Europe 2019, Cont.: Trier and Bonn

Trier, June 24-25

We drove from Munich to Trier in the Mosel Valley close to the border with Luxembourg.  Our hotel, located on a ridge overlooking the city, provided some relief from the European heat wave that reached 100 degrees F. during our stay.  

Trier from our hotel

Our hotel from Trier

The oldest city in Germany, Trier served as Emperor Constantine’s headquarters before he decamped to Byzantium on the Bosporus—an extraordinary change of venue.  Its principal Roman ruin is the Porta Nigra, one of the old city’s gates that was saved from destruction by its conversion into a Christian church.

Porta Nigra

Although not as ancient, the Trier cathedral claims to be the oldest church in the country.  Its massive size dominated the view of Trier from our hotel.

Trier cathedral

Arguably as impressive is the Basilika or Aula Palatina, built as the throne hall for Constantine.  The huge building was incorporated into the palace of the local princes, but when the (mainly Catholic) area was annexed to Prussia after the Napoleonic Wars, Frederick William IV decided to make it a freestanding Protestant church.  None of the Roman marble interior remains, but the size of the hall is impressive.

Interior of Bazilika

Naturally, we paid tribute to Trier’s “favorite son” (well, maybe), Karl Marx.  His birthplace was purchased by a Socialist Party supporter in the 1920s and reconstructed ahistorically as a medieval townhouse.  It now contains a worthwhile historical museum explaining Marx’s works and their later significance.  However, the Marx family only lived in the house for one year after Karl’s birth.

Bonn, June 26-28

En route to Bonn, we stopped at Burg Eltz, one of the few medieval castles never severely damaged over the centuries.  Curiously, it was occupied by three branches of the Eltz family, and the successor of one branch has restored most of the castle and opened it to the public.

Burg Eltz

We stayed in Bonn as guests of Christoph Hinz, Todd’s valued German colleague when he headed State’s maritime office, and Christoph’s friend Roswitha Schmitt.  We had enjoyed the cultural attractions (think Beethoven) of the area on many previous occasions so this time we concentrated on recent political history.

The Rhine near Bonn

Despite his years as mayor of West Berlin, former Chancellor Willy Brandt moved in retirement to a Rhine town across from Bonn.  A citizens group there has established a memorial center presenting the highlights of his extraordinary career.  At the center, for example, we learned that Brandt, exiled from Germany, had traveled to Barcelona as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War and met George Orwell.

Children playing at the Brandt memorial fountain

The Konrad Adenauer center in Rhöndorf, also across the Rhine, was still more impressive as it benefits from federal government funding and includes Der Alte’s home, where he lived from the 1930s until his death in 1967 at age 91.  The house is built on an extremely steep hillside, an almost unimaginable residence for an elderly man, but Adenauer took great pride in climbing up and down the slope to tend his magnificent rose garden.  The house tour gave us a new appreciation of Adenauer, who had stepped down as Chancellor when Todd was a vice consul in Munich.

Adenauer home

DeGaulle and Adenauer in the garden

Europe 2019, Cont.: Munich--and Hall in Tirol

Munich—and Hall in Tirol, June 18-23

As on an earlier trip to Munich, we stayed in Unterhaching, a suburb southeast of the city, where we could catch S-Bahn trains for a 20-minute ride to Marienplatz.  The city’s rail system was a special plus on June 20, for the streets were crowded with marchers for the annual Fronleichnam (Corpus Christi) holiday, which celebrates for Catholics the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Emerging from the U-Bahn, we followed the marchers, who represented parishes and Catholic organizations throughout Munich, from a mass on Marienplatz to a closing ceremony on Königsplatz.

Catholic organizations await the monstrance with the Host

The monstrance enters Königsplatz

The timing of our visit was governed by the date of the 80th birthday party of Dirk-Peter Müller, whom Todd came to know in 1963, when he gave Dirk a visa to work briefly in the United States.   In addition to the party, staged at a suburban Gasthaus with live music, Dirk and his wife Frauke entertained us on other evenings with dinner at their home and a marvelous performance of La Bohème at the Munich’s Nationaltheater, where we sat in the former royal box.

