Leipzig

I came to Leipzig last night, but haven't taken any photos yet, because all of my SD cards are full.  Mom looked at shipping my computer to me, but it cost $250 to send it!  So I have been looking at netbooks today.  They cost about the same as the shipping, so I think I will do that.  I also looked at getting a phone.  I can get a prpaid sim card that will work in my phone.  Incoming calls are free, so once I have it, feel free to call.  I will post my new number.  Outgoing international calls are expensive so don't expect me to call you unless I can get to a call center.   Of course it is raining again!  This is getting a little depressing.  I will make another post after I have taken some pics.  Leipzig is almost as nice as Dresden.

Meissen and Lommatsch

I forgot, but I also went to Meissen and Lommatsch on Friday.  Both of these cities are in the Dresden area and I was able to go by tram and bus to see them.  The tram card for the whole region for the day was €12 so that wasn't so bad.  Of course, just like everywhere else, it was raining.  While I was in Meissen, it rained so hard and the cobblestones were so slippery, and the terrain so hilly that I thought I would take a really bad spill.  Luckily I didn't, just slipped down a stairway, but my backpack took the hit.  In Lommatsch the rain had ended for a while, so I walked around looking for one of the buildings that I saw on the auction.  It was an old butchershop that was built in 1802.  The place was huge, and the minimum bid is €500!  All over Europe and Especially in the former communist countries, the small towns are losing people, some by as much as 20 to 30% in the last 10 years.  This is a problem that is recognized by the European Union, and they are trying to do something about it.  Unfortunately their best answer is to tear down most of the unused buildings.  This of course does nothing to make small towns a better place to live.  Some countries, like Spain are assisting young people to return to small villages with financial assistance to make it possible to afford to live in them, since there is not any work in most of these places. 

Dessau and the Bauhaus

Went to Dessau Saturday night and Sunday, and looked around the city and especially at the Bauhaus sights.  It was really an amaying and insightful visit.  Saturday night there was a concert in the basement of the Bauhaus school.  It was the 15th anniversary of a local Rock Band from Dessau.  The whole place was packed.  I think it was a really good place to celebrate the arts.  I spent some time talking with the director of the Klum am Bauhaus.  He was a really nice man and very helpful.  On Sunday morning I met a woman from Nurnberg who was there to see her voice instructor who was perforning in Candide at the State Theatre.  Whe was also really helpful and assists tour groups of highschool bands, etc. as well as having a traditional toy and woodcutting booth at the Nurnberg Christkindl Markt.  I got her card as she is in Dresden for work some times.  Great!  In the evening I came to Leipzig by train.  Typically I can't access my photos from this computer, and I also have all of my SD cards used up. Damn!

Just so you can see me

I took this pic the other day, but when the bus driver asked if I qualified for the senior pass (over 60 ) I decided to get a razor and shaved this morning.

Dresden-The most beautiful city in the world

So I arrived Friday afternoon in Dresden and started sightseeing with my pack on.  I was amazed!  I think it is easily the most beautiful city I have ever been to, and replaces Chicago as my favorite city in the world!  I have spent the last three days walking around and taking the street cars and buses taking pictures all the way.  I am staying in a camping place on the outskirts of the city and really am getting to know my way around.  Yesterday I went to the Grosser Garten, a city park which has an old palace at its center, and used to be the hunting ground for the King.  Then I went to the area called the Wilder Mann this is on a hilltop overlooking the city.  The view was amazing! 
I have decided I like it here so much that I am going to check into the summer language school program at the University.
Last night and today it has been raining really hard so I found this net cafe and started uploading photos to the desktop so I could transfer them to my Picassa album, but couldn't use picassa because I don't have the authority to install it and neither does the guy working here.  So I can only put up my main photo here today and have wasted the last hour of transferring photos!  Whatever.
Well my mom wants to know how my knee is and what I have been eating.  The knee is feeling much better, and is about the normal size.  I have been eating rolls with butter or cheese for breakfast and lunch since I got to europe, and having a dinner of whatever the local specialy is.  This has worked out pretty well except that I have noticed that I had to move by belt one hole over from its usual place.  That probably makes some of you jealous, but I think its just that I have tomned up a little.
I'm going to end this post here today and look for someplace where I can upload my picassa albums to.
Auf Wiedersehen!

Vienna to Prague

I wrote a whole post here the other day, but for some reason its not here , so I will try to recreate it.

I went back toVienna from Oberwart and thought I would make one more try at the State Archives, but when I got there they were already closed.  They have different hours every day of the week, so if you don't know that you're just out of luck.  It was another cold wet day in Vienna and my knee was still bothering me so I took the overnight train to Prague.  It was cheaper than a hotel and I have always wanted to go to Prague anyway.  But just one more stab from Austria, the ticket agent didn't reserve my seat aand I spent the next 6 hours sitting in the corridor of the train. 

