Month: August 2016

The Holocaust Trail – A German town remembers its Nazi past

 

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The historical marker across from Gestapo Headquarters

Tübingen – Baden-Wurtemberg. Most people come to the university town of Tübingen in south-western Germany to admire the colorful medieval and renaissance architecture, walk the ancient cobblestone streets and visit the museum at the castle Schloss Hohentübingen, parts of which date back to the 12th century. Others come for treatment at the world-renowned university hospitals. But this summer, the city’s Green Party lord-mayor, Boris Palmer, inaugurated another kind of visit aimed at a German public: the city’s Nazi past.

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Val di Cembra: Escaping the crowds in Trentino

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Looking down the Val di Cembra

Cembra – Italy. Since the Dolomites were made World Heritage sites by UNESCO in 2009, the number of Alpine hikers and tourists has grown exponentially. But if you tire of the crowds and of finding mountain refuges and valley hotels booked out weeks and months in advance; if your mind spins from juggling the Südtiroler German names with those the Italians have been trying to impose on Alto Adige ever since they annexed it from Austria after WWI (how does Grassleitenpass become Passo Principe?), there is a valley not yet over-run by the international tourist industry and which is pure Italy without the noise, hustle and bustle: the Val di Cembra.

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Over The Alps: Hiking from Munich to Venice

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Marienplatz – Munich at the start

If you are nearing retirement or have retired and you are looking for that great adventure which will take your breath away, both literally and figuratively, or just need to clear your mind to start a new life, then the Dream Trail from Munich to Venice is perhaps what you want. The trek, known in German as the Traumpfad München-Venedig, may sound awesome but if we could do it, so can you. All you need is a couple of months, a few thousand dollars in cash and a lot of determination.

It is late June and Sonja, 62, and I, 61, are off to one corner of Munich’s Marienplatz square having our photo taken while tourists crowd in front of the Gothic Revival Town Hall and wait for the colorful Rathaus-Glockenspiel clock to sound its 43 bells with 32 colorful life-sized figurines re-enacting a 16th century fairy-tale in a 15 minute show.

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