being built that will house more museums, shops, galleries, and concert halls costing the citizens of Berlin 600 million euros. So hopefully for politicians, it will be worth the expense.

It is worth noting that the museums are the Bode, Pergamon, the Neues, and Altes Museums plus the Old National Gallery of Art. Each museum specializes in a different historical era like Roman, Hellenistic, Babylonian and Islamic art and treasures. Of special interest is the 3000-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti located in the Neues Museum. The bust has been called “Berlin’s most beautiful woman”. It is amazing that after 3000 years, this statue makes such an impression not only because of its age, but her sheer beauty that still astonishes after 30 centuries. Right across the bridge toward the Brandenburg gate, is the German History Museum and the German State Opera house both worth consideration. Plus there are museums and art galleries in every part of the city exploring Berlin’s history and artistic contributions.

Victory Column, Tiergarten

Since my background is in live theatre, I took some time to explore Berlin’s avant garde theatre scene.  Berlin possesses more than 50 or so working theaters and produces more than 1,000 new live shows a year. Deutsche Welle’s Ben Knight describes the Berlin theatre scene as “Berlin theater is a hard thing to love – it’s pretentious, abstruse, cerebral and elitist. But on a good night, it’s also unique, iconoclastic, bizarre, and compelling.”

While I understand that Berlin’s theatre scene was one of the richest in Europe, it is really elitist and hard to understand sometimes. Even if you just take in the four international known theatres in Berlin, the Berliner Ensemble (formed by Bertol Becht’s wife), the Deutsches Theatre, the Schaubuhne, and the Volksbuhne, you are going to get four completely different experiences based on the artistic direction of each theatre, and they play to completely different audiences. Yet, I found some of the work I saw to be compelling and inventive, but emotionally distant as if I was watching an exercise in a theatre class. I am told the Berlin music and film scenes are just as inventive and wild.

Small Lake, Tiergarten

If you are looking for something a little more quiet and not quite so cerebral, then check out Tiergarten Park in the middle of Berlin, right across from the Brandenburg Gate. Huge, green, quiet and filled with bike paths and walking paths, where you are always finding a rose garden or a fountain or a memorial hidden among the lush green trees. To US citizens, it will remind you of New York City’s Central Park because of its large size, placement in the city, and how several streets run right through the middle of it.

Along its eastern edge you will find several important sites and memorials including the Brandenburg Gate, the Terror Museum, the Memorial to Murdered Jews of Europe, the German Resistance Memorial, and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims (the official names of the Gypsy race).

Holocaust Memorial

History, shopping, music, art, culture, food, cafes and clubs, Berlin has everything that you could want in a capital city. When I visit Europe, I often trying to envision myself living there and where would feel like home if at all. Rome is the first place that I think about, but Berlin while it can give you a cold distant feeling has an energy that I have not found in many European cities. It does not feel old and tired, it feels alive, new and  vibrant, and that is why I came to like the city so much.

Author with a new friend in Tiergarten

I had nothing to write about? – Los Angeles

I have just returned from an around-the-world trip – Europe, Middle East, India, through Japan back to Los Angeles. I took 1000’s of photos, visited ancient and modern cities, saw tons of castles, museums, and old ruins. Visited old friends, met new ones and saw people and places that I will always remember.

I also fancy myself a travel writer. I have a blog – tripswithjames.com. My readership is small but slowly growing. I have my website, a FB page, a Google page, and an Instagram page. I have tried to publish at least one article a week and on the recent trip I was up to two per week. I posted 100’s of photos on my sites and use an app called Hootsuite that can publish on up to 10 sites at the same time (to save time).

I try to take this new hobby seriously, so that it may one day turn into something real. Like a real business. That is why I was shocked when I went to start a new blog post a week ago, and had nothing to say????

While on my journeys I had posted 11 blogs about Iceland and parts of Germany. I had not even gotten to India yet (I could do 11 on India alone). Yet, on that morning as I sat at my desk and tried to write about Berlin (where I spent a week) – nothing. I did not even want to edit some photos and post those. Just blah!


