elbegewa

Any suggestions for a trip to Zurich (& a bit of Switzerland), Alsace, Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate / Pfalz, Saxony / Erzgebirge, Berlin?

3 of us are just starting to conceptualize a 4 week trip next September. We’d be interested in your suggestions while we start imagining our trip. Our interests: history, getting as much a feel for the culture as is possible while traveling, family genealogy, art !, architecture, and general sights that shouldn’t be missed, especially special things “off-the-beaten-track”. We’re all in our mid-60’s but fit and active (walk and hike a lot) and interested in keeping costs down.

Zurich, Lucerne, Alsace, Rhineland-Palatinate / Pfalz, Saar:
1 week +/-: My family roots trace back to this region, especially the areas around Zurich and Bad Dürkheim / Leistadt / Kallatadt. Of course, we’ll visit the wine road while there.

Baden-Württemberg
A few days +/-. Part of Ginny’s family originated in Egenhausen in the Calw Kreis (northeastern Black Forest). So we’ll be researching church records as well as touring/sightseeing the area.

Saxony, especially Erzgebirge:
1 week +/-: Part of the time we’ll be in Olbernhau and Borstendorf trying to research what happened to Ginny’s father’s parents and siblings; he was corresponding with them into the later stages of WWII and then lost contact.

Berlin:
4 to 7 days – especially the great art museums.

Middle Rhine:
1 - 3 days: One of us hasn’t seen the middle Rhine so is interested in a boat trip. Also, is the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz worth a stop?

Switzerland:
We’re toying with the idea of taking a few days – maybe - to see a small part of Switzerland. But since we live in the North American mountain areas it won’t be as special a treat to see the Alps as it would likely be for others.

Also: any suggestions to where to fly into from the western US / Canada (cost being a factor)?.

Once we settle on a framework for the trip and begin to winnow it we’ll have more questions.

DalaiLlama

You list up first "...<i>Zurich, Lucerne, Alsace, Rhineland-Palatinate / Pfalz, Saar:
1 week +/-: My family roots trace back to this region, especially the areas around Zurich and Bad Dürkheim / Leistadt / Kallatadt. Of course, we’ll visit the wine road while there</i>...."

All that in one week? Sorry, can't be done. More like four weeks just for the names in this opening paragraph.

Look at www.viamichelin.com and other maps, read up on the places Zürich, Lucerne, Alsace, Rhineland-Palatinate / Pfalz, Saar - how far apart they are, what makes them worthy of a visit, how long it is recommended to spend there <i>as a bare minimum</i> and reschedule.

Then see how much time you have left for the rest of your ever-so-overly-ambitious plan.

Berlin is worth 4-7 days, with Baden-Württemberg you'll have to take your picks, ditto with Sachsen/Erzgebirge.

I suggest you begin your genealogical research long before you head on out - research genealogical societies and such, correspond with local entities there - it's a specialized field where a great many people can save you a lot of time. If you arrive cold and start the process from scratch, you might just not get anywhere in the short time you have.

Switzerland doesn't really compare with North America, and it is not all about the few mountains that, from a distance and a glance, might look similar to some snow-capped peaks in the Rockies. But discussing Switzerland might be a moot point since you have to reschedule what comes before.

Few if any of the places you have on your list are places where you rush in and rush back out, there is not usually a single sensational target that you view, photograph, and then move on.

Happy planning.

michele_d

I agree with DalaiLlama that North America's mountains pale in comparison to Switzerland. We too live in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada and we were blown away by the beauty of the Berner Oberland area.

If you all like to hike there are many very easy and beautiful hikes around the BO area. If you need an apt to stay I can highly recommend Chalet Horner in Lauterbrunnen. http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/Swi...6258#unitrates

Happy planning, Michele

elbegewa

DalailLlama:
Yes! Totally agree that our list is impractically ambitions - thats the way we plan - we start with many wild thoughts and spend months winnowing.

