Exploring Germany

I did several trips in Germany this year...tried more to explore the area where i live now :-). I have my wish list destinations in Germany and i did not realize i did quite good this year, thanks to some bank holidays on Thursdays which enabled me having some short trips :-P :-)

My first trip was a one-day trio to Bremen, I haven't explored the north side of Germany that much (only Hamburg), so one day I decided I want to go there. Got some tips from Tobias, my colleague who is originally from Bremen. Ole decided to join me for this trip (so I had a photographer :-P). We took quite early train (forgot exactly how early it was) and joined a guided tour in Rathaus (town hall) which is one of the Unesco World Heritage sites. Then we just enjoyed Bremen by foot..admiring the Roland statue in the Marktplatz and for sure the famous Bremer Stadtmusikanten. Walking along the pedestrian passage of Boettcherstrasse, the promenade, and the Schnoorviertel, the oldest quarter in the city. We managed to visit the art museum in Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Haus. We're lucky to have a nice sunny spring day and we left Bremen after an early dinner in one restaurant at the main square (forgot the name already :-P).










My second trip was to Nuernberg, my initial 'obsession' with this city is because its famous Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market), but Ole convinced me that it would be hard to enjoy Nuernberg during that period since there would be lots of people around. So during one of the Bruecketag (we took friday off because thursday was bank holiday) we went there. Nuernberg is a nice city with its pretty medieval old town. We stayed there one night, in the first day we basically walked around the old town, visited the Schoener Brunnen, the beautiful Kaiserburg, Albrecht-Duerer-Haus, Ehekarussell,and dropped by at the Japanese art exhibition in Stadtmuseum. The next day we went to Dokuzentrum in the Reichparteitagsgelaende (seriously I had to try several times before being able to pronounce it correctly :-P). It was an impressive experience to spend some time there, it's a must if you want to learn more about German history. We returned back to the old town around noon, had our lunch and then had another museum visit in Germanisches Nationalmuseum which is quite important museum in Germany (too much museum visit that day but Nuernberg has quite a lot of interesting museums indeed).







My last big exploring Germany trip was to Wuerzburg, Bamberg, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber, all of them (as well as Nuernberg ) are in Bayern (Bavaria) area in southern part of Germany, I did a solo trip this time. Wuerzburg was my first destination. First I visited the beautiful Fuerstbischoefliche Rezidenz which was considered as Balthasar Neumann's masterpiece. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the most important Baroque palaces in Germany. Then I walked to the Rathaus area in the city center, had lunch there, and walked trough the promenade of Main river. I ended my walking tour by visiting the Festung Marienberg. I stayed overnight in Wuerzburg that day.





The next day, I took train to Bamberg. Bamberg is already in my wish list destination for some time. Some people recommended me to visit it and I instantly like this small city. It has a scenic old town with nice landscape, no wonder that the old town of Bamberg itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site. I love the view overlooking the Altes Rathaus (old town hall) across the river Regnitz or the frescoes in some buildings (do not remember the names anymore :-P). I continued my walk to the Dom area and decided to head up to the Kloster St. Michael. After that I just walked around the old town, enjoying the atmosphere (was nice weather and only some tourists around). I visited the Naturkundenmuseum (natural history museum) actually to visit its famous Vogelsaal (Birds' hall)which is claimed as one of the most beautiful early classical museum halls in Europe. But unfortunately it was being renovated when I was there :-(. Around late afternoon I left Bamberg for my last destination, Rothenburg ob der Tauber.





I arrived in Rothenburg odT around 8pm, directly to go to the B&B I have booked. It was located inside the old town area so I could not resist the temptation to explore the town directly (it was summer btw, so it's not dark yet). And..yeah Rothernburg made me speechless, it's kind of an open air museum to me :-P (reminds me of Tallinn with its town wall). You'll get the feeling of coming to a medieval time, but you also get the feeling that everyone around you are tourists :-P. The beautiful Rathaus, the pretty houses and the cobbled lanes ...I could not stop taking pictures there. I walked around until the Alte Burg which is actually a garden surrounded by the town wall where we can look over the Tauber river (as its name, the town is located by the Tauber river). The next day I explored the small town more, visited its Reichsstadtmuseum, and basically just enjoying the medieval town including trying its specialty: Schneeball (snow ball), which is quite okay (though Lonely Planet wrote it as one of the worst local specialties in Europe :-P).
I left Rothenburg in the evening...totally satisfied with my three-beautiful-city
trip...

