Andrew

<b>Exploring Dresden's Altstadt</b>

My first day upon arrival from Nuremberg, after walking a few minutes from the Neustadt train station to the Motel One and checking in, I walked over to the Altstadt across the Augustus Bridge. The sun was in and out but it felt much colder than in Nuremberg or Rothenburg – hey, this was April after all so not a big surprise. I scrambled to shoot pictures when the sun popped out for a few minutes here and there. I got a few shots of the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) in great late afternoon light.

Compared to Nuremberg, everything in Dresden looks HUGE! Wide streets, huge buildings. Everything is on a much larger scale than any other city I visited in Germany. Everything I was seeing was also built or rebuilt after the war, as allied bombers nearly destroyed the city with firebombing raids.

At dusk I shot pictures of the beautiful Dresden cityscape, but I was tired and then it started to rain (and it was cold) so I went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

The next day, back to the Altstadt, a perfect day for museums: rainy and overcast. I visited the portrait gallery first, then the scientific instruments museum and briefly the porcelain museum adjacent (all included in the same single ticket). I enjoyed the portrait gallery, but by then I was pretty much “museumed out” for the day as it were. I wasn't interested in the “Green Vault” everyone else seems to salivate over, and my ability to see more art was probably at an end by lunchtime.

In the afternoon I took a tour of the Volkswagen transparent factory just outside of the old town – a quick tram ride away. There are a few tours a day in English. Sadly, you can't take pictures inside. The idea of the factory is largely a marketing gimmick for VW: you can pay extra for the privilege of watching your high-end VW (or Bentley, which VW owns) being made here. If you go for a tour, try to go early in the day; the factory floor closes pretty early, and by the time our tour started mid-afternoon work was already shutting down for the day. We did see a little work in action, mostly robots installing batteries and such. The whole thing is pretty neat though – the cars being built move across the floor on a big conveyor belt and workers install new pieces at each station.

I wouldn't put the VW factory tour at the top of your list unless you are really interested in how cars are made or, like me, you were tired of museums on a rainy day and wanted a different kind of activity.

By evening the rain had stopped, and I was able go out for a long walk shooting more pictures of the beautiful Dresden skyline at night. I also did a long walk to outer Neustadt the same evening. Even though I had a day pass for the trams, there wasn't an obvious direct tram between outer Neustadt and my hotel, so I wound up walking almost all of it – quite a few kilometers carrying all my camera stuff, but oh well.

The Motel One was decent for the price – it's new, stylish, and comfortable, though otherwise very basic, a huge mega hotel. The location wasn't great but not awful – the tram was convenient enough when needed, but I wish there had been more around the hotel to walk to. There's another Motel One in the Altstadt, but I didn't find the Altstadt area all that exciting either. (The name “motel” implies a drive-up roadside hotel, but it doesn't feel that way – just a name I think.)

Andrew

<b>Saxon Switzerland and Meissen Day Trips</b>

(Saxon Switzerland Pictures: http://portlandbridges.com/00,0,411,1,0,0-germany.html )

I had originally booked three nights at the Motel One, but by the second night, I decided I was pretty much done in Dresden. I didn't hate Dresden and loved the photo opportunities, but I felt no need to stay any longer. The hotel charges for your entire stay when you check in, but they will let you checkout early and refund any remaining nights if you check out before noon on that day, so that's what I did. I left my bags in storage at the hotel.

It was turning out to be a beautiful day, so I decided to squeeze in some day trips around Dresden before heading on to Görlitz. First I headed to Saxon Switzerland National Park about 45 minutes from Dresden by S-Bahn train S1.

I got to see some pretty scenery from the train before even getting to the park. There are some pretty reflections in the Elbe River on the way – boats and houses. Once you get off the train at Kurort Rathen, you walk down to the river, cross in a little ferry that runs back and forth almost continuously, then hike through the rest of the tiny town and up into the woods where you hike straight up through the trees.