Of course, I was back home and my “REAL” life was taking over again. My job as a college professor, my ownership of an Airbnb guest house, and editing my new short film as a film/theatre director slowly invaded the space that once was taken up with the next adventure and the next place to see and experience. Slowly, the journey was pushed out replaced by the need to have the dryer fixed, a new dishwasher delivered, and the carpeting in the apartment replaced with laminate flooring.

Yet blah?

Travel has been my increasingly important passion over the past 5 years. Something that I dream about and plan for and save for, so that I can see something I have not seen before and experience something that I have not done before. So why the writer’s block?


Then, I started to put pressure on myself for not writing. I would make plans to sit down and write, but always found a way to put it on the back burner. Always found an excuse or just plain forgot. What was going on? And the pressure built because if you are writing a blog – you have to be consistent to build an audience for your work. And I had made a promise to myself to be consistent. Yet, nothing. What was going on??

One night during an editing session on the new short film (called Fancy Meeting You Here) I mentioned this block to the writer/producer of the film. How I was so frustrated and stressed about not writing, and she said write about that.

What? Write about not writing? Why would anyone want to read that?

She told me that I am a creative person, and I am upset with not being creative. That I had just returned from a world tour for 6 weeks where my only responsibility was getting to an airport on time for my next flight. Other than that, I had no restrictions at all. I could do anything I wanted too. Now, my real life and all the things that entails was taking over and blocking out the journey and the ideas that it generated. The very jobs that make my current passion possible were getting in the way of that passion.
Further, she explained, is that I have a blog about travel but also all the things related to travel. Wasn’t it ironic that the very things that made the blog possible were keeping me from doing the blog. So write about that frustration.

Great, I get that I acknowledged, but who wants to read about a travel writer who cannot write. Who cares?

The problem was not unique to me, my friend pointed out. Everyone gets overwhelmed by daily life. The mortgage, the kids, the job, the car, the repairs, the in-laws, your boss. It all adds up to take us away from what is really important to us. You have to make an active attempt every day to focus on what is important to you, because no one else is going to make that space for you. Some days you get the time and other days you don’t, but you have to always try to find the space to create or whatever it is that is important to you. And that is what you should write about.

Then we went back to editing the film.

So that is what today’s blog is about. Finding the time to do what it is that you want to do. It won’t be there every day, but if you plan for it and make space for it, most days it will be. Daily life is going to happen regardless. Your responsibilities, your obligations and society all work to take over your moment to moment life. Your daily obligations can overwhelm you, and soon you may not realize that you have lost control of your own day to day existence.

It would be very easy to put off writing for a day that turned into a week, into a month, into three months, finally into six months I forget that I have a website at all. Me, myself, and I have to make the space, the time, and effort to get to do what I want to do. Some days I will have it and some days not, but I will not blame myself for not doing it – I will just make sure that I do it the next day. One day at a time – make the space to do what you love to do.

Peace!

Romantic Rothenburg ob der Tauber – Germany

After 5 rainy days in Munich, I took the train out of Munich to Rothenburg to experience the community that has been on this site since 1150 AD. The official name of the city is Rothenburg ob de Tauber, or “Red Fort on the River Tauber.” Around 1160, Rothenburg was swiftly became a commercial center because of its’ enviable position on the age old trade routes through Germany where goods from the East passed through, but also because of “the white gold” known as salt.

700 year old cobble street

By 1400, the city was one of the largest and most successful cities in the area. The city had a population that topped 6000 people, and business was booming. Rothenburg was becoming very wealthy and was much worried about the safety of its’ wealth and citizenry. The city elders through the years constructed a sophisticated system of walls, towers, and gates for the protection of the city. Massive stone walls were constructed that were pierced with 7 main gateways and aided by 42 stone towers for defensive positions and protecting the town. Along the inside length of much of the city’s walls, covered walkways were built that allowed for archers and other solders to take up protected positions for watching or shooting at possible invaders.

