Crossing Europe from West to East and back. Part 5: Germany in the return

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Here wo go again. Ray Charles sang it in 1979 already. Now it is our turn to sing it. And Linda and I have reasons to sing. After three years of self imposed quarantine we hit the road again. With our little Volkswagen Polo we'll leave The Netherlands, cross Germany, cross Czech Republic, cross Slovakia, slowly traveling from spot to spot. Near the border with the Ukraine we will turn and travel back via another route, slowly again, enjoying the trip. It will take us one month.

It is almost one month ago now that Linda and I left the Netherlands. It was cold, we had to wear winter jackets. Our first destination was Germany. We visited Münster, where we saw the very spot where the Peace of Münster was signed. In Berlin we went looking for traces of my father, who was forced laborer during World War II. At last we saw Dresden, the city which was destroyed in the same war and had risen from its ashes. And now after visiting Czech Republic and Slovakia, we are back again in Germany. It has become beautiful weather now. We can leave our winter jackets in our suitcases. Walking in T-shirts is so much better.

Nuremberg

It is only two hours by car from Plzen in Czech Republic to Nuremberg. We have an excellent hotel, Franconia City Hotel, near the centre. Actually it is the best hotel we have had during our trip. It is a small hotel, the welcome is most cordial, the room is beautiful and the breakfast is absolutely great.

It is the first of May. The centre of the city is full of people enjoying the festivities, the end of the corona measures and the nice weather. While walking to the castle we see that Nuremberg has beautiful buildings. Again such a beatifull town, like we saw them in Slovakia and Czech republic, but still completely different. Like Dresden Nuremberg was bombed during World War II. Many houses were destroyed, but not The Albrecht Dürer Haus, which has only got some damage. Albrecht Dürer has lived here almost 20 years in the 16th century. All his famous paintings are there, but all of them are copies. They were for safety reasons removed during the war to München. And they never came back. Well, just once for an exhibition. The local artists took the opportunity to make copies. And that is what we see here.

The Albrecht Dürer Haus is not the only building in Nuremberg which got some damage in WW II. The same happened to the Reichsparteitaggelände der NSDAP. On YouTube you can see how the Swastika on top of the Zeppelinhaupttribüne is bombed. You can still visit the Zeppelinfield. It was designed by Albert Speer, the General Bau Inspector for whom my father had to work as a forced laborer during the war. Standing on the very spot where Hitler used to give his speeches, you might get some megalomane feelings. And that exactly was the purpose of Albert Speer. The Zeppelinfield gives room for 300.000 people.

Nowadays the effect is broken by a row of trees. In front of the Haupttribüne, the spot where the parades took place under the approving eye of Hitler, there is a trail where mororcyclists get their lessons. They swing around some orange pylons under the approving eye of their teacher. A bit further a lady gets badmintonlessons. On the lake in between the megalomane Congresshall and the Zeppelinfield float some pink toy flamingo's.

I walk down over the stairway which Hitler used to take when he walked to his lectern. I almost fall over it, because the steps are too small for my long legs. Then I realize Hitler was a little man. Albert Speer knew that. Meanwhile Linda is taking pictures of the flowers which pop up out of the building. She is specially fond of the ivy-leaved toadflaxes (Cymbalaria muralis) with their tender purple flowers.

When we walk at the other side of the Zeppelinfield, there where the spectators used to sit, we meet an old man with a rollator. I hardly can understand his German, but he is very angry. He talks about Stalin, Hitler and Putin. "Sie sind allen gleich". When we pass him I hear behind me: "Und auch Angela Merkel".

The designer of these monstrous buildings, Albert Speer, the man my father had to work for as a forced laborer, was condemned at the Nuremberg trials. You can still visit the spot where the trials took place. It is the Memorium Nürenberg Trials, Hall 600. Albert Speer sat at the left hand side, between the other criminals of war. His last words at the trial were:
"But the world will learn from what has happened not only to hate the dictatorship as form of government but also to fear it."

