In 1680, the Sun King, Louis XIV ordered his fortifications engineer, Sèbastien Le Prestre de Vauban to design and construct a vast fortification on the Saar River to protect the eastern frontier of what was then part of France. The result was Saarlouis, a town that still prominently features the star shaped walls of the great fortress, only today those ramparts contain a museum, fine restaurants and night clubs.
For Lawna and I, Saarlouis is about a an hour's drive, and we ventured there on a drizzly Sunday afternoon to check out its unique layout. This part of Saarland in westernmost Germany was until recently a major steel producing area, and driving into the town one sees row houses which reminded me of pictures I have seen of English towns of the industrial revolution. There is still industry in the area--including a Ford auto plant, the only American car maker that has much prominence in Germany. Soon (the town isn't very big, about 38,000), we crossed the gently flowing Saar River, and the bridge carried us through the old gate, nestled between the massive outer walls of the fortress. The river has a peaceful, tree canopied walkway and a lovely park.
Saarlouis Riverwalk
Fortress park
Model of Vauban's design for the original fortifications
Once inside the walls, the downtown section appears as an orderly grid, much as Vauban designed the fort. Most of the buildings, however, are not original. Because of its nearby industry, Saarlouis was heavily bombed by the Allies during WWII. Even the old Ludwigskirche is capped with a new metal roof. In fact, compared to many other German towns we have visited, Saarlouis is not that pretty. Most of the buildings are functionally modern. My fascination was with the remnants of the old fort, which was an enormous engineering undertaking that involved a complex, multilevel moating of the Saar. If one moat were to be breached, then an inner area could be flooded to create another water obstacle. The walls were not terribly high, but the deep pitch and heavy armaments place within them made them difficult to breach.
Antique vendors
Ludwigskirche
Today, the inner parade ground where French, and later German, troops trained and marched is covered with shops and cafes. That Sunday, antique dealers had set up shops on the street--an open air antique market. The less expensive food is in the town square, and the finer dining is in the wall. We visited an antique shop and were served champaigne while the owner taught us about Art Nouveau furnishings and urged us to visit the art museums of Nancy (pronounced Nohng-say), which was the center of the art nouveau movement. She spoke completely in German, and I'm getting so that I can understand most of it. In the fortress walls, we visited the Saarlouis museum and then ate overpriced Swiss toasted sandwiches with salad at a fortress restaurant. Hey, but how often does one eat in Louis XIV's fortifications?
Our restaurant
Fortunately, the Saarland is at peace today, and hopefully will remain so for the foreseeable future. But, as is true of so many cities in Europe, people live their day to day lives in the shadow of a long and often brutal history. In the quiet shops, it's hard to imagine the suffering that people a generation ago went through in the last major European war, reflected in old museum photographs of a town festooned with Nazi bannners, then lying in rubble, pitted by bombs, and finally images of a slow reconstruction, trying to rebuild shattered lives. There's not much left of the old town, but Vauban's thick fortress walls remain. The fortress stands, but Saarlouis is no longer part of France. The friendly border is just miles away. The ramparts no longer protect Saarlouis from enemies, but instead welcome visitors and provide a place of hospitality with good food and drink and spacious parks for strolling.
I drove Michael and Victoria to Amsterdam a few weeks ago where they would stay with a friend. It's about a five hour drive (according to Google Maps, a four hour drive, but that doesn't account for inevitable bathroom breaks and road construction). It rained the whole way. Crossing into Belgium, the roads become noticeably patchier and in need of good German-style maintenance, but the forested countryside is as beautiful as Germany's. Then the highway begins to spiral down into the low country, and by the time you reach the Netherlands border, the landscape is perfectly flat all the way to Amsterdam. Additionally, the main highway (often up to eight lanes across) runs almost absolutely straight past flat farms and occasional nuclear power plants. It's a boring drive, especially in gray, rainy weather. We did see a couple of old time windmills.
Amsterdam is a larger city than I had expected, and the inner section is so populated by young people, that I was sure we were in a university area. However, I was told by two different people that the area where we parked was an old residential section with no university close by. Downtown Amsterdam has simply been taken over by young people.
Flat, straight city streets
We stopped to eat at a sandwich shop where the young women who took our orders spoke pefect English, then sat down at a table with an older lady who turned out to be from New Zealand, visiting Amsterdam in her retirement to soak in the arts and culture. I heard very little Dutch during my brief stay downtown. It's a very international city. Like the highway that leads to it, the streets tend to extend in long straight lines. Amsterdam is flat.