Guards walkway on the outer wall

However during the early 1500’s and into the late 1600’s, the city began to experience a steady decline because of political and religious upheavals like the Peasants War, the Reformation, the counter-Reformation and the 30 Years War. Plus the “Black Plague” that were sweeping through Europe killing millions of people also visited Rothenburg and killed as many as one-third of the citizens. What remained by the 1800’s was a walled village that was once famous yet now was a backwater town with no real business and thus no real reason to change anything. It was if the once prosperous medieval village was trapped in a time warp. Narrow cobblestone streets, half-timbered houses with red tile roofs, massive stone walls that no longer protected anything but a poor half-empty village that recalled a more ancient time.

Massive stone walls and towers are part of the defense.

Yet along about 1850, fortune began to smile on Rothenburg once again. This time it was because of the very backward nature of the village that people were attracted. Because of its’ very medieval look and feel, artists, poets and writers discovered the old town and painted it, wrote about it, and talked about it. What was considered ancient and backward now became quaint. And as is true through the ages of man, when the artists and creative types come, soon the general public follow and you have tourism. Tourists helped make Rothenburg relevant again.

Chapel courtyard

They came for the quaint ancient walls and half-timber houses that were 500 years old. They came to see the old churches like St. James Church, the Gothic masterpiece with its hand carved altar. They came for the excellent Franconian wine, food and hospitality. They came for the chance to step back time and experience a little of what it must have been like in the Middle Ages.

One of the many gateways into the town

And that is what you get when you spend a day or two in Rothenburg – living history. Walls and houses and buildings that are in some cases over 700 years old, but people still use and live in them. A chance to walk cobblestone streets that have carried people and goods for over a thousand years. Walking the same covered walkways along the village walls that some guard walked 500 years before you.

You can actually walk the city by using the guards walkway

There is a suggested Town Walk around the village that will lead you through large squares where you will see historic buildings, along the city walls where you will find towers, churches, gateways and bridges that date from the 12th century and leads to other parts of the city where you may decide to wander off the “official” tour to see some mysterious door or walkway of Rothenburg that interests you. There are several museums in Rothenburg like the German Christmas Museum showing the history of Christmas through the centuries, the Imperial City Museum with its’ collection of items covering 9 centuries, and the gruesome and very interesting Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum featuring scary examples of torture and execution devices.

Center square

The most interesting thing to see in Rothenburg is actually live entertainment. It is the world-famous Night Watchman’s Tour which I will write about in my next blog, but it is without a doubt the best hour of entertainment in Rothenburg and at 8 Euros the best deal in Germany.

400 year old cover bridge (rebuilt of course)

The most romantic place in Rothenburg is the Castle Garden and Burgtor Gate. A huge quiet garden at one end of the town as you pass through the Burgtor Gate with spectacular views of the city and the surrounding valley. There is a small old chapel that has stood there since the 14th century and a lovely herb garden. The area is quite large with many old trees and benches to sit and read or just chill. If you walk further in the park past the chapel and herb garden to another viewpoint of the surrounding valley, rumor has it that this is the best place to grab a kiss with your significant other.

View of Rothenburg from the Castle Garden Park

And of course as a tourist destination, there are plenty of eateries of all types and places to sleep inside and outside the village walls. For something to eat, you have traditional German fare, non-German styles foods, Italian food (because it is just on the other side of the nearby Alps), sandwiches and snacks plus several Biergartens (beer gardens) all covering a range of prices and styles. But make sure that you eat early. Rothenburg shuts down early. In the Old Town there are no night spots, although a couple of places stay open till mid-night during the summer where locals mix with tourists.

My Hotel, PhinzHotel Rothenburg

If you are staying in the Old Town there are more than 20 hotels and hostels to chose from and in all different prices ranges from very expensive to a very reasonable hostel located in a former horse-powered mill house. Outside the walls, there are even more choices of food and hotels.

One of the Tower Gates into the City

Getting to Rothenburg is very easy. By car or bus, you are on the Romantic Road, a route that extends from Fussen in the south to Frankfurt in the north, and you pass right through Rothenburg. There several car parks in and around the Old Town, and cars are allowed to drive in parts of the Old Town. If you are coming by train, the station is literally a block away from the main gate of the Old Town.  You can only get to Rothenburg if you make a connection in Steinach. It is a little spur line with a small train that runs about every hour until 10:30 PM. If you arrived after 10:30 in Steinach, there is a subsidized taxi service that can take you to Rothenburg, but you must call them 2 hours ahead of time to make a reservation. To use them call AST at 09861/2000 in advance, and they will take you to Old Town for 4.60 Euros per person instead of the regular 31 Euro daytime charge.

