Bremen, Germany

Back into Germany, with Johan safely onboard, and away from the friendliness of The Netherlands. As Churchill said, "We will be back."

The purpose of visiting Bremen was twofold, to see the statue of The Town Musicians and to visit the Universum - a science centre.

The statue was somewhat underwhelming, although the architecture in central Bremen was inspiring with lots of lanes, steeples and arches. The Universum was a revelation. Because we spent two hours shopping and stocking our supplies at German prices rather than Scandinavian prices we only left ourselves two and a half ours to visit before it closed. This proved insufficient, as the centre was full of interactive activities that demonstrated scientific principles. We could easily have spent a full day there.

The Universum looking like a giant rugby ball.

Johan listening to his own voice in delay, after it has travelled through 100 metres of hose.

A scorpion robot

The characters in the Town Musicians of Bremen blending in with the scaffolding

Johan getting aquainted with a German Weisswurst.

Johan and Gretel think getting conned is a joke. They have just paid one euro to listen to a drainage sump play one bar of 'donkey music'.

We remain bewildered why they have windmills in Germany. There is no wind.

Elburg

Marinas are fast becoming our favourite camping places. Elburg marina has been one of the best. Boats of all descriptions, including a decent percentage of yachts (one of the measures we have when ranking marinas), line the harbour wall. Summer holidays have started in Holland, so there is a lot of boating activity to look at.
Elburg village is notable for two things.
First it is built in the form of a rectangle with the sides having dimensions of the 'Golden Ratio'.
Secondly it is the first time in 132 days that we have encountered meat wrapped up in pastry. It wasn't a pie, more like a sausage roll, but we were not complaining. There must be a business opportunity for someone to open a pie shop in Europe.


The flurry of blog postings over the last few days has been a result of us wanting to catch up with were we actually are, before Johan (grandson) arrives at Amsterdam airport tomorrow and we embark on the Scandinavian leg of our trip. Apart from Switzerland the cost of stuff has been comparable or even slightly cheaper than New Zealand; we fear all that is about to change when we venture further north. As we use opportunities such as McDonalds and cafes to connect with the internet, we may have to wait until Estonia (if we can get in) to make future postings.

Sunset.

Masts

The access to Elburg

It seemed like the 'Tour de France had made its way to Elburg. Despite our recent training we did not enter.

Gouda

Gouda made our list of villages to visit due to our overindulgence in cheese, a cheap place to camp, and a more economic alternative to visiting Delft.

The canals in Gouda flow very very slowly providing lots of reflective photo opportunities.

... except where the canal is green.

Gouda in Holland is pronounce Houda, in fact the guttural 'H' sound is prevalent in much of their language and seems to sufice nicely when greeting someone.

Modern gouda architecture.

The Hague

We visited The Hague primarily to see Vermeer's paintings at the Mauritshuis Art Gallery. The gallery itself was a former palace exhibiting impressive architecture.

We saw a wide range of paintings by the Dutch Masters including Reubens, Rembrandts, and Van Dyke. The gallery had three Vermeer paintings out of a total of 34 paintings attributed to the artist.

Throughout the castles of Europe we have been forbidden from taking interior photographs, it was therefore with some surprise that we were able to photograph the paintings at the Mauritshuis Art Gallery.

The Hague itself was a busy vibrant city, although somewhat smaller than we had expected for the capital of The Netherlands.

The Mauritshuis Art Gallery.

'Girl withe the pearl earring' - Vermeer

Cityscape - Vermeer

'Books' -Jan Davidz de Heem (tony's favourite).

'Candlelight' - Reubens (Gretel's favourite).

The Hague

Western Holland

Our initial impression of The Netherlands is extremely favourable. Friendly people, cooler weather, wind, windmills, canals and boats of all descriptions, and an organised chaos of bicycles everywhere. 

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The Romantic Road and Grimm brothers' fairy tales

For those of you who enjoyed the Grimm brothers' fairy tales as children, the following photos depict locations and buildings that inspired the stories.

Sababurg Castle - (Sleeping Beauty's Castle). Apparently when the current owners purchased the property it was overgrown with roses, as it also was in the fairy tale.

Rapunzel's Tower (complete with plait hanging from the top floor). A woman may have been incarcerated here in the distant past.

View from the tower.

Snow White

"Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go."

Snow White's house -in reality someone was poisoned here.

Nothing to do with fairy tales.

Harz Mountains

The Harz mountains are not really mountains in the true sense of the word, but they are as high as it gets in central Germany (about 1100 metres). For us they provided further opportunity to bruise our backsides on the bikes and admire some attractive and somewhat remote scenery.

Germany continues to be very hot. We see lots of windmills that do absolutely nothing because wind is an elusive commodity. 

"Should I or shouldn't I?"

Leipzig, Germany

We visited Leipzig primarily to see the former home of Johann Sebastian Bach, that has been turned into a museum.