Euro trip with mom and dad

My mom and dad visited me last Spring..yes I know it's been a while already :-P Got no motivation to update my blog lately. Life was bit busy especially with my short-time travels that I did quite often this year :-P

My parents arrived in Germany end of April. It was my dad's first time to visit Europe but my mom's second time. I hadn't booked any trip yet when they came since everything depends on their physical ability (e.g. jet lag recovery etc), but I had some itineraries for sure. My dad wanted to visit Italy so I prepared an itinerary to visit Rome and Venice (plus Milan since I found cheaper flight tickets to Milan compared to Rome or Venice).

I was surprised when the next day after they arrived, both my mom and dad were so excited to start their European trip already, so we decided to visit the Netherlands for the long weekend. We had a day trip to Roermond (yup..a shopping trip indeed...) but I like Roermond city center too, it's quite a lovely small city. The next day we took the Duess-Venlo train route again, this time to Amsterdam (only a glance of Amsterdam actually) and Volendam then stayed over night in Den Haag. We managed to walked around Den Haag in the next day after visiting the lovely Keukenhof and had lunch in Java House (my fave Indonesian resto in DH :-P). Then we headed to Roosendaal to visit my aunt before returned back to Duesseldorf. My dad was so excited with the whole train trip (thanks also to my 40% disc card :-P), he always wrote down the name of every station that we passed through in his notes :-)

The next week was some relaxing days in Duess for my parents since I had to work :-P (but also to give them some recovery time after quite a long journey). We departed to Milan in the weekend, quite early in the morning (I took one week holiday). We still had some time to experience Milan with its Duomo. Which was actually my hidden agenda since the last time I visited Milan the Duomo was still under construction. Milan's Duomo is one of the most beautiful cathedrals that I have visited imo. Then we took train (that I have booked before) to Rome. We arrived in Rome late in the afternoon after finally managed to find the office of the apartment that we rented (it's quite an adventure with our luggage and considering that my parents did not get used to walk that much, oh and plus it was quite warm in Rome). Had a relaxing evening in the apartment, the location was great, only less than 50m to the famous Colosseum also it has small supermarket and some restaurants nearby). We stayed in Rome for three nights (but only) two days since we left Rome in the morning to Venice. Rome was definitely nice and has a lot of things to offer but my parents were not that happy with such crowded, noisy and warm Rome (they said they like Duess more :-P) ...

We arrived in Venice late afternoon after quite a long train trip. Again a bit adventure to get the apartment keys. But this time I learned from our previous experience, I asked my parents to wait at the train station with our luggage so that I could find the office of the apt rental faster. The apt in Venice was better than the one in Rome. It's more modern and also cheaper. We still had some time to walked around Venice that day (and my mom likes it a lot..yup a lot of nice shops :-P), visited San Marco, did some window shopping, and bought some stuff in the supermarket close to the apartment. We only stayed one night in Venice (the one that my mom regretted :-P..). After doing some walk around again and some photo sessions, we left Venice for Milan in the afternoon. Our flight back to Duess was late evening from Milan.

We returned back from Italy on Wednesday night after spending five days there. Initially I planned to take my parents to Paris for the weekend but could not find the cheap tickets to go there anymore. Accidentally I found a good train ticket deal to Bruges (38EUR return/person with ICE). Bruges is one of my fave cities, so we went there on Friday morning and spent two days there. Bruges was still lovely but it was quite cold and rainy when we were there.

The next week, the third week, was another relaxing days for my parents (and I worked again), but that Thursday was a bank holiday and I took another day off on Friday so we had a long weekend to explore some places around Duess before my parents left for Indonesian on Sunday. We went to Bonn-Bruehl-Koeln and also explored Duess too :-P I invited some friends for lunch to meet my parents. And yeah it was great having my parents here, happy that they are still healthy for the long trip and we also had fun baking some cookies and cooking together in my apartment. I took them to Frankfurt on Sunday and was really glad that they enjoyed their three-week holiday in Europe.
Thanks a lot mom and dad for the visit, love you always :-)
See our pics here.