The key attraction in this area – besides some pretty scenery down on the river and a rocky terrain – is the famous stone Bastei Bridge, built at the top between some rocks. Quite an engineering feat! I did the hike up fairly quickly – sometimes a little steep but otherwise easy. There were a good number of other tourists hiking but it wasn't exactly crowded. After I got to the top, I didn't linger much after taking a bunch of pictures. I could have hiked up past the bridge to other viewpoints, but instead I decided to hike back down and try to make it to the town of Meissen. I enjoyed Saxon Switzerland National Park though – great scenery and a nice, easy side trip from Dresden.

(Meissen Pictures: http://portlandbridges.com/00,0,412,1,0,0-germany.html )

Trying to visit Meissen the same day was probably too ambitious. It was on the same S-Bahn S1 line as I was getting back on but it was on the opposite side of Dresden! So it was another hour plus before I got there. By now it was clouding up a little anyway. I had in mind two trains from Dresden to Görlitz I might catch to get in before early evening – and if I hustled in Meissen and made it a super quick visit, I might even make the earlier train..

I wound up with all of about 25 minutes to explore Meissen! The most obvious attraction is the huge Albrechtsburg and Cathedral that dwarfs the little town below. I got some pictures of it from the train as we crossed the river to the old town and the train stop. Then I hustled through the town, through a couple of squares, got a few more pictures of the cathedral, then headed back to the train station. So much for Meissen! Seems like a nice town, though. I had enough time to stop at a bakery on the way back and stock up on pastries for the train rides ahead, plus enough time to buy a ticket from Dresden to Görlitz from the machine before the train arrived. I had gotten to be a pro with the DB Bahn ticket machines by now.

As soon as we got back to Dresden Neustadt train station, I hustled back to the Motel One maybe a 7 minute walk way, grabbed my bags, and made it back in time to catch the early Görlitz train with a few minutes to spare.

Andrew

<b>On to Görlitz</b> (1 night)

(Görlitz Pictures: http://portlandbridges.com/00,0,413,1,0,0-germany.html )

The direct train to Görlitz took about 1 ¼ hours, on a basic commuter train. Most of the passengers seemed like commuters – school kids who were going home from school for the day, doing their homework on the train. It was a Friday night, so I imagine many were going home for the weekend from the big city.

I had booked a cheap B&B (the Pension Gina) in Görlitz on Booking.com for the next night, Saturday, so now I needed to change or cancel it. I had tried calling the Pension earlier in the day, but the person who answered the phone spoke only German, so I had to hang up and try again later online. I found the time to get online and change the booking only during the train ride over, maybe about an hour before arrival. I suspected this was not really enough time for the change to filter through to the Pension – this wasn't a regular hotel where I could just show up at a staffed front desk. So I was prepared for that.

I dragged my bags the standard 15 minutes from the Görlitz train station to the Pension, which I found easily. I rang the bell out front but there was no answer. Finally a neighbor woman – speaking only German – came down to try to help me. I assume she realized I was there for a room when she saw my luggage. I gathered that the Pension was basically closed down for the season but still rented an apartment year round (which I was getting) so they weren't normally staffed this time of year. The neighbor watched the place for the owner, whom she had just notified of my arrival, and he was now on his way. At least, that's what I gathered as we had no translator. All I understood that she wanted me to wait there for the owner. I felt bad for her – she seemed a little exasperated at the language barrier and was obviously trying to help me, but I wasn't upset or stressed.

The Pension owner soon arrived and apologized for not getting the info from Booking.com, but it was hard to blame him, as I had made the change so late. I should have apologized to him – but he barely spoke much English himself and it wasn't worth the trouble. He showed me the place, took my payment, gave me the keys, and was on his way. The apartment was HUGE – way more than required for a single night for one person. I almost wished I had stayed elsewhere in a smaller room. Had I been staying a week there the kitchen and big rooms would have been nice.

Andrew

<b>Exploring Görlitz and Walking to Poland</b>

The sun was still out but starting to set by the time I left the pension with my camera gear to explore Görlitz. It is a nice town for sure, a bit sleepy in April. Because historically the town was part of Silesia, it does not feel very “German” compared to all of the other towns places I had just seen. I am no expert on architecture, so I couldn't really appreciate the various styles of buildings I was seeing, but they were interesting for sure, sometimes striking.