Taken by our New Zealand acquaintance
I said my goodbyes to Michael and Victoria after they safely made their connection, and then drove around briefly to find the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, just to see it. I got caught in rush hour traffic, which in Amsterdam is a crush of cars, bicyclists and pedestrians, mostly young and fearless. One bicyclist cut in front of me, riding with a spare bicycle wheel in one hand and an open umbrella in the other. Many were pedaling adroitly, holding umbrellas in the rain. I needed to start heading back to Spesbach, so I eventually gave up on my quest to locate the Concertgebouw. Maybe later, when both Lawna and I visit, and then take in a concert. I finally navigated through the busy, rainy streets to the freeway, then made my way to the long, straight ribbon of cars that extended back toward Belgium. It rained all the way back to Germany, severely through part of Belgium. When I reached the German border, though, the sun suddenly appeared and, once past the border check that looks for those drugs that are legal in the Netherlands, I was on my way on clear, well-maintained German autobahn roads, with unlimited, perfectly legal speed to get home as fast as possible.
Since then, Lawna and I haven't wandered far. The government furloughs have taken a bite out of our finances, so our excursions have been close by. After living here for six months, we still had not visited two cities close to us, Zweibrücken and Saarbrücken, so on alternate days we did so. Saarbrücken is the furthest, and it's only a half hour away on the French border.
Zweibrücken used to be the site of a major US military installation, employing many local Germans. When our government decided to cut back and in 1990 closed the base, the closure devastated the local economy. To compensate for the loss, Zweibrücken spruced up its downtown section with a pedestrian network of shops and restaurants intermingled with restored historic buildings. The investment paid off, populating the inner city with tourists and shoppers and bringing new jobs to the city. It became an urban model that has been replicated all over Europe. Most cities have a refurbished, historic old town, pedestrian and retail oriented.
Shops of Zweibrücken
Palatinate Ducal Palace
Zweibrücken is a small city with a population of about 33,000, and its history is not so well known to draw a lot of visitors from afar, but it is a pleasant and friendly town with some 18th century government buildings that were once palaces. Zweibrücken also sports an airfield that is larger than one would expect for a smaller city, thanks to the departure of the Americans.
Saarbrücken, located along the German/French border (Saarbroucken on French road signs), is larger than Zweibrücken, with a population of about 178,000. A major coal mining center since the middle ages, Saarbrücken was a major target of bombing during World War II and sustained considerable damage. Of course, this region has passed between German and French hands frequently throughout the centuries, and the Saarland region for which this city is capital and the neighboring Alsace-Lorraine region of France have endured a history of incredible violence and misfortune until modern times. Fortunately, the regions are at peace today with thriving economies and progressive democracies. Saarbrücken certainly does not look like a bombed out city today. It is clean and mostly modern, with an impressive network of baroque buildings designed by the 18th century architect Friedrich Joachim Stengel. Despite wartime bombing, much of his work has been meticulously restored along a broad, royal promenade along the Saarbrücken cliffs overlooking the Saar River. A wide pedestrian bridge links downtown, with its many shops, restaurants and business buildings, to the historic promenade. The day we visited, the river bank was polulated with market vendors. It seemed to be a massive flea market. A walk up some cobblestone streets to the higher level promenade brings one to the Schlossplatz (Palace Square). The main palace is today a museum and cultural center. The main palace building features a massive modern glass entrance, which may not be to everyone's taste. It is functional, but not exactly in tune with the rest of the neo-classical design.
Schlossplatz with a modern entrance
One of the most notable Stengel structures in the area is the baroque Protestant Ludwigskirche (Ludwig church). It's not as elaborate as many Catholic baroque churches, since Protestants tended to be a bit iconoclastic, but, though the walls are plain white, there is plenty of baroque decorative design and gold. A wedding was about to take place when we arrived, so we ducked out after taking a few pictures. Certainly a beautiful setting in which to tie the knot!
Exterior of Ludwigskirche
Plain white Protestant walls. A Catholic king would have splashed some color around with floating, beatific kings and saints and fawning cupids.
Ready to wed.
From the Schlossplatz, we wandered back down across the Saar into the downtown district, most of which is modern, though there are a few smaller baroque churches and a particularly striking Rathaus (city council) exterior. Inside, the building looks pretty drab and municiple, but the medieval façade with its gargoyles and St George and the dragon motif is great fun.
Rathaus
Tokyo has Godzilla; Saarbrücken has this fierce reptile!