Enjoy Rothenburg and step back in time for a romantic and fun adventure.

 

5 German Castles in 3 Days – Part 2 – Munich

Continuing on with the castles of Munich, we come to the town of Hohenschwangau which is a village in Germany’s southeastern state of Bavaria about one hour’s drive from Munich. This is the home of not one but two of Ludwig’s castles. His childhood home is here Schloss Hohenschwangau, and his dream castle, Schloss Neuschwanstein whose entrances are literally across the main village road from each other.

Village of Hohenschwangau

Ludwig’s father raised his sons primarily in the country at the family palace of Hohenschwag to be far away from the court intrigue of Munich and the two palaces there. So Ludwig would never developed the hard shell needed for the political hardball that Munich and governing required.

Foothills of the Alps around Hohenschwangau

HOHENSCHWANGAU

Lake Alpsee

Built high about Lake Alpsee in the foothills of the Alps, Schloss (German for castle) Hohenschwangau started out as a fortress in the 12th century. The castle started to take shape around 1535 when the owners brought in an Italian architect to create a new interior floor plan while keeping the existing walls. That owner then sold the residence to the Wittelsbach family, the Kings of Bavaria in 1550 and it stayed in their family (mostly) until Ludwig II’s time. The place was used mostly as a hunting lodge and retreat for the family. However, in 1832, Maximilian II, King of Bavaria and Ludwig’s father, began a new reconstruction of the old place and turned it into his official summer palace. This is where Ludwig grew up and fell in love with the beauty and seclusion of the area. From windows in Schloss Hohenschwangau, he could see the location of where his future palace, Newschwanstein would be. He continued to live in Hohenschwangau for large sections of time during his reign splitting his time between Hohenschwangau and Schloss Linderhof after it was finished.

Hohenschwangau Castle

After Ludwig II was deposed by his family, the castle continued to stay in family hands, and even after the King of Bavaria stepped down, the German state allowed the family to continue to use the residence up until the current day. While belonging to the German state and being used as a museum/tour destination since 1913, the family has continued to live there even during World War I and II.

While I did not actually tour the castle during my Grey Line tour, you can clearly see it from below in the village and if I had more time on the tour, I would have loved to see it. You can tour Hohenschwangau separately or as part of different tours that run out of Munich. If you happen to be in the village itself, you can purchase tickets right from the local ticket booth which handles tours for both castles.

Lake Alpsee

NEUSCHWANSTEIN

Young Ludwig was a dreamer and romantic at heart. He was born at a time when as King of Bavaria he would not have absolute power but was part of a “constitutional monarchy” where he shared power with a legislature in Munich. He hated this position plus as well his government was being played by Prussia on one side and Austria on the other. With no real power and not being able to do much about it, he turned inward and began to dream of magnificent castles like Versailles and his personal hero, Louis 14th of France. Imagining himself to be like Louis, he envisioned great castles that would reflect his hoped for and never to be achieved power and control, and Neuschwanstein is the zenith of that dream and desire.

View from Neuschwanstein

As king of a constitution government like Great Britain, the cost of the building came from his personal and his family’s fortune, and he borrowed that money from the Bavarian State Treasury. As he was building three or more castles at the same time, the cost was immense and as the members of his family saw their fortune being eaten away and were now in huge debt to the State, they conceived of a plan to remove Ludwig from power by proclaiming him mad. Thus Neuschwanstein and another castle were not finished during his life. He actually only lived in Neuschwanstein for about 170 days before he was removed in a coup. He was mysteriously killed or committed suicide the next day.

Neuschwanstein

Schloss Neuschwanstein which in German means “new swan stone” was built as a nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival palace. The swan was Ludwig’s favorite bird so the name reflects that and images of swans are on displayed throughout the castle. The palace was also as a homage to Richard Wagner, and the romantic German legends that his operas are about – myths, legend and heroic characters.