I made my way to the center of town (maybe a 10-15 minute walk) and, eventually, down to the river. There's a huge church, St. Peter's Church, right by the pedestrian bridge on the German side of the river.

Görlitz is right on the Polish border. Before the war, Görlitz had been one town with suburbs east of the Neisse River, but after the war Stalin insisted that a big slice of Germany be “given” to Poland (which in turn had to “give” part of its eastern territory to Ukraine), and the new German/Polish border was set on the Neisse, slicing Görlitz in half with its eastern suburbs now the Polish town of Zgorzelec. In recent years, since the Polish border with Germany was opened, a pedestrian bridge was constructed between the two towns, and now one can walk freely from Germany to Poland over this narrow bridge. I found this idea intriguing.

Görlitz isn't on the way to anywhere else in tourist Germany, so you kind of have to see it as a detour, perhaps between Dresden and Berlin as I did. (It also makes an easy day trip from Dresden, with several direct trains a day – but I wanted to spend a night.) The main appeal of Görlitz is the architecture: well-preserved older buildings that survived World War II largely unscathed – but many buildings really date from only about a hundred years before that, because the town was damaged in earlier wars.

Several American movies have been filmed partly in Görlitz – for example Wes Anderson's “Grand Budapest Hotel.” The interiors of the hotel were filmed inside the beautiful old Hertie Department Store in the center of town, but the outside of the hotel shown in the film is mostly a miniature model.

I walked over to Poland – probably a total 20 minute walk from my B&B. I noticed immediately how much less prosperous Polish Zgorzelec is than German Görlitz. Some of the buildings right at the Polish side of the border have clearly been renovated, but others were old and crumbling,, sometimes with big trash dumps behind them, whereas German Görlitz feels like a nice, prosperous, clean town. Görlitz was part of East Germany and behind the same Iron Curtain during the Cold War as Poland, so it's hard to blame the difference on “communism” but perhaps even during the Cold War East Germany was more prosperous than Poland.

Also, liquor and cigarettes were much cheaper in Poland – lower taxes I guess. There were newish liquor stores just a few meters from the bridge in Poland trying to lure German consumers I guess. Soda is cheaper, too! I had been nursing my diet soda addiction at some expense throughout Germany over the last week and was gleeful to pop into a little convenience store in Zgorzelec to seek out Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi in bottles – but they had no diet soda, only regular cola! I checked three different stores before giving up.

By now it was almost dusk, so I mostly waited around by the river for optimal light for photography (not any sort of visible sunset but a nice sky at dusk). My plan was to shoot river pictures at dusk/night at the bridge, then get a plate of pierogies at a Polish restaurant somewhere. After I finished my pictures, I chose a restaurant that was in many of my pictures: the Piwnica Staromiejska Restauracja occupies an old grain tower (right by the bridge) that has been converted into a restaurant. I couldn't read much of the menu, so I simply asked for a plate of “Pierogi Ruskie” (plain potato pierogies) and that's what the server brought me. They were different than I had had in Krakow – these had been baked not fried, but they were still really good. Paying for my meal in Polish Zloty (albeit with a credit card) made me a bit nostalgic for my trip to Poland in 2012.

Then I walked back to Germany and the pension, taking some night pictures along the way.

I had hoped to take a long morning walk the final morning in Görlitz before heading on to Berlin, but it was raining. I still spent another few hours walking around Görlitz and managed to dodge the rain and shoot more pictures here and there. Then I left the pension, headed to the Görlitz train station, and on to Berlin.

I enjoyed Görlitz, but it doesn't have an obvious, overwhelming appeal. There are no world-class museums, and the city while nice isn't a postcard-perfect beautiful town. Most tourists probably wouldn't want to waste a night here, but I sometimes like places that are off the beaten track but still interesting. “Walking to Poland” was a neat experience, in a quiet town that also seemed authentic. I even considered staying another night – but what else was there really to do? I could have walked down to see more of Polish Zgorzelec I guess, but I decided to head on to Berlin instead.