Still keeps time
The last few weeks have been quiet, tooling around just the local area, and I now finally have a job. I've been hired on by the University of Maryland in Europe and will be teaching introductory writing to mostly military students on the base (in an air hanger, in fact). I begin on Tuesday. It will be good to have classes again. I have missed teaching. The furloughs (compulsory unpaid days off) are supposed to be ending for Lawna, although with this Congress, who knows? We should be getting a bit more money that we can sock away for some longer trips. I'll try to keep you informed.
I hope you enjoy the new music video. The first scenes are from a late afternoon visit to the Palatinate forest with Michael and Victoria before they left, and the rest of the scenes are from Saarbrücken, accompanied by an old German folk melody, "Ich Hab die Nacht Geträumet." (I Had a Dream Last Night)
Last weekend, Lawna and I drove up to Frankfurt in a rented black VW van to pick up our son Michael and his girlfriend, Victoria, at the city bus terminal where they arrived from a stay in Berlin. Michael is working on his doctorate in German at Columbia University and is making an annual visit to brush up on the language in country. After waiting for some time, a bit anxiously since they do not have cell phone service during their stay in Europe, I finally caught sight of a fully bearded Michael and then Victoria in a long yellow dress, both wheeling their bikes from the bus they had deboarded. It was wonderful to see them! Michael studied at Goethe University in Frankfurt a few years ago and knows the town. We stowed the bikes and their backpacks in the rented van, and then Michael guided us through the city metro system to the picturesque historic center of an otherwise modern high rise city, and, after walking around the town square and taking some pictures, we found an Italian restaurant and enjoyed a leisurely meal with good conversation. I think we helped to close the restaurant, and, as we still had a two hour drive back to Spesbach, we hopped back onto the metro, made our way back to the van which was safely parked by the bahnhof (train station), and started off home.
Together in Frankfurt
It has been just Lawna and I these last months since we arrived in Germany, and it is good to have the company now of our son and Victoria. Lawna grew up with two brothers and later had two sons. In other words, she has lived her life in a high testosterone environment, and I think the extended company of Victoria has been a real joy for her. They have gone clothes shopping together, and walked out into the nearby fields to pick summer flowers and make arrangements for the apartment. Victoria is like the daughter or sister she never had. It has been fun just to watch movies together in the evening, passing a bowl of popcorn around.
Michael atop Homburg Schloss
Michael and I have biked around the Spesbach and Landstuhl area together, and the four of us have climbed up to the castle ruins of Homburg, and then enjoyed beers together down at the base of the hill. Later in the week we drove to Strasbourg to see the cathedral and wander around the shops and cafés. Finally, this last weekend, we drove south to Freiburg, where Michael first lived in Germany on his study abroad program. I booked hotel rooms so that we could make a full weekend of the visit, and, again, Michael, visibly happy to be back in his first German city, showed us around his old hood. We saw the great Münster cathedral, a vast Teutonic gothic structure full of bizarre medieval carvings. Michael and Victoria climbed the tower stairs to the viewing area while Lawna and I rested our feet below in the cooler vault of the church (the temperature had reached the humid nineties, and Germany has almost no air conditioning). Now I kind of wish I had made the climb. Maybe next cathedral--they're everywhere here.
in Strasbourg
Staying cool in Freiburg
Freiburg bikes
Freiburg türm
Market flower stand
Münster tower
Münster Tannhäuserish interior
Freiburg street clown
On Thursday night, Lawna and I went out to celebrate her birthday at the Greiffenegg Schlössle restaurant that overlooks Freiburg from atop a high hill. Michael wanted to show Victoria some of his favorite night spots in town (maybe not for parental consumption), and that freed us for a special dinner, just the two of us (which, though ever sweeter, is no longer such a novelty). Again, we closed down the place, along with a Chinese student and German software developer that we met at the next table. Both spoke excellent English, and we ended up conversing over glasses of wine into the night. We returned by foot to the hotel after Michael and Victoria. We had out partied them!
The restaurant where we celebrated Lawna's birthday
The view of the Münster from the restaurant
It's good to have Michael and Victoria's presence in our house. We wish that Brian could be here, too. We will have him with us, we hope, after he graduates from UTSA next fall. Germany is a wonderful place, and we are enjoying a great adventure that we never expected to have at this point in our lives, but we do miss our families. Fortunately, modern technology makes it possible to keep in close communication through media such as this blog, email, Skype and a good long distance phone package. When I was a child, living in Japan and, later, in Hawaii with my parents and sister, we could only access the US mainland by slow mail. Even television news had to be flown to Honolulu, so that with the time difference, we received it a day late. Of course, satellites changed everything, and now the World Wide Web makes communication instant and simple.
