Travel Archives – Page 2 of 31

March 29, 2026March 31, 2026

Running a Small Country

I like big globes and I cannot lie. Still can’t remember the capital of Uganda, though. Kajmeister photo of Kajmeister.

Somehow, I missed the memo on Nunavut, and my globe ended up broken. However, there is a silver lining. You get to learn some geography.

April is about to start, which means it’s time for the A- Z blog challenge. This was a blog post challenge created in 2010 by J. Lenni Dorner and friends. The requirement is to write 26 posts using letters of the alphabet. People interpret that different ways, but my way is to pick a single theme, then cover them all within the month of April. The hard part is always Q, J, Z, and X. I’m going to cheat on X; I’ll warn you in advance.

I wasn’t sure if I was up to the challenge for this, my seventh year in a row. I’ve loved doing it since 2020. I’ve learned a lot (hope you have too), and it kick-started a book-writing career for me. Olympics, Accounting, Silk Road, didn’t we have fun on Ancient Inventions last year? How could I not? You can even peruse prior years in the menu at the top, under “Books & A to Z.”

October 15, 2025November 20, 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.