Andrew

<b>From Görlitz to Berlin</b>

In my trip planning, I'd always assumed I could train from Görlitz to Berlin with only one connection, via Cottbus, but when I checked train schedules again on DB Bahn's website the night before leaving, that one-connection option was gone! I never figured out why. Instead, it appeared I'd need to take regional trains and change twice – or go back to Dresden, way out of the way.

I decided to take the regional trains and also figured out I could buy a ticket from Görlitz to Cottbus, then buy a regional ticket (VBB) in Cottbus, another change in Frankfurt (Oder), and on to Berlin. As a small consolation, that turned out to be a few Euros cheaper than that original faster connection. Everything worked out fine.

I had planned to get off the last train at Berlin Hauptbahnhof and take a U-Bahn train up to my hotel, but I was staying in Prenzlauer Berg and realized I could just get off the train at Alexanderplatz and walk 15 minutes to the hotel, so that's what I did.

I had booked at the Meininger Hotel Alexanderplatz in Prenzlauer Berg, because I'd read that Prenzlauer Berg, was a neat neighborhood. and the price was right, not bad. Meininger is a chain of budget hotels that also have hostel rooms. This one was in a building several stories high. I had a private room with a private bathroom. The place was clean enough, but it seemed overpriced and Prenzlauer Berg was more out-of-the-way than I'd imagined. I checked out after one night – see below.

From the Meininger front desk person I bought a three day transit pass for Berlin. I asked for one with enough zones to cover a day trip to Potsdam (not much more expensive from what I'd read) - but she didn't have any passes for that many zones and helpfully suggested I could simply buy an extension ticket anyway on that day and save a few euros. But that turned out not to be true – you aren't allowed to extend a pass like that, I found out later. I had to buy a day pass just for Potsdam and that wound up costing me more, so I was a bit annoyed.

Andrew

<b>Exploring Berlin</b> (4 nights)

(Berlin Pictures: http://portlandbridges.com/00,0,414,1,0,0-germany.html )

I saved my transit pass for the final three days and stuck to walking on my first evening in Berlin. I walked from Prenzlauer Berg all the way up to the Brandenburg Gate – a pretty long walk. Berlin isn't exactly a nice or compact walking city – it's huge and spread out, but I still felt the need to walk it, to help get a feel for the city. It was a nice afternoon. I walked along the Spree River bank for a while. People were out in one of the parks having picnics or just hanging out.

Otherwise, Berlin certainly isn't what I would call picturesque. When I visited, there were construction projects and cranes everywhere, especially in the former East Berlin. The famous Unter den Linden boulevard was all torn up and ugly. I'd hope in a few years that all the construction will be done and Unter den Linden will again be a beautiful street.

I walked all the way back to Prenzlauer Berg. Dinner was a take away pizza from I Due Forni, a recommended pizza place a few blocks from the Meininger – this recommendation from the Meininger front desk turned out to be good.

Andrew

<b>Sunday in Berlin</b>

The next morning I hopped on Priceline.com – something I should have done in the first place, as a veteran Priceline user – bid $65 for a 4-star hotel, and won the Maritim Proarte Hotel, only about a kilometer from the Brandenburg Gate for about the same price as I was paying at the Meininger and a much nicer hotel to boot. Although much more touristy and much less hip, this turned out to be an excellent location, close to Unter den Linden on Friedrichstrasse, right by the Friedrichstrasse train station.

I checked out of the Meininger , took the U-Bahn to Maritim, dropped my bags until I could check in later, and met up with a 10AM “Third Reich Walk” from Original Berlin Walks. The guide was a lively, colorful German PhD history student who was knowledgeable about everything she covered. I can't say I learned a lot from her as I already knew a lot of the history. (Obviously, these tours need to be geared to all levels of knowledge.) I mostly wanted to see how the various sites of the Third Reich were physically connected (even if many of the actual buildings are now gone or radically changed). Still, she had interesting stories about her grandfather's involvement in the SS, and that added a dimension to the tour you wouldn't get from a non-German tour guide. (Some of the tour guides are American expats for example.) These walking tours can be an excellent way to see your way around.

The worst part of the walking tour is that I was FREEZING – I foolishly thought it would be as warm as previous day and left my jacket at the hotel, figuring I'd warm up once we started walking, but it was a chilly day and I froze the entire time. I couldn't wait for the tour to finish mostly because of that.