Inner Courtyard

The castle was never completely finished although it was far enough along that he could move in. After his death, the family immediately opened it to the public as a museum and tour destination. Since then more than it is estimated at over 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Great Escape, and served as the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle at the Disney Theme Parks.

Tours of Neuschwanstein can be brought almost anywhere. Online, local tour companies in Munich, or locally in Hohenschwangau if you take the train down from Munich at the local ticket office. Please read the entrance requirements before you come because the tour is very strict about time of entrance. There is a new tour starting every 5 minutes and if you miss your time you are out your money. No refunds or excuses. Also be prepared to walk a lot. You have to walk up hill to the castle and in good weather it can take 45 minutes. There are buses, horse carriages, and other forms of rides part way to the castle but they do not go all the way up, so you will have to walk at least some of it uphill. Please check for any handicapped access or help with the local German tour office or view online.

Kitchen

Pantry to Kitchen

NYMPHENBURG

Nymphenburg Palace

The final stop to the Palaces of Munich happened on the 3rd day. Again a wet, windy, cold day in Munich, I ventured out once more to see the exalted lifestyle of the former Kings of Bavaria, the Wittelsbach family.

Schloss Nymphenburg or “Castle of the Nymph (or Nymphs)”, is a Italian Baroque style palace located on the outside of old Munich. The palace served as the main summer residence for the House of Wittelsbach. The palace was commissioned by the King Ferdinand Maria and his wife, Henriette Adelaide of Savoy after the birth of their son, Maximilian II. The castle was gradually expanded and transformed over the years. (The Wittelsbachs still live and use the Palace as a residence living in one wing of the Palace.)

Great Hall

Starting in 1701, Max Emanuel, the heir to Bavaria, undertook a huge redo of the entire palace.  Two pavilions were added one on the south and one on the north connected with the center pavilion by two gallery wings. Other parts were added to the Palace to make it equal on both wings and huge formal gardens with lakes were added in the back of the Palace as well.

Great Hall

Interesting factual note – to those who trace the line of legitimate British monarchy down through the legal heirs of James II of England (Jacobites), the head of the house of Wittelsbach is the legitimate heir of the Stuart claims to the thrones of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland; this claim is not being actively pursued.

Ceiling Great hall

Where the Residenz tour goes on for miles, this tour only shows about 16 rooms in total. The tour starts in the Great Hall, which barely begins to describe how huge it is and the effect that it was supposed to have on visitors. It is truly a beautiful and grand statement of power and royal taste.

Then you view North wing which were more state rooms for the king’s business and then return to the great hall to view the more interesting South wing which were official apartments for the Wittelsbach kings.

Most impressive is King Ludwig I’s Gallery of Beauties. Using the greatest single pickup line in history, “I would like to have a portrait painted of you”, King Ludwig would invite beautiful women from all over Munich and all classes – elite and commoner – to come to the summer palace and have their portrait painted by the court painter. During this time, the affair would start – some short, some lasted very long. Who could refuse that offer? King, Portrait, Affair! He used it 36 times, and the beauties all hang in a room of the tour. You will notice one physical trait that they share – I will leave you to find it.

Part of the wall of Beauties

The tour is relatively short but you get a real sense of this place and the type of people who lived here. Again most the furniture and paintings are not original to the house. Many were lost to bombing in the war or stolen. The replacements are from other palaces in Germany or donated by the public after the war.

This palace is also the birth place of Ludwig II, the mad king. He was Ludwig I’s grandson.

The gardens in the back extend far back beyond the palace and are open to everyone. Joggers and walkers alike.

After my 5th palace in 3 days in a cold, wet Munich – I stopped for (when in Munich) a cold beer and rested my feet. That was a lot of walking, but totally worth understanding the history and position of Munich and Bavaria during Europe’s long history of war and struggle among all the royal families.

Enjoy Munich!

