There was a smoky haze most days and on the Rhine Gorge section. Using Picasa editing I was able to eliminate most of it by injecting a bit more light, so the pictures in a way are better than reality.

Re Heathrow, we used Star Alliance rather than Oneworld. The airlines we used were Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Air Canada and Air New Zealand. The advantage was that we avoided Heathrow, New York and Los Angeles. The disadvantage was returning over the Pacific via Auckland.

The big hub airports we used were Singapore (magnificent) and Frankfurt (well-organised). In Frankfurt we had about a 10 minute bus ride from where we landed from Nüremberg to the terminus, then had to walk ages and left from gate 67 or something. Large but quite unproblematic.

Last year I read Christopher Clark’s Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia which is quite sympathetic to Prussia. France was a major power. Brandenburg during the Thirty Years War got sick of other countries like Sweden doing as they pleased in their territory and got organised. Prussia steadily got more and more organised and in the end consolidated Germany by bashing up the Austrians and then the French. I think the French dished out plenty in their time, so the Germania thing is perhaps understandable.

Anyway I decided I’d identify as Silesian rather than as Prussian on my father’s side. As chance would have it we met a Silesian on the boat who’s family fled to Canada just after WW2 and it turns out that my friend in Erlangen’s father came from Silesia before the war. Silesia, of course, was snaffled by Prussia off the Austrians in 1742.

I must send you what I found out about the history of our name.

Cheers

We visited the GERMANIA Monument and the inscription hides the ultra-militaristic European mindset: Prussia crushed France in 1870 and unilaterally declared itself to be a Reich (Empire) in the conquered Palace of Versailles. That’s why the monument faces towards France which is just over the horizon. The “unanimous victorious uprising” was in fact imperialistic expansionism, which all came crashing down in 1945, to the everlasting shame of us Germans.

I remember being shocked by the high level of smog, the day I was there.

The symbol on the hillside is UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE. Don’t know if the Rhine Gorge is protected by WORLD HERITAGE or if this is just supporting the idea.

Five years later, I can still hear the annoying rattling jangling noise of the constant railway traffic on both sides of the river. And, above, the ugly crisscrossing contrials. But then Germany has 80+ million and its neighbours are equally overpopulated. When Australia’s population reaches 80 million, … perish the thought!!

The fact that you are all wearing dark glasses or tinted specs reminds me that I suffered from the glare reflected off the water. That of course is why the vineyards were planted on the slopes: the glare helps the grapes to ripen.

Thanks for bringing back so many memories, cousin. Hope you and your family have a Prosperous and, better still, Interesting New Year! (I leave for Europe on the 18 Jan, to visit my paternal ancestoral places in Ireland and England.)

When Leo and I packed into the second row of a scrum together in the seconds all those years ago computers and the internet were in the far distant future. I got my first one when I was 57, so there’s hope for the old dog yet!

Actually the cathedrals and churches really got to me even more than castles and the persistence of the Germans for example in Nüremberg, which was hit something dreadful by the bombing, but they’ve put them all back the way they were.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertyinfrance/6916385/Property-in-France-chateau-that-inspired-The-Three-Musketeers-for-sale.html

For anybody with a dream of owning their own castle, France is probably the place to go. There are thousands of chateaux dotted all over the landscape, with those in need of some TLC able to be picked up comparatively cheaply. These days, most are operated as restaurant/hotels and in the off-season can be stayed in for less than the price of a cruddy Paris hotel. Back in July, we drove from Paris (where we are living) to Provence. We returned via the Auvergne, which is simply stunning, and stayed in the turret of a converted chateau with a breathtaking view over the local mountains.

Something that is also quite common in France is purchasing land on the grounds of a chateau to build a holiday home. In return you often get access to the amenities of the chateau included in the purchase price. For example, in the place we stayed in the Auvergne you could purchase around 5000 sqm for about 75000 euro. The low price reflects not the beauty of the region, but is relative economic backwardness and less developed transport links. Still, it was only a 4 hour drive to Paris and 30 minutes from Vichy, the Nazi capital during the occupation.

I should probably say this on another thread, but to all those with whom I’ve constructively and productively debated a variety of topics over the past year, I wish you a good start to the new year.

I’m fortunate enough to be seeing in the new year in Baden Baden with my wife and two year old son.It is an old spa town in the north of the schwarzwald with lots of beautiful, crisp, classically designed buildings and lovely picturesque walks.

We crossed the Rhine by car from France yesterday and I was impressed by the river’s vastness and productivity. A wonderful book about river journeys is “Danube” by Claudio Magris. The author journeys down the river from its source in Bavaria to its Black Sea mouth and along the way tells fascinating stories of the history, politics, geography and people of the towns and regions along the way. It is probably the best book in the travel genre I have ever read.

For Australians, especially non-indigenous Australians, it can sometimes be hard to understand the cultural importance of river systems in the “Old World” and in particular how bound up they are in the foundation myths of the peoples that inhabit the lands they flow through. A wonderful book that explores this and similar themes related to forests and mountains is “Landscape and Memory” by Simon Schama.

As a tourist venture, I’m sure there is plenty of competition and you could easily burn a lot of dough