I spent the rest of this Sunday visiting sites like Checkpoint Charlie, the Topography of Terror Museum, and the Berlin Wall Memorial. Berlin is unique in that there is an enormous amount of “outdoor” or public museum information out on the streets or even in side the U-Bahn stations. I was well aware of basic Cold War and World War II history but was still very interested finaly in seeing this stuff. Still, all the Nazi stuff is kind of intense, and I got quite saturated with it pretty quickly. I could read only so many texts next to World War II photographs before I became blearly-eyed.

The Berlin Wall Memorial and the adjacent Nordbahnhof U-Bahn station were my favorite museum-type of sites in Berlin. Many tourists will take the Nordbahnhof station to the memorial anyway, but inside the station there are a series of info plaques and pictures describing the stories of how the Wall split Berlin's U-Bahn trains, how people tried to escape, etc. Don't miss this portion inside the station if you visit!

The outdoor Memorial has surviving sections of the Wall (almost all of the former Belin Wall is now gone from Berlin) as well as pictures of people who died trying to escape East Berlin to freedom in those years. I found the pictures themselves particularly moving. The memorial itself is on the site of a former church (since demolished). The Wall went right through the church property, separating the cemetery from the church and splitting up the congregation between east and west. People in the west were unable to visit their deceased loved ones in the east in the cemetery. It's easier to understand the real human consequences of the Wall when you visit the actual sites like this one.

I visited Checkpoint Charlie on Sunday and several times over the several days I was in Berlin, sometimes while on the way to somewhere else. It's a super touristy site but also famous in Cold War history. You can see pictures of American and Soviet tanks facing off there in 1961 – a tense point in the Cold War – and pictures of western leaders visiting the area. I walked a few times from Checkpoint Charlie over to the the Topography of Terror site (which is located at the site of the former Gestapo headquarters, long gone but you can still see the foundations) and down Wilhelmstrasse, which was the main “Nazi Street” during the Nazi years, connecting the major government buildings (mostly gone now). You can stand on the site of Hitler's former underground bunker – now a parking lot for a post-war communist-style apartment building, walk past other former ministry buildings, etc. The Reichstag is nearby as well; unfortunately, I waited too long to try to book a tour and it was all booked up for the days I was in Berlin.

I also fit in a brief visit to the “Museum The Kennedys,” a small private museum dedicated to the Kennedy Family – an odd museum for Berlin, I guess, but I was interested in seeing the context again for President Kennedy's famous visit 1963 to West Berlin (“Ich bin ein Berliner”). It didn't take long – mostly a bunch of pictures and some video of his visit. I had half a notion to try to locate the physical site of JFK's famous speech in Berlin, but it wasn't anywhere near the Wall (which he did visit, at Checkpoint Charlie) so I didn't bother.

Then, back to Maritim. For dinner got a take-away pizza from Vapiano, a kind of trendy pizza joint (a chain) where one orders with a magnetic card at each station, and the card records what you've ordered there; then you hand the card to the cashier as you leave to pay. Pizza was decent enough.

As for the Maritim: it was certainly a much nicer hotel than the Meininger for about the same price, and I thought the area on Friedrichstrasse was far superior to Prenzlauer Berg, at least for me. The Maritim was kind of a big, impersonal business-type hotel, clean and comfortable. (no free WiFi – I had to use my phone's hotspot). I got water all over the floor the first morning I took a shower and had to get towels from the front desk to mop it up – I told them about it but no one ever came to see to it. The floor never really dried even a few nights. I probably should have switched rooms but simply didn't feel like it.

Andrew

<b>Monday in Berlin</b>

Monday was a rainy day – the perfect day to visit the huge German History Museum. I spent much of the morning and afternoon there with a few hour lunch break in between. Some of it was interesting for sure, as you survey German history from the early settlements through the wars and the modern day, but as I'm not crazy about museums it was a bit of a forced march. By the time I got to the World War II section I was saturated and yawning (this after my lunch break). I think I enjoyed the section covering Berlin between the world wars the most – I learned a few things and found the era fascinating. The museum is quite good, actually, despite my aversion to museums.