Johann Sebastian Bach's statue surveys his former house (below). His grave was discovered nearby and his remains interned within the cathedral behind his statue.

Gretel having a rest in the gardens associated with Bach's house.

Bach's organ.

Leipzig is about as far away from the sea as we will get on our trip. This is not a problem for its inhabitants, they have created their own 'beach'.

Leipzig is a city in the former East Germany and is a city of stark contrasts. We drove through about 5 km of graffiti and part vacant buildings to reach an attractive central square, then repeated the entry process to exit the city in the opposite direction. The city was grim to say the least and it came as no surprise to learn there was large scale anti-immigrant race rioting earlier this year.
We were not sad to say goodbye to Mr Bach and Leipzig.

Colditz - Oflag- V-C

Our visit to Colditz allowed us to re-live the TV series. Since the filming in 1972 the castle has been painted white, which seems to detract from its ominous presence somewhat. Learning about the numerous escape attempts and the conditions the men were held in gave us an increased appreciation of their bravery.

We expected Colditz to be a major tourist attraction, but in reality only Brits, Australians and New Zealanders visit and not many of them make it this far east in Germany.

A 24 second video clip of the reenactment of the planned glider escape attempt

Gretel getting friendly with 'Max' the Dutch dummy that impersonated missing/escaped POW's during roll calls.

The ventilation shaft exit that Pat Reid and three others escaped, naked and facing backwards, to Switzerland and freedom.

One of Colditz's most famous inmates, alongside our own Charles Upham, was (Sir) Douglas Bader. Growing up his autobiography, 'Reach for the Sky' was my favourite book - reread many times. His story was one extreme bravery. He lost both legs in a aerobatic plane crash in 1931 but flew as a pilot in World War 2 in a modified Spitfire. Having no legs in part an advantage the G forces can cause pilots to black out when effecting tight turns - no legs meant the blood remained closer to the brain allowing him to maintain concsiousness! It was not so much of an advantage when his prosthetic leg got stuck in the cockpit when he bailed out (eventually the legs retaining strap broke). 

An aerial view.

One of the more audacious escape plans was to fly a glider by launching it off tables placed on the ridge-line of Colditz castle. This is a copy of the original plan. To attain the necessary speed a bath, filled with concrete, was thrown from the roof. A 2:1 pulley system was necessary for the glider to attain the necessary speed.

The glider was built in the attic of the castle sheets to clad the wings and fuselage and millet porridge to stretch and set the fabric. The glider was never launched, however after the war a replica was made and successfully launched off the castle. We have included a link above to a snippet of the glider project - a full documentary is available on youtube.

The actual replica in the attic.

One of the many escape tunnels. For this tunnel, which started in the chapel, the POW's created a hinged door, covered with rock to camouflage it, to cover the opening.

Dresden, Germany

Dresden was always on our 'must see' list and many Germans have subsequently recommended it as a city to visit. The history of being mostly leveled by Allied bombing in February 1945 with loss of life totaling approximately 25,000 civilians, including many refugees, is horrific. With the benefit of hindsight it seems difficult to justify how killing so many civilians, mostly woman and children, so late in the war could be justified.

It was with high expectations that we visited the city. On reflection we are not sure whether or not the city delivered. The historic portion is very dark, the sandstone that most buildings are clad with turning black. It has extremely spacious public areas that appear underused and is separated from the main portion of the city so that it appears to exist purely as a cultural and tourist hub.

Counterbalancing Tony's negativity the architecture is grand and the setting alongside the Elbe river is picturesque. We have not visited a huge number of museums on our trip, but the military museum was extraodinary - both for its architecture and thought provoking content.

Dresden Frauenkirche (Lutheran) was destroyed in the 1945 Allied bombings and the ruins left as a memorial. Following the unification of West and East Germany in 1990 the church was rebuilt, being completed in 1994.

The Furstenzug mozaic, commemorating 35 successive rulers of Saxony between 1127 and 1904.  

Maths problem for St Martins students - the mozaic is 101.9 metre long and 10.5 metres high. Each tile is 20.5cm X 20.5cm. Your challenge is to construct a proof for the total number of tiles. A prize will be delivered at a later date!

A closer look.

We have yet to visit a city with so many impressive statues.

The military museum building combines elements of old and new.

Within the museum was a V2 rocket deployed by Germany in 1944 and 1945. The V2 rocket was the first object launched into space. It reached speeds of up to three times the speed of sound. Such supersonic  It is estimated the V2 rockets were used to kill approximately 8,500 people  (mostly in London and Antwerp) with a further 12,000 dying (mostly slave labour) in the rockets construction - no such thing as health and safety in Nazi Germany. The technology utilised to build the rocket was the forerunner to the space programme.

Tony having an up close look at one of the many fountains in Dresden. Note this photo has been included due to the thousands of requests that we have received to include some photos of Tony.

The Elbe river.