Dirk and Frauke at the party

Nationaltheater

A night at the opera (minus the Marx brothers)

La Bohème, Act III (Spoiler alert: It doesn't end well.)

Marienplatz on the way home

A further treat was a car trip over the Austrian border to Hall in Tirol, Dirk’s birthplace.  With Dirk as tour guide, we toured this charming town, which is a smaller version of neighboring Innsbruck between two Alpine ranges.

Downtown Hall

Pfarrkirche St. Nikolaus

Our week also included a welcome reunion with Peter and Gisela Wild and Rupert Pfeffer, also friends from Todd’s vice consular tour in Munich.  The Wilds had moved into the Augustinum, a Seniorenresidez not unlike the retirement community we have chosen in Palo Alto.  The visit gave us an opportunity to compare the German and American approaches to senior living.  Like most such American institutions, the Augustinum offers cultural programming—on our evening, Spanish guitar music and a flamenco dancer.

A week in Munich would not be complete without a visit to Dallmayr, a 320-year-old delicatessen purveying the best in Bavarian goodies.  Our purchases included elderflower syrup and elderflower liqueur, for we had become favorably acquainted with “hugos” on board the Navigator.

Central Munich near Dallmayr

Europe 2019, Cont.: Stuttgart and Bayreuth

Stuttgart, June 14-15

From Rambouillet we drove to Germany, stopping at Verdun to visit the massive concrete citadel that anchored the French defenses during the horrific battle there in 1916.  Our trusty Mercedes, which had proven its worth on the French autoroutes, was about to be tested on the speed limit-less German Autobahnen.  The car’s one peculiarity was its Siri-like voice recognition system, which was activated any time we said “Mercedes,” even in reference to a passing car.  Thus, we learned to refer to the other vehicle as a M-E-R-C-E-D-E-S.

Our trusty Mercedes

Arriving in central Stuttgart, we checked into a hotel on Marienplatz, a square frequented by young people on that Friday evening.  The next day our good friend Irene Kohlhaas, our next door neighbor in Chisinau and Todd’s colleague as German ambassador, led us on a tour of the city, where she had grown up.

Marienplatz Friday evening

We started with a walk through a forest to the Fernsehturm, reportedly the world’s first TV viewing tower, for a view of hilly Stuttgart and its surroundings.  Then on to the city center for a good lunch.

Stuttgart from the Fernsehturm

Downtown Stuttgart

In the afternoon we visited the Mercedes Museum, an impressively large and well organized building on the outskirts of the city.  Starting at the top floor and walking down a circular path, we viewed the evolution of the Daimler-Benz company and the vehicles it produced, all in the context of the political and social developments of the day.  The descriptions were quite forthright in describing the company’s use of POWs and other forced laborers during World War II.  Needless to say, however, the vehicles on display were magnificent

One generation of Mercedes vehicles

Georgia's new car

Bayreuth, June 16-17

Driving to Bavaria’s Bayreuth, we spent two days with Jochen and Irene von Feitlitzsch, with whom our friendship began in the 1960s, when Todd was a vice consul in Munich and Jochen was a university student there.  Irene took us on a bicycle tour of several new (to us) attractions in the city center, highlighted by a visit to the recently restored opera house, now included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List.  Margravine Wilhelmine, favorite sister of Frederick the Great (and, like him, a composer), commissioned the construction of the exquisitely baroque opera house as a means of enhancing Bayreuth’s reputation and her own.  She quite clearly succeeded!

Wilhelmine's opera house

No visit to Bavaria would be complete without beer and music.  Happily, Bayreuth was celebrating its annual Volksfest, where we were able to drink suitable quantities of the local brew, eat brathendl and wurst, and watch the carnival rides.  (We politely declined Irene’s invitation to go on Aristico.)  Appropriately for us and the Volksfest, the evening ended with fireworks.

The Volksfest and Aristico in full swing