Did the world learn from it, now there is a war going on in the Ukrain? Anyway these words saved his life. In stead of the death penalty he was sentenced on the first of october 1946 to 20 years prison. The judges charged him specially on the fact that under his leadership one million of the six million forced laborers out of the occupied territories had to work in the weapon industry. What the other five million forced laborers would think of that, I don't know.

Ansbach

About 40 kilometer from Nuremberg sits Ansbach. The reason we visited Ansbach is that we wanted to see the Markgrafen Museum. Let me explain.
On the 26th of May 1828 a strange boy appeared in the streets of Nuremberg. No one knew who he was. He had a letter in his hands with his name: Kaspar Hauser. Once I read a book about him: "Kaspar Hauser, the Child of Europe". I got nightmares of it. It appeared that Kaspar Hauser was locked up in a darkened dungeon during his young life in solitary confinement. In december 1831 Hauser was transferred to Ansbach, where a schoolmaster took care of him. The house where he lived is now the Markgrafen Museum. In the museum is an exhibition on Kaspar Hauser.

Kaspar Hauser has become a mistery. On the 14th of december 1833 he came home with a deep wound in his left breast. Someone has stabbed him. Why? Three days later he died. Rumours go that he was the son of the Grand Duke of Baden and that he could claim the throne. That was against the will of Countess of Hochberg who wanted to secure the succession for her own son.

It is a sad story. The reason why I became interested in Kaspar Hauser is that his long time isolation caused special skills. He could smell a cherry tree on kilometers distance and he had a sense for magnetic fields. Learning was a punishment for him. His teachers thought him to be lazy. But when they researched his brains after his death, they found that his cortex was underdeveloped. Due to too few stimuli he got during his long time isolation, I guess.

Heidelberg

I had never plans to visit Heidelberg. I thought it to be dull. But now I am here, I am stupefied. Heidelberg is great. We have a beautiful room in hotel Holländer Hof with view on the Neckar, where boats with their cargo sail up and down the river. Heidelberg has a famous university. Students populate the terraces and pubs. The reason we are here, is because Linda wants to see the Kurpfälzisches Museum. Here is the famous lower jaw of Homo heidelbergensis, which was found here in 1907. In case you don't know who Homo heildelbergensis is, it is your grandgrandfather. But that is not sure. Because nothing is sure in anthroplology at the moment. Every time new discoveries pop up. According to convention Homo heidelbergensis is placed as the most common ancestor between modern humans and Neanderthals, I read in Wikipedia.

During WW II Heidelberg was not bombed. Maybe that is the reason why it is so beautiful. For safety reasons the jaw of your grandgrandfather was moved to another spot. Unfortunately that spot was bombed. The consequence is that the jaw of your grandgrandfather is missing two of his molars. The jaw in the museum is not the original by the way. The original is kept in a safe in the Paleontologic Institute of the University at the other side of the Neckar. I play with the idea to become a paleontology professor here, but then I realize I am too old. So we just went to a shop with fossils and bought some.

After the lunch we walked to Schloss Heidelberg uphill. We came specially for the Deutsches Apotheker Museum. It is part of the buildings of the castle. The museum is absolutely fine. It tells about the development of pharmacology from the ancient up to now.

Mainz

On our way to the North we passed the Grube Messel near Darmstadt, where a lot of fossils are found from the Eocene. We missed it, because we could not find it. More luck we had in Mainz. There we visited the Gutenberg Museum. Johannes Gutenberg was the man who started in the 15th century with his printing system the Printing Revolution in Europe. The impact on the world was enormous, comparable with the invention of the computer and internet. Everyone could get books, magazines, newspapers now. There is an interesting exhibition. Most precious is the 42 line Bible.

Koblenz

It is not far to the Netherlands anymore, but we prefer to overnight near Koblenz. Just before Koblenz we bump into a nice hotel: Waldhotel Forsthaus Remstecken. It sits in the middle of a beautiful forest. Next morning we made a nice walk in the forest and then we drove back to The Netherlands. Late in the afternoon we were back in Schiedam. And that is the end of our blog. Thank you for reading.

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