During my lunch break (a currywurst at the famous Bier's Curry und Spiesse near the Friedrichstrasse train station and near my hotel), I visited the “Victory Column” in the former West Berlin. Good timing – the sun came out for a few hours, so I could get some decent pictures from the top.

In the evening I took a train out to Kurfürstendamm in western Berlin. I was hungry for an American-style burger, so I hit up the overpriced Hard Rock Cafe, a place I'd probably never visit in the US but in Europe I make it a point to patronize one in the middle of a long trip.

Andrew

<b>Tuesday in Berlin – Day Trip to Potsdam</b>

(Potsdam Pictures: http://portlandbridges.com/00,0,415,1,0,0-germany.html )

Tuesday was the last day of my trip! I devoted most of it to Potsdam. After buying a day transit pass to cover Potsdam, I was able to get a direct train from Friedrichstrasse station near my hotel up to Potsdam, then take a tram from the Potsdam station into town. I had only a few things on my agenda in Potsdam: see a few of Fredrick the Great's palaces – or at least see the outsides of them – and visit Cecilienhof Palace, site of the famous Potsdam Conference that followed World War II in Europe. And maybe take a quick tour of the town of Potsdam.

Getting off the tram near the center of Potsdam, I tried to follow a scenic shortcut recommend by Rick Steves to visit the big palaces, but I could not follow his directions at all, got confused, and gave up, catching another tram and bus instead to take me directly to the Sanssouci Palace . I didn't go inside, but I photographed the buildings when the sun came out. A few potentially nice pictures were ruined by scaffolding as, apparently, this palace was being renovated.

Then I waited for a long time for the next bus back to town – kind of a waste of time, really. Potsdam turned out to be a frustrating day of missing trams and buses, getting lost, etc. Maybe I was ready to go home.

I finally caught another bus up to the Cecilienhof Palace, site of the famous Potsdam Conference, where Churchill (later Atlee), Truman, and Stalin signed off on post-war agreements and probably set the Cold War in motion. I visited the palace in the afternoon. Here was another favorite site of the trip: seeing the famous red, round conference table that the Big Three leaders sat around. I lingered in this room for a good long while, trying to imagine Churchill smoking his cigar, giving his long monologues while Stalin and Truman listed patiently and politely, or while Stalin and Truman communicated via their translators, as they finalized these momentous agreements.

Aside from its historical significance, the Cecilienhof Palace itself is nothing amazing, just a big mansion convenient for holding the conference.

Finally I returned to the center of Potsdam and explored the town a little – cute but nothing special, really. Then I headed back to Berlin.

For my last afternoon in Berlin I returned to the Topography of Terror a final time. I tried to absorb more of the Nazi pictures and descriptions I had skipped before, but it was just too much – I could barely read it anymore. I considered going to a few of the smaller museums – the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, the DDR museum, etc. but I just didn't feel like it. I was kind of “museumed out” by this point.

I had an early dinner, another take-out pizza from Vapiano, so I could get to bed early before my 7AM flight out the next morning.

Andrew

<b>Wednesday Morning – Berlin, Paris, Chicago, and Home!</b>

I set my alarm for 4:20 to catch the TXL (Tegel Airport) bus, which stopped on Unter den Linden, only a few blocks from the hotel. (Walking at that hour was not scary at all.) Then I took the 7:00 Air France flight to Paris – everything was on time, routine. I made my connection to the 12:10 American Airlines flight to Chicago with plenty of time to spare. (Minor gripe: food options at CDG are lousy while you are waiting to fly back; plenty of overpriced shops, but at least a freaking MCDONALDS would have been nice!.) My flight home to Chicago was half empty, and I had an empty seat next to me.

The long travel day home – flight from Berlin to Paris, Paris to Chicago, Chicago back to Portland – wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. The empty seat on that long flight from Paris helped a lot!