5 German Castles in 3 Days – Munich

So when people come to Europe, some like museums, some churches and some castles. I fit into the castle branch. After two or three churches – yawn. Museums are amazing, but only so many paintings or sculptures can I retain in my head unless it is astonishing like the David in Florence or a Cavagio in Rome. So on this trip to Germany, I planned to see a few castles, but the weather in Munich suddenly turned cold and rainy, and castles became the main focus for the next few days. Three days to be exact and in those three days I managed to cram in 5 castles either in or around Munich. And thus we begin –

Main Reception Room – Residenz

The first castle that I was went to one cold rainy day was the Residenz. For 500 years, this mammoth complex of buildings was the official residence and seat of power for the rulers of Bavaria, the Wittelsbach family. It began in 1345 and continued to be used and added to until 18th century. It was almost destroyed in World War II and what you see today has been reconstructed using old photos, paintings and original plans.

Main Reception Room

The place is so large that it now consists of three different museums that you can see separately or together in a couple of different combinations. There is the Residenz Museum which is the palace itself, the Residenz Treasury where some of the Bavaria crown jewels are located, and the Cuvillies Theatre which is a perfectly restored Rococo opera house. If you decide to see all three, then the price tag is 13 Euros.

The Green Hall – Residenz

The Residenz Museum is really about 90 rooms of Rococo banquet and reception halls (you will see about 70 rooms if you take the long tour), and the royal family apartments. Because of the war, most of the furniture that you see is of the time, but not the original items. There are a couple of amazing rooms like the Shell Grotto and Antiquarium, but in all honesty (maybe because of the weather) the palace was very blah. Just endless room after endless room. The place (or palace) is huge covering hundreds of meters of floor space. You can wander around until you say “enough already.”

Relic Bone

A Relic Head

The most gruesome room was the Reliquary Room which contains a very odd collection of Christian relics which were very big items to have in the Middle Ages. You will see mummified hands, skulls and bones all contained in golden cases. It is a little disquieting to be honest.

The New Court Chapel

The most impressive room to me and where you can see the painstaking work that the city of Munich has done to restore this monstrously huge palace complex is the Court Chapel which was completely destroyed in the bombing. They have rebuilt it as a very simple space showing you all the steel beams and walls made of simple red brick. Not like it was before the war. They use it as a concert hall for about 300 people and it was just moving to me. Plus the rebuilt windows are beautiful.

Window – Court Chapel

The Residenz Complex is right in the middle of Munich and worth the view, but be prepared to WALK!

Bavaria Rainy Day

The next morning I got up early and took the S Bahn (subway) to the main train/bus station. There I bought a tour on Gray Lines, a very large tour bus company in Germany. The tour was going to cover 2 of the 3 main “Mad Ludwig” castles.

Gold Fountain – Linderhof

Ludwig II was a young gay man of 18 when he assumed the throne of Bavaria in 1845. He ruled for 22 years at a time when Bavaria had become very weak in terms of power. He spent his entire reign being played by either Prussia on one side or Austria on the other. Instead of being depressed in Munich as a powerless king, he stayed at the family country palace of Hohenschwangau, a former hunting lodge that had been enlarged to palace scale. From here, he dreamed up his three amazing castles – Linderhof, Neuschwanstein, and his castle in the middle of lake, Herrenchiemsee.

Linderhof

The only one to be finished in his life time was Linderhof. It is very small, compact, frilly, and personal to the only man who ever lived in it – Ludwig. Rather than face being a weakened king, he dreamed and spent his family’s fortune on building and building these images in his head. Linderhof’s tour offers the grounds which look much like Versailles but on a smaller scale, and in the “castle” 10 rooms have been set aside to view. It is frilly in it’s overly ornamented Rococo and Baroque styles and is filled with priceless furniture, chandeliers and porcelain figurines. It is not really a castle either in size or scale – but because a king lived here for 8 years and surrounded himself with land and priceless objects, it gets the name. Yet in size, it is not any larger than Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello either in scale or design. You could call it a mini-castle, but whatever it size it is amazing to view and consider this sad lonely man living here along by choice.

