The pastry chef aboard the Viking Vili had no fear of losing his job because of me. My pathetic attempt at making a gingerbread house during his lesson on board put my skills at the kindergarten level. His fanciful creations in the ship’s lounge looked like they were conjured up by a Christmas elf employing Santa’s magical powers.
In the 1955 film Daddy Long Legs, the actress Leslie Caron, playing a teenage waif in an orphanage, is plucked out of her drab milieu and introduced to a posh life, where she can have just about anything. What she asks for is an "'amburger with chocolate sauce," homing in on the most tasteful delicacy she can imagine.
During my second trip to Hamburg (a city, I should parenthetically add, that has captured my heart), I had occasion to drive with a friend into the countryside, skirting decorated, half-timbered homes with elaborate thatched roofs in charming neighborhoods. A highlight of this road trip was our drive through Altes Land, the largest fruit-producing region in Northern Europe.
During my first trip to Hamburg last year, I was so smitten with the astonishing Elbphilharmonie that I knew I had to return to this Hanseatic city and the celebrated concert hall for another opportunity to imbibe the heady grandeur of this splendid monument to music… and to do more of the things in Hamburg that I had not had time to do during my first visit.
The island of Rügen, Germany's largest, just off the Pomeranian coast in the Baltic, was an occasional summer retreat for, among the many, a troika of Teutonic heavy-weights — Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Otto von Bismarck. So, I figured it was good enough for me to take a three-day respite there, after an activity-filled few days in hectic and exciting Berlin.
Berlin has been on my mind. I just finished reading Scottish writer, Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir Trilogy: an addictive, hard boiled historical fiction series about private eye Bernie Günter, as he descends into the dark underworld of Berlin in the 1920s and ‘30s. The trilogy reminded me about my own past journeys to Berlin.
Have you ever thought about the attention getting factors involved in riding a bicycle? Probably not, but while most people know about “Bicycles Built For Two,” what about one built for seven? Now there’s an attention getting device for a fun way to start a vacation or hey, even a business meeting. It’s not only one of the really nifty …
Passing by in a car a few years ago, I had no clue this had been something special. After all, it looked just like a field that stretched into infinity. But that’s exactly what made it so appealing to the Luftwaffe in WW2. The German Air Force of that era has always intrigued me, so I was excited to visit …
Oktoberfest is celebrated around the world, but only in Germany can you return to the original source of the world’s largest Volkfest. You’ve travelled for the live music, traditional costumes, parades and sheer joy of festival revelers.
They go very deep into the world’s oceans. They’re still – in my mind – beyond belief as one wonders how do so many tons of steel actually float. Some can even hide – yes, hide! – in the depths of Davy Jones Locker for months on end without coming up for air. If you have even half of one …