But, still we miss our families. It's a blessing when we receive a flesh and blood visit. For Lawna, the visit from her boy had to be the best birthday present possible.
Enjoy the following Freiburg music video, accompanied by two street musicians, the Münster bells and yours truly on mandolin, guitar and bouzouki. The tune is a German traditional song, "Die Gedanken sind Frei" (My Thoughts are Free).
Last weekend (I've been lazy about blogging) we drove for about an hour northeast to Mainz, the city of Gutenberg. Our son Michael had told us glowing things about the place from his stays in Germany, and it is an interesting city, especially if you like history.
The most prominent landmark of the city is the magnificent Mainz cathedral of Saint Martin and Stephen which still dominates the skyline.
Cathedral of Saint Martin and Stephen (Mainz Cathedral)
As you can see from the photo, we arrived on market day, and the main squares were covered with open air produce stands. It was a sunny, warm day, and the streets were teeming with visitors and locals browsing through the market, packed into stores and relaxing in the cafes. It wasn't until the merchants took down their market stands later in the day that we got a clear view of the Stadtmitte (downtown) layout.
Stadtmitte market day
First, we took in the cathedral. We have already seen plenty of beautiful churches, and Mainz is uniquely beautiful and historically significant in the history of Europe. It was the site of important coronations, not just of German kings ("German" is actually a later Romantic nationalist concept), but several Holy Roman emperors, the kind that could call the entire continent out to a crusade. The church's architecture is mostly Romanesque, not as ornate as the later Gothic style, and it doesn't house the incredible windows of a church like Metz, but its dimensions are vast with high domes that afford a gigantic soundscape. In fact, we were lucky to arrive for a free organ recital by Jonathan Dimmock, who plays for the San Francisco Symphony. I'm usually not that fond of pipe organ music, but in a space like Mainz Cathedral, the effect is thrilling.
organ of Mainz Cathedral
interior of Mainz Cathedral
After visiting the cathedral, we walked across the square to the Gutenberg museum. Mainz is the city where Johannes Gutenberg started printing bibles with movable type and changed the world. The town square has a statue dedicated to him, of the old, fatherly looking bearded man holding a book. In fact, no one knows what he really looked like. He invented the printing press as a young man, and the style of the day was clean shaven, so the portraits we usually see are probably total fictions. That aside, the museum is well worth the couple of euro it takes to get in. The exhibit is not just about Gutenberg, who they've only devoted part of a floor to. The rest of the four storey building is about the history of print, mostly movable, but also engraving and calligraphy. And it's not just about European print. There are sections on Asian printing techniques, Islamic calligraphy and even ancient Egyptian and Babylonian engraving. And yes, there's even a wall of contemporary graffiti! The collection is impressive, and the detail in many of the ancient books is astonishing. Of course, the museum houses several Gutenberg bibles, and includes lots of information on how they were made and the early combination of mechanically printed text and hand-inked illuminated flourishes.
Offices of the Gutenberg Museum (previously a palace and later a grand hotel that housed Mozart and Goethe)
Replica of Gutenberg's press. The museum staff conducts demonstrations of Gutenberg's printing process at regular intervals.
From the museum, after some lunch, we walked along the old streets and discovered some more interesting looking churches that were closed. Further down, toward the Rhine (which we never caught sight of while we were there), we visited a free ancient maritime museum that houses several reassembled Roman ships that have been discovered in the area by archaeologists. If you like ship stuff like I do, this is a really fascinating place. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures. They requested that we not photograph anything.
We will certainly return to this city. There was plenty that we were not able to see, and it's located near us. I've been wanting to see examples of rococo architecture, and I was thinking we might have to visit Bavaria or Austria for those types of buildings, but Mainz has several grand rococo cathedrals. We just didn't have a chance to see them, and one was closed.
Entrance to Augustiner Kirche (closed roccocco church that we will have to visit later)
Mainz is only a short distance from Frankfurt. We had originally toyed with the idea of visiting both cities in one day, but there is simply too much to do in each one. We will briefly see Frankfurt next Friday when we pick up our son Michael and Victoria. They have been staying in Berlin these last couple of weeks and will be visiting us in the south for a while. Michael studied in Frankfurt at the Goethe University and knows the city well. I'm sure we will visit there during his stay, as well as Freiburg, where he also lived as part UT's study abroad program. We are very much looking forward to having Michael and Victoria with us for awhile. We miss our family!