There are 3 focuses for our trip:

We expect to spend 30% or so of the time on family history ... we have done much research and made various contracts and will continue for the next year, including identifying specific documents and their curators we want to see. For that part we know we need to spend 2 or more full days in the Egenhausen area, same in the Leistadt / Kallstadt area, and 3 to 4 in Olbernhau and Borstendorf Sachsen, and perhaps some time in Zürich. And the time in those places may expand.

And we know we want to spend 4 or hopefully more days in Berlin to follow up on a quick visit a few years ago ... especially to visit some of the museums.

That leave a little less than 2 weeks of our planned 4 weeks available to (1) travel between the points and (2) explore a very few other things nearby our route. That part is all very vague and ill-defined at this point ... my post was to ellicit various potential ideas to consider. As the trip begins to gel, we'll undoubtedly get more focused and have more specific questions.

lavandula

If you are contemplating doing research (i.e. family history research or other) in Germany you should be aware of the fact that in many cases records, archives and books have been destroyed by the numerous wars fought there, or moved to other libraries or archives in a hurry and never returned - so you might set off to the town where you expect to see records of your family and instead find they are either missing, destroyed or, for argument's sake somewhere in a Polish library (this has been the case for books I have attempted to chase up). So you may leave disappointed if that was your goal at the outset. You should also be aware of the fact that handwritten German has changed over the ages. If your records are 19th century the handwriting is Suetterlin script; if older, well, let's just say every century had its handwriting styles, and you will need help to read handwritten records, even if you read German quite well. Even Suetterlin could bring you to tears, so different is it to modern script. I would engage some help before you leave if you have this sort of thing in mind.

Lavandula

lavandula

Suetterlin:

http://www.suetterlinschrift.de/Englisch/Sutterlin.htm

Lavandula

Ingo

Hi L!

Good to hear from you. Back to Saxony again, eh? I cannot exactly remember how much of the Erzgebirge you saw last time. I guess not much except Olbernhau and Borstendorf. Time to hit the beautiful towns this time! Annaberg-Buchholz, Freiberg e.g. are *must* see towns. The Zschopau valley e.g. is dotted with castles - Scharfenberg, Augustusburg, Zschopau, Schlettau, Wolkenstein ... all of them worth to see. A few of them are listed on my VT pages ;-)

As for Switzerland - I think the Alps are different from the Rockies, especially when it comes to the local culture. The Alpine villages, grazing cows, cute houses with flower boxes ... the cheese. Alphorn playing. The historic (partially steam) railways.

I'd head to Lucerne, spend a few days there. Make a cruise on the lake, explore the old town, go up to Mt. Rigi (cog railway), Mt. Pilatus.

Then head to the Bernese Oberland and spend another 3 days or so. Stay in either Wengen or Mürren to get the *full* experience.

Why not flying into Zürich and out of Berlin or Frankfurt? Sorry, not much experience with airfare, but seems logical to me. Btw, 7 days for Berlin seem too long to me, but that's subjective, of course. A week in a bustling large city ... ugh.

danon

"7 days for Berlin seem too long to me, but that's subjective, of course. A week in a bustling large city.... ."


I visited Berlin twice ( 5 days each time) and still have a ton of things to see the next time. For lovers of art and history - a great place, for lovers of small, quaint towns - not so much.

quokka

Sounds as if you have experience with archive research so you know what you are getting yourselves into, and I assume/hope you are able to deal with the handwriting. By the way, Sütterlin is of no use if the research extends beyond the late 19th century, which it probably does... this is the writing style of the early 20th century and even people who claim they can read Sütterlin are at a loss with older documents. (Trust a professional.)

Contacting the relevant archives well in advance and making appointments well in advance is necessary - especially in diocesan or regional church church archives where you are shown microfilms of the church registers. These have a limited number of readerprinter work places and tend to be booked solid for months in advance.