When I arrived in Prague it was 3 in the morning and I couldn't even use the toilet without a Czech crown!  So I looked around for someone to change a euro to a crown because I had to go pretty bad.  Then after a shop opened I got a few more crowns and went for a walking tour of the city.  My knee was still hurting but It was to early to do anything else.  I walked around until about 1 in the afternoon.  Prague is a really beatuiful old city but the late 19th century areas look like Liberace threw up!  everything is over decorated.  There are a lot of cool art deco and art nouveau buildings, but I think the best part of the city is the old city and Prague castle.  You can really feel the history there.  The Charles Bridge is one of the most beautiful bridges in the world.  About every fifty feet there are sculptures on either side of the bridge.   

After seeing the old city I took the train to Dresden because I didn't want to change euros to crowns and then back to euros later.

Burgenland

Well things just aren't going very well.  I have been here for two days, and can't camp because there isn#t a campground, and I haven't met anyone. so I have had to stay in a Pension, which I can't afford right now.  I waited all day yesterday for the parish priest so I could look at the old church records, but he was a no show, and noone knows where he is today either.  I guess he will have to be here Sunday, but I think by then I will be gone.  Not sure what I will be doing next, maybe heading to Croatia and Adriatic Sea.  At least its warm there and maybe I can camp on the beach.  The weather here has been awful, one sunny day, yesterday, but its rainy again today.  No pics today sorry.

The Donautal, Vienna, Bad Tatzmannsdorf

The Donautal is the Danube Valley where it goes through the Schwabian Alps.  It is really beautiful here.  Really high mountains with castles an monasteries everywhere you look.  I wish I had the energy to climb up and look at some of them, but by this time my knee was starting to bother me.  I kept on walking though until I came to Beuron.  In Beuron is a very large Benedictine monastary.  It was nic to see, so I had a lite dinner here and then kept going until I reache Siegamaringen.  By this time I couldn't go down stairs, so I went to the doctor.  He said I needed to take a break gave me some cortizone and a prescription for 400mg ibuprofen.  I took his advice and decided to take a train to Vienna and visit the Kaisers archives to check on my great grandfathers military record.  However I just realized that I gave them the wrong birth year and although I found a lot of relatives records I didn't find his.  I guess I will have to go back.  I have to anyway because it was another cold and rainy day.  I decided to do some laundry, which was really a debacle.  The maschine didn't work and I couldn't gt my clothes back out.  I was freezing in a pair of shorts and a tshirt, until a chinese girl came in and helped me out.  She called the owner who came an retrieved my clothes and paid for the dryer.  Then I got warmly dressed and headed to Bad Tatzmannsdorf, my grandfathers hoem town.  By the time I got here the camping platz was closed, but the police, who had seen me on the road earlier told me to go ahead and stay and talk to the owners in the morning.  So I did.  I never saw the owners though.  When I got up there was nobody around so I hung out for a while, but when noone came I went into town to the Catholic Church to look at their birth records, etc.  The priest told me that sine it was such a small village back then I would have to go to the county seat, Oberwart, where I am writing from now.  While I was waiting for the bus I had a look around an came to the war memorial, where there was a list of Fiedlers and other relatives who had died in WWI, and WWII.  I took the bus to Oberwart and am waiting to meet with the prist here.

Until the next tim Auf Wiedesehen

Gutmadingen to Niederdingen

After breakfast I took off  back to the road.  From here the route went through a lot of small towns until I came to the town of Immadingen.  If it seems like all the towns end in ingen, in Schwabia I think they do.  After Immadingen the Danube sinks into the ground and disappears for about 155 days of the year, and goes through the very porous limestone until it comes out about 200m lower downstream.  Because of all the rain there has been in the last month I did not get to witness this phenomena, so I kept trekking on.  At Niederdingen I was tired, it was getting dark so I made my camp alonside the river and went to sleep.  When I woke up Sunday morning I could hear church bells ringing all around the valley.  I got cleaned up and dressed and headed of through the Schwabisch Alps.

Gutmadingen

Gutmadingen was the town that I was sent to.  When I got there it was about 8 oclock and I walked into the first Gasthaus that I saw, the Gasthaus Ochsen (oxen).  When I came in there was a small group of people at the table, I asked them if I could gt something to eat here, and they looked at me and said I could eat wine there, then the owner came out and said of course I could and brought me a menu.  He sked if I could read German and I said yes.  I ordered and got the best Jagrschnitzel I have ever had.  While I wa eating I could tell the people were talking about me.  The owner came back to my table and asked about where I was from, etc.  H invitd me to put up my tent in his garden  We talked for a few minutes and he invted me to come to the Stammtisch, the table everyone else was at, I said thank you and did.  This is rare to be invited to the Stammtisch so I was impressed.  So I had a beer with everyone and then as a treat one of the other men who was there and is a magician put on a show for the group.  We all had a great time and then I was invited by one of the other men, Rudi, to stay at his house instead of camping.  I thought this was a great idea so we went back to his house and talked about all kinds of things until 2 in the morning then I got to sleep on the sofa bed.  Next morning we got up and had breakfast, which one of the others had brought over for us.  Gutmadingen is the home of a tractor manufacturer and they will have a big antique tractor fest this weekend, to which I was invited back.  Unfortunately because of the knee problem and being in Austria now I will not be able to go.