Andrew

<b>My Thoughts on Germany</b>

I can't say I fell in love with Germany. I enjoyed some places and was glad to have visited others. I didn't hate anywhere I visited. On the other hand, there is nowhere in Germany I'm dying to return to anytime soon. I think I would have enjoyed Germany more had I visited about ten years earlier, before I had visited other more “exotic” European countries by 2014. Germany has a well-developed tourist industry and feels almost too easy, too routine, even if some of the places I saw were beautiful and historic. Other European countries I've visited like Poland and Croatia are still a little rough around the edges in places and feel like more of a challenge.

Visiting Berlin was long overdue, probably essential; I'm glad I can now picture the city I've read about so many times. But I can't say I'm excited to return to Berlin anytime soon, either.

I'd go back to Görlitz again if I could fit it into a trip to somewhere else – it was one of my favorite spots – but it's really not on the way to many places. Rothenburg ob der Tauber was as nice as I had heard and much less touristy in April than it probably is in warmer weather. Dresden was beautiful at night and I got some of my best photographs there, but otherwise the city left me feeling a bit cold. The Nazi sites in Nuremberg were probably a waste of time, to be honest, but without seeing them, how would I have known?

The Mosel Valley looks like a beautiful place for a relaxing vacation; maybe I'll take one there someday when I want a trip like that.

The trains worked fine for me – despite some tight connections, I never missed one. I probably should have considered renting a car in Freiburg and driving it up to say Nuremberg. I would have been able to see more and saved some of the frustrations of all of those train changes.

Colmar may have been my favorite stop on the entire trip. I'd like to go back to Alsace again someday for sure.

I spent a lot of time worrying about the weather before the trip (will it rain too much?). But the weather in April was not bad at all. I was there about two weeks and I really had rain only 4-5 days or parts of days (one in Freiburg/Zurich, one morning in Nuremberg, one day in Dresden, one morning in Görlitz, and one in Berlin), and I still managed to take pictures all of those days despite the rain. A clear day for my Black Forest hike would have been nice. But you can get clouds or any any time of the year, despite the averages and trends. I've been to Europe a few times in September and have had plenty of rain in September. Going in April saved some money (award ticket, cheaper lodgings off season, etc.), so for me it was probably the perfect time to go. It was pretty warm until I got to Dresden, and after that I still had a few warm days and a few cold ones – I never needed more than a light jacket with a sweatshirt.

Andrew

(That's all of it!)

mokka4

Thanks for posting Andrew. It was nice to revisit some of my prior haunts and read about the new (Poland, eastern Germany). Nice photos. Can't wait to get back!

swandav2000

Thanks for posting, Andrew -- enjoy reading about travel in Germany and enjoy reading about people taking the train. I don't agree that it would have been better to have rented a car, though.

Oh, yes, Americans (or anyone!) can download their train tickets from DB onto a mobile phone. I do it all the time.

Thanks again for your report!

s

Andrew

Thank you, mokka4 and swandav2000!

I normally do prefer the train. I'm still thinking I would have had more flexibility covering all of that ground between Freiburg and Rothenburg so quickly in a car. I didn't need or want a car anywhere else on my trip, though.

I read the ticketing instructions on DB Bahn's website pretty carefully, and they seemed to indicate I needed a paper ticket unless I had some sort of "Bahn Card" and perhaps a German SIM? It was too late to be sure by the time I was about to purchase to decide. But I should have tried to show a PDF of my ticket on my phone anyway even when I had a paper copy, just to try and see if it would have been accepted; if not, I could have shown the paper ticket, but then at least I would have known!

swandav2000

Hmmmm, no there's no requirement to have a Bahn Card; I don't. I do have a German sim, but I'm sure any sim would work.

You need to download the DB app, though, but you can do that with any sim from anywhere. Then use the same sign-in you used to purchase your tickets. Then just download the ticket/s, and poof, there they are!

s

robincal

Andrew, love your report, and I like your travel style. Love the part about your trip to Zurich, where you enjoyed the city but didnt spend any money.

bilboburgler

nice report,

parts of Eastern Germany are a bit like your Polish town (I've been to towns where the grass grows in the streets) and you can see why the people of Dresden are so fearful of globalisation and immigration. (they need to get out more)

Andrew

Thanks!

alisa23

Very interesting report, thank you