Der Reisende

We just returned from a week in Medjugorje. That is one very special place. Kate found a tour group from the U.S. who said that we could join them in Frankfurt. For a very reasonable price, we got a round trip flight to Split, Croatia, a three hour bus ride to Medjugorje in Bosnia & Herzegovina, a nice room and breakfast and dinner each day. The group was led by Steve Shawl of www.medjugorje.org, who has been conducting these tours to Medjugorje for the past 13 years. We were fortunate in that just as we were signing up to go, Steve had to raised the tour price but he said that since we had been emailing him back and forth about the trip he would give it to us for the original price. The other ... read more

There is no way that either Kate or I would have ever imagined that we would be spending our 39th wedding anniversary in Warsaw, Poland but due to an airfare special from a German airlines that is exactly where we landed on our anniversary. Warsaw, being the capital of Poland, is a large city. According to Wikipedia, the city area is 516.9 square kilometers (199.6 sq mi). It is the eighth largest city in the European Union. Fortunately, most of what we wanted to see centered around Warsaw’s old town and relatively new downtown sections. There is so much to see and do in Warsaw that we found it but both physically challenging and exhausting to see what we did see. We were on the go from morning to night. Fortunately, we stayed at a very ... read more

For a place that really is really only open for about 8 weeks a year and especially if you love spring flowers, and more especially tulips, there's no place better than De Keukenhof not far from the village of Lisse, The Netherlands, southwest of Amsterdam. This remarkable park is transformed every spring into a dazzling, ever-changing display of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses, lilies, amaryllis, and many other flowers. There are also flowering shrubs, ancient trees and countless natural surprises, as well as themed gardens to explore and pavilions filled with displays, and of course, a windmill. A number of sculptures and other objects d'art can be viewed on a sculpture trail among the flowers throughout the park. The park has somewhere near 10 miles of trails and walkways among its 70 acres for you to ... read more

Kate and I had the opportunity to visit Strasbourg a few weeks ago. For a town that is over 2000 years old (the first mention of this city dates back to 12 B.C.), Strasbourg looked extremely well preserved. The old town is located on an island, which is surrounded by beautiful rivers and canals. Strasbourg sits at the confluence of the Bruche and Ill rivers and it sits across the Rhine River from Germany. It boasts one of the world’s most stunning cathedrals and its streets, including the Petite France neighborhood, are right out of a fairy tale. Situated on the Franco-German border, over the centuries, Strasbourg has been passed back and forward between those two countries. Annexed to France in 1681, after centuries of self-rule, Strasbourg was subject to German control from 1871 until the ... read more

It was a warm and sunny day when we arrived. There were a lot of people who arrived about the same time we did, all talking quietly to each other, wondering what this place was really like, trying to imagine…. The only difference was that we were arriving by car, not jammed into a rail car like so many who arrived here over 60 years ago to the infamous concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. We were there as tourists, not like the million and half men, women, and children who were slaughtered, many within a short time after their arrival. Auschwitz is probably the most recognized of all the Nazi concentration camps and the biggest Nazi concentration camp complex during World War II. Poles and prisoners from other countries were condemned by the Nazis to ... read more