When Lawna asked me where I was going to take her for our Saturday excursion, I thought that it might be good to go for a ride in the country rather than fight city traffic. I mistakenly thought that driving in the country would be less stressful. I browsed through some tourist stuff I'd picked up in different places and looked for ideas on Google Maps. I had read an appealing article about driving through the Palatinate wine route, or Weinstrasse, and it looked doable for a day and pretty stress free.
Now I've begun to think that there is no such thing as stress free driving in Germany. The autobahn is a pretty wild place to drive, as are the crowded, narrow streets of most European cities. Add to that list idyllic country roads.
Patron saint of grapes?
To follow the ancient wine road, we first had to get there, which is by winding roads through the deep Palatine forest. These roads are quite beautiful and often breathtaking, and also treacherous, at least to a south Texas boy who is used to straight, wide highways between home and Dallas or El Paso. Nothing is straight in Germany because there are so many hills (I'm not even talking about mountains here). Forest roads are narrow. They are two way, but often are marked with no dividing lines, and they look like they can only accommodate cars in one direction. In fact, two vehicles can get past, but it is a snug fit. When you are traveling along ledges and hairpin turns, these exchanges call for utmost concentration. Additionally, Germans who are used to these roads, drive on them pretty fast and become impatient when you slow them down. These roads are also popular with weekend motorcyclists, who drive even faster, leaning at low angles into their turns, and don't hesitate to pass you on a blind curve, and bicyclists who appear suddenly, pumping slowly, as you round a curve. I'm hate to even blink on these roads. We took no pictures in the forest--both of us were pretty focused on my driving. Sorry about the loss. The forest is quite beautiful.
Wine tasting center
Finally, we crossed the Hansel and Gretel woods and emerged into wine country. The wine areas of Europe tend to be unusually dry parts of an otherwise damp continent. On this day, it looked like it could rain any moment with dark clouds scudding across a pale, blue sky. After days of unseasonably hot weather, there was finally a brisk, cool breeze. I thought that maybe the driving would become more relaxing. It is, between the picturesque towns, but the villages themselves are crazy networks of narrow cobble stoned streets with terrible visibility and plenty of walking and biking tourists to watch out for. The best thing to do is find a vacant spot to park along a medieval alley, get out of the car and do some wine tasting. That's what we did.
At our first stop (and I'm sorry that I don't remember the names of the towns--we sort of lost track and just followed the Weinstrasse) we ate a salad garnished with German sausages and, of course, drank some local Riesling. After a leisurely meal, we hopped back in the car and traveled to the next lovely town, found a wine tasting station populated by many other pilgrims of the grape, sitting at tables outside and speaking a number of different languages, drank some more Riesling (a good summer wine) and purchased a few bottles to go. By this time, the grape was going to my head. Driving the narrow village streets was still treacherous, yet somehow I felt more relaxed. Still, after bumping along cobblestones on steep, medieval streets, I decided that we needed to find a good cafe to get some coffee to offset my bacchian reverie. We found a lovely town with an eis cafe open, which specializes in ice cream treats. I mainly wanted coffee, which they did have, but Lawna and I also shared a banana split, probably the first one I've had since college. Yes, friends, I have gained some of my weight back. It's a never ending battle.
Eis cafe
Restaurant service is slow in Europe; you are supposed to relax and enjoy a meal or snack. After an hour and a half, only part of which was spent eating and the rest spent talking and watching two toddlers paint their faces with chocolate and play outside, pretending to feed a statue an ice cream cone, I finally asked for the check, paid, and we set out to walk it all off in the picturesque village. It was late enough in the afternoon so that most businesses were closing, and we found a pharmacy named Luckenbach, like in Texas. We also found an old country church open and walked around inside and took pictures. Eventually, we wandered back to the car and headed back home, yes, along the same narrow forest roads. More white knuckle stuff!
Days are long here in the summer, and it was still light when we made it back to the Kaiserslautern area. Instead of going home, we drove to the base theater and took in a movie. It was a full, fun day.
We didn't see much of the wine road. It extends from Germany's southern border with France all the way to the Netherlands. When you are sampling wine along the way at restaurants that serve you at a leisurely pace, it's hard to rush through the area. Nor is it advisable. There are also castles along the way, none of which we saw. We would probably need at least a week to get a decent sense of the region and its offerings. People have been making wine here since Roman times, and there is plenty of interesting history to be learned. We scratched just the shallowest skin of the surface. As I keep saying, we have three years.
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