Donaueschingen to Gutmadingen

Friday afternoon I got off the train in Donaueschingen and headed to the Donauquelle.  This is the original source of the Danube.  A small spring next to the Furstenberg palace, surrounded by a colonade with sculptures and tablets on the wall from all the countries the Danube goes through.   I started from this point and headed to the Donaususammenfluss.  This is the point where two small rivers come togther and the Danube really begins.  From this point I headed downriver through rolling countryside until I came to the first village the river runs through.   The village had a small hunting castle called schloss Entenberg.  from here I went on to the next village which was a little smaller, but very nice looking.  By this time it was late and I was starving, however there was no place open to eat.  The only Gasthaus only sered drinks.  They told me I could get something at the next town, so I went on, tired and hungry.

Aschaffenburg to Donaueschingen

Last Friday I lft my friends in Aschaffenburg and took the train to meet a friend in Mainz, but when I got to Darmstadt I mad a call to him and he was unable to meet me there.  Since it was a cloudy and rainy day I decided not to stop in Mainz and upgraded my ticket to Donaueschingen.  The weather has been really cold and cloudy since I got here.  This brought me down the Rhein valley  and through the Black Forest.  The Black forest is the home of all the Grimm Fairy tails and was really beautiful from the train.  Really perfect little farms with lots of cows and sheep.  Unfortunately the photos from the train are all reflections and useless.  This is an area I will have to visit again on its own.

The first few days

I started at Donaueschingen, the home of the Furstenbergs, where two rivers come together to make the Donau (Danube)  and have gone about 90 miles so far.  Sorry there is no picture today, but I am doing this quickly.  Yesterday I started to have water on my knee and today it is about 3x normal size.  I am on the way to a doctor and will see if I can keep walking.  I will update later with the whole story and some photos.

Days 4 and 5

I have spent the last two days visiting Aschaffenburg and nearby areas with my friend Chris and her son Linus.  We have had a really great time and seen a lot of sights.  Chris and I went to the castle park Schönbusch, then I visited the Pompeianum and Schloss Johannisburg.  The three of us went to the Schloss Mespelbrunn, and Kloster Engelsberg, and Miltenberg together.  We had some really good food and wine on the way. [ http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mespelbrunn , http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss_Johannisburg , http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aschaffenburg , http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miltenberg ] Check the wikis, I think theses are in German, but you can find it in the english wikipedia also.  Chris and I also visited some friends, Martina and Helmut at his new pub the Goldfisch in the old city in Aschaffenburg.  I think I know why I still like it here, the friends are great!

Be sure to check out my picassa albums too to see all the photos.

Days 1 ,2 , and 3

The first 2 days I spent in the airport or in the air.  Continental lost my bags in Washington D.C. and made me late for my flight to Germany, so I spent the night in Newark, then spent the next day in the airport waiting to find out if I would be flying that day because of the volcano in Iceland.  I did leave on Sunday night at 7:30 and arrived in Frankfurt at 10:30 mondy morning.  I took the train to Aschaffenburg where I was stationed in the Army.  I met a nce older couple and had a gloss of my favorite wine at the Schloss Weinstube. They insisted on giving me 20 euros to help on my trip.  Then I met my friend Christine Hytha-Schmitt at the Bahnhof.  Although I hadn`t seen her in 23 years it was like we had seen each other yesterday.  She was working so I went to the Cafe Würst Bindel where I met a man who was clelbratinng his 81st birthday.  We had a beer and Dopplekorn (schnapps), and talked a while.  Then I went to meet Chris again at her work and came to her house where I met her children and had a great dinner.
On Tuesday Chris and I went to the schlosspark Schönbusch where we had a great walk around the park and a coffee.  We went shopping after then she went to work.  I spent the rest of the day visiting tzhe city and took a lot of photos.  Unfortunately her computer didn.t recogniz my disk so I will have to post them on the nex post.  We came back to her house where I met another old friend. Frank, and his wife.  I made spaghetti for the family and then posted this.  Until the next time Auf Weidersehn.

Leaving In An Hour

Going to the airport in an hour to start the days travel.

Before I Go

Thought I would set up the tent once just to make sure It was livable.  This is everything I am carrying with me.  Hope its not too much.