Atlas Shoulders the World – Top of Linderhof

Possibly the saddest thing to consider is that he did not want to see anyone or be seen even by his servants. His personal dining room was designed in such a way that the table was prepared with all the food, drink and dishes already on it in the kitchen, and then was lifted by elevator through a hole in the floor in front of Ludwig who was sitting in the dining room waiting for dinner. When done, he would ring a bell and the table would disappear back through the floor. The entire time he was totally alone and saw no one. Yet he did have long imaginary conversations with kings of past that he admired like Louis the 14th and others.

Classic Statues Abound at Linderhof

I am told that the highlight of Linderhof is the Grotto which he had built so he could sail around in this underground lake/cavern listening to a opera company perform works by his favorite composer, Richard Wagner. Of course, the opera singers and musicians never saw him at all. Unfortunately the Grotto is under repair until 2019, and I did not get a chance to see it.

Main Fountain – Linderhof

Next column – the final three castles of Munich.

A Point In Time – Munich 1923

One of the most famous storylines in science fiction is the time line story. A man goes back and time and has to be very careful to not change history by his actions. One of the counter arguments to that storyline is the belief that most people even if they went back in time and somehow acted in the past it would have no effect on the time line because we are just not that important.

Very few men stand on the ledge of history and have the chance to change the world. Even fewer know that they are even in that position. And if they knew the outcome of their actions would they still do it? Today’s blog is about such a man and such a time.

The site of the Beer Hall Putsch – Munich

On November 8, 1923, a 34-year-old Austrian led a large band of armed men through the street of Munich. His intention was the armed over throw of the beleaguered German government struggling to find a way in light of the harsh postwar measures put in place by the Allied powers at the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War 1 that stripped Germany of much of its power, money and pride. Outside the old Munich royal palace known at the Residenz, the group of insurrectionists ran into a solid line of Munich police. After a fierce gun battle in the street, 16 of the insurrectionists lay dead plus 4 policemen.  Whether the leader was wounded or not is up for debate, but he was arrested for crimes against the German State and High Treason and placed in jail.

Line of police/soldiers waiting for the mob

The leader felt that Jews and Marxists were ruining Germany from within, and the Allied powers were ruining Germany with their harsh treatment from outside. Germany was in the clutches of some of the worst runaway inflation that modern society has ever faced.  He was a born leader, rousing public speaker, had fought for Germany in the World War 1 and had been awarded the Iron Cross for Bravery. He was not scared of war, guns or violence. Once before he had been arrested for stirring up trouble and his plight did not look good for him or his party of followers. He was a Germany nationalist and believed in the purity of the original German race.

The other side of the street. The confrontation point.

Of course, I am talking about Adolf Hitler, one of the great monsters of the 20th Century, and the rebellion that he tried to lead that day became known at the Munich or Beer Hall Putsch. And being responsible for the death of 4 policemen, leader of a rebellion against the state, and charged with high treason, that should have been the end of Adolf Hitler and his very small NAZI party.

However, this debacle of a fight would turn out to be one of the luckiest days of Hitler’s young life. And all because of one man who you have probably never heard of.

Hitler’s Trial

The senior judge of the council of three judges that would hear the treason case was himself a NAZI sympathizer. He also selected two other judges who shared the same beliefs in Hitler and his ideas. In a wild 24 day trial, the three judges gave Hitler full rein to expound his anti-government and anti-Semitic beliefs, and the national papers printed almost every word. Hitler even admitted in open court that he was solely to blame for the uprising. Yet at the end of the trial instead of being shot for treason or put in prison for life, Hitler got 5 years in jail and was out in nine months for good behavior. But the long-term effect of the trial was that Hitler now became a nationally known person, and his thoughts and party took on a larger presence in German politics.

Hitler and associates serving out time in prison. Looks like really hard labor.

It was during that time in jail, that his philosophy on how to accomplish his goal changed from armed conflict to winning at the ballot box. He wrote his book, Mein Kompf and began to reorganize his party from street fighters to politicians.

And who was this upstanding judge who followed his feelings of national fervor, and not the laws of Germany at the time was George Neithardt. Mr. Neithardt did not become a favorite of Hitler from his soft touch, but the judge did go on to have a very successful judicial career.

George Neithardt, Judge

You could make a really good case that if the judgement had been by the letter of the law instead of in spite of it, that the Honorable George Neithardt made World War II possible.