A week in Berlin seems the perfect amount of time to me for a first-time visit, like in any big city. (@ Ingo: ;-) )

Ditto for Saxony, my stays so far sum up to about 6 weeks and there is still so much on my to-do-list. But you and I have the same source of information...

elbegewa

lavandula & quokka:
Yup, the handwriting is definitely going to be a problem. Ginny and I have learned to decipher a bit (her parents learned to write before Sutterlin was taught and she used to be able to somewhat read their writing) but we can't really read it ... actually, to us some older forms seem easier (no, less enigmatic may be a better way of saying it) than Sutterlin. Luckily we know and correspond with some people who can help ... we already know some of the specific documents that we want to see. We'll rely a lot on photographing, or photocopying, the original (where permitted) and dealing with the image later back home.

Ingo:
I'll shoot you an email later, but in short, in 2009 we got to Ukraine (former Bessarabia - amazing that several schools in some small dorfs there had devoted a room each as a museum of German times) and to Stuttgart (Bessarabiendeutschen Verein's heimatmuseum and bookstore) as well as take a quick traveller's peek at the Lahn (Limburg an der Lahn was fascinating), the Mosel, and the Middle Rhein. Our favorite: Chagall's stained glass windows in St. Stephen's in Mainz - the blue cast they gave to everything was entrancing).
Hopefully we'll see a bit more of Dresden next year than we saw in 2006, and definitely more of the Erzgebirge. In 2006 we saw only Olbernhau (where we met the people who now live in the house where Ginny's dad was born - a very special moment), Borstendorf, and Freiberg (but the cathedral with the Silberman organ was locked. We'll definitely see more this time.

With any luck we'll get an amalgamated and very delayed trip report on here (sometime? when? hmmm #-o )

lavandula

elbegewa,

can I recommend two books to you? One is by Fritz Verdenhalven, (1991) Die deutsche Schrift / The German Script, Verlag Degener & Co.: Neustadt/ Aisch. Like the link I gave you it has progressive exercises to teach you to read the distinctive handwriting, with both a German and English introduction. Another handy book is Faulmann, Carl, (1990), Das Buch der Schrift, Eichborn Verlag: Frankfurt/Main. It's a reprint of a book from the 1880s. Don't buy it unless you have a particular interest in alphabets and writing systems through the ages. Instead, get it via inter-library loan. Page 195 has columns of letters which are representative of the German writing styles through the ages; the two final ones are 15th-17th century and 18th century. You can photocopy this page and take it into the archives with you. It should provide you with enough comparison for you to be able to make out words. If you find anything written in Latin it's written in a font that you will be able to read easily (quite likely you will come across some Latin if the records are older). There is another book by Heribert Sturm but those two should set you right.

Lavandula

Ingo

Hi again,

Ah, yes, I remember ... Bessarabia and that Verein in Stuttgart. If you liked the stained glass windows in Mainz so much you might want to have a look at the Fraumünster church in Zürich this time - Marc Chagall created those as well. Truly beautiful, especially in the morning with sunlight.

As you have only seen Olbernhau, Borstendorf and a tiny bit of Freiberg in the Erzgebirge last time you definitely need to explore this region more. Better timing for the cathedral in Freiberg this time, I hope

Looking forward to your email!

I.

herself

Trip sounds great. I just got back from Alsace, Germany and Zurich. Roads are fabulous, drivers are the best I have ever seen. No one drives in the passing lane. They pass and zoom back in the driving lane. No borders between EU countries. Towns we loved most were Obernai, Ribeauville, Kaysenburg. Beautiful country. We also did a bit of genealogy in Thann. Never believe oral history. Facts were much more colorful.
Have fun.

PalenQ

But since we live in the North American mountain areas it won’t be as special a treat to see the Alps as it would likely be for others.>

Yes the rocky glacier-girdled Alpine peaks look like the Rockies but the sweet villages that lie just under them are so so much more prettier IME than towns in our mountains and there are just not the myriad of impossible mountain-climbing trains, funiculars, aerial cableways, cog railways, etc - I'm sure there are some of these in ski resorts in the West but not the panoply of say a Grindelwald-Lauterbrunnen area.

Mountains are obviously the same - what lies under them is not and Switzerland IME is far far more beautiful than any part of our Rockies.