Historical Tidbits Archives

October 15, 2025October 18, 2025

Don’t Overlook Hamburg

“We don’t fly to Hamburg,” the woman with the fancy-schmancy cruise service told me. “It’s not a tourist destination. For an extra fee…”

I disagree. Not with the fee, though I didn’t like to pay it, but of course I did because I wanted to go visit my son in his temporary home, Hamburg. What I disagree with is the disdain for the touristability of Hamburg. This city has a lot to see, do, and–most especially–eat. It may not quite be a tiny, picturesque village, but what it lacks in castles, it makes up for in Franzbrötchen. Plenty of cathedrals. Views to die for. Bakeries up the wazoo. Places for children and places with no children allowed. Herein, I will make the case for Hamburg. The post’s a bit long, but at the end of my travels, so think of it as a summary of all things German.

Keep Your Apple Store, We’ve Got A Particle Accelerator

First of all, Hamburg has world class scientific facilities. Not in a giant megalith concrete building like in Thunderbolts or The Incredibles. This one’s in an office park, lined with lovely trees and walkable, rather than the car-park laden Silicon Valley offices, famous for refrigerators stocked with free Red Bull, bouncy ball pits, and 20-year-old millionaires.

Entrance to DESY, photo from wikipedia because my son was talking too fast past the guard for me to take a picture.

October 10, 2025October 17, 2025

Up the Main/Rhine: Restoration

Marksburg Castle, a rare, preserved medieval castle in Germany. Kajmeister photo.

What is our responsibility to the past? Must we remember things as they were, and, if we must, how and why?

Yesterday, we visited the “last remaining medieval castle” in Germany. But other cities and other castles had been destroyed and rebuilt. Art had been hidden in bunkers, then replaced with missing bits filled in. The famous castles along the Rhine were mostly built after 1850, and you can tell the medieval English style chosen for design from the medieval German style chosen, by 19th century architects. The Germans have found many ways to embrace their past. How do they approach their history, and can we learn from it?

Recreating What Was

As we walked around Marksburg castle, a historical site near Koblenz on the Rhine in western Germany, our guide kept emphasizing that these were the original timbers, the authentic tapestries, the slippery stone steps that prevented attack, which have never been improved in nearly a thousand years. Imagine storming this medieval castle! Imagine the duke sleeping upright in the tiny bed or using the stone toilet in the Great Hall while the door was open!

Tourist sites emphasize these ideas of real, authentic, preserved, or original. But much of what we’ve seen in Germany had decayed or had been destroyed and was decidedly not original. Does it matter? Germany makes the argument repeatedly that it does not matter whether it is authentic or original. What matters is the memory.

October 4, 2025October 9, 2025

Up the Danube: Small Town Bavarian Charm (& Sausages)

One of dozens of picturesque towns in the Wachau Valley. Kajmeister photo.

Can there be too many quaint Austrian and German villages along the Danube, Main, and Rhine? In Bamberg today, I’m taking a day off from the bus + walking circuit to recap our previous few days in Melk, Passau, and Regensburg.

There is this self-destructive cycle of tourism in which we find ourselves. We want to SEE, but, when we do, we quickly tire of the same ol’ village. *yawn* another hand-painted baroque ceiling. Oh, NOT another castle! How many bloody things did these people build? (A: one in every town, of course). Last night, a fellow traveler said it was the same thing in Egypt–desperate to go, then three days in, NOT another tomb and 5000-year-old hieroglyphics!

I will try not to bite the hand that feeds me too much today, since I am a tourist, and I am here to appreciate these exquisite German villages.