Bastogne

The Battle of the Bulge (known in German as the Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein – Operation Watch on the Rhine) was the last major German offensive in the western front during World War II. The Germans attempted to use this offensive to break the Allied offensive on that front and force the western allies to negotiate a peace treaty. The territory taken by the Germans during the offensive resembled a “bulge” on the map, hence its name.

During the battle, Bastogne was surrounded by German forces, and when the Germans asked the Americans in Bastogne to surrender, Brigadier General McAuliffe famously answered “nuts!” to the German request.

We stayed overnight in the same farmhouse which served as the former field headquarters of the legendary American 101st Airborne Division during the battle. The staff there mentioned that the same family still owns the farmhouse to this day and that some of them had perished in concentration camps during the course of the war.

They even decorated in the interior with old helmets and ammo boxes.

I wouldn’t consider the place in the middle of nowhere, but maybe trying to find it at night isn’t the best idea.

Just look for the tank turret out front I guess!

We tried going to the Bastogne Museum, but little did we know that the Bastogne War Museum was closed between 20. January 2020 to 19. February 2020. I knew it was low season, but I didn’t think it was so not busy that the entire museum would be closed for a whole month! The only exhibit we got to see was the East Germany open air exhibit outside showing off art painted on the tank, slabs of the Berlin Wall on old Trabants.

Nearby the museum was the Mardasson Memorial, a monument dedicated to the American soldiers who fought the Battle of the Bulge. Inside the memorial, carved panels tell the story of the battle.

The weather really cooperated with us today! We had clear blue skies all day, and got to see the the thin layers of morning frost over the vast farm fields.

Liège

The weather didn’t cooperate for long though because it became like this on our way to Liège…

The thing that surprised me about Liège was how seedy it was. We were hanging out around Place St Lambert, and it felt like people were subtlely eyeing us from the side of the street. In once instance, the moment we turned corner, a man glanced at us and immediately started walking in our direction. I glanced at him some more and eventually he went away. Yeah, we didn’t stay long in Liège.

I think one way to explain why it was so seedy was that Wallonia was no longer Belgium’s center of industry like it was in the late 19th and early 20th century. As the industry went to neighbouring Flanders, the local economy suffered.

Drielandenpunt

Next up, Drielandenpunt, the triple point between Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium. It’s also simultaneously the highest point in the entire Netherlands, a miniscule 322.5m above sea level.

Aachen

Not far away from the Drielandenpunt, was the westernmost city in Germany, Aachen. This is where 31 Holy Roman Emperors were crowned. Charlemagne (his bust pictured below) himself had his imperial medieval residence here.

The Aachen Cathedral shown below was the burial location of Charlemagne. The chapel shown in the middle is the location of the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperors. Despite the name, the Holy Romans Empire was neither holy nor Roman, nor an empire.

As a “holy” empire they weren’t exactly unified by religion. It wasn’t solely catholic and had a significant population of Protestants.

It wasn’t really Roman since for most of its history it didn’t rule over what the Roman Empire ruled over (although it did for a time) and its centre of power was ultimately in Germany. Arguably, the Byzantines or the Eastern Roman Empire was the true successor to the Roman Empire. They were a part of the Roman Empire when it fell and it continued the empire in the east until it fell in the 15th century to the Ottoman Turks.

Technically, it was an empire (at least officially) for a time, until their defeat in the Thirty Years War (1618 – 1648), which resulted in the kingdoms within the empire effectively receiving independence from the empire.

For lunch, I finally got the chance to eat Eisbein (bottom dish), a pork knuckle! It’s simmered for several hours in broth and served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes! If you like meat, this is the dish for you. The above dish is a schnitzel – thin slice of meat (thinned via pounding) that’s breaded and fried.

Bonn

From Aachen, we drove to Bonn to meet up with a friend, who moved to Bonn from Taiwan to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering. We were so full from lunch, we only had a small snack for dinner at a local pub.

Since it was a Bavarian pub, it sold Bavarian specialities like weisswurst (shown on bottom – literally white sausage). It’s a sausage made from veal! The bread in the basket is a very delicious German pretzel. It’s got a nice cripsy outside flavoured with salt with a soft inside.

After dinner, we explored the city a little bit and visited the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven. The house is one of the few remaining middle-class homes of the era.

Bonn is also the world headquarters of an amazing brand of gummy bears – Haribo! It was founded by Hans Riegel in Bonn, hence the name Haribo. People who hear about Haribo for the first time usually think it comes from Japan, and are almost always surprised to find out it’s German! The outlet store not far from Bonn city centre has a MASSIVE selection of all sorts of Haribo variants! It’s got gummy bears, sour worms, licorice, and more! I definitely recommend the gummy bears (of course), the frogs, coca colas, and the Phantasia pack!

That concludes our 7th day. The next day we’d travel to more German cities – Cologne and Düsseldorf.

Photos:

• Bastogne
• Liège
• Drielandenpunt
• Aachen
• Bonn

On the day I landed, Tobias picked me up from a train station near his house and I dropped off my stuff at his house.  Afterward, I went on my own to visit the Deutsches Museum.  He mentioned that the next day, we would be meeting up with two of his other friends that he met while on exchange at UBC and by sheer coincidence, they all happened to be in Munich at the same time.

A Very Stereotypical Bavarian Breakfast

In the morning, we rode bicycles to the English Garden to meet up with two of his UBC exchange friends. One of them was also from Munich and the other came all the way from Australia.

For breakfast, we had Bavarian white sausage (Weisswurst, or Weißwurst) with sweet mustard, giant pretzel (or Brezel), and of course, beer. There is a German phrase “Kein Bier vor vier”, which means “no beer before four”, but that does not apply on weekends. As good as that breakfast was, I saw a guy roasting an entire pig and that looked really good.

The English Garden

We biked around the English Garden enjoying the scenery for a little bit. While I’ve been there before (so I didn’t take many pictures), it was nice and relaxing to ride around with a bike in the scorching 38°C weather.

We passed by an area, known as the Eisbach (or ice brook), which is an area in the English Garden where people surf on standing waves. The difference between standing waves and the regular waves that people surf on is that standing waves pretty much stay in one spot and surfers try to surf on for as long as possible.

Friedensengel

Friedensengel can be translated as “Angle of Peace” and it is a reminder of the years of peace after the Franco-Prussian War. The German victory in the war united the German people and formed the German Empire.

Munich’s Birthday

It just so happened that when we were in Munich, the people were celebrating the city’s birthday, so there were quite a lot of people in the streets. People were dressed up in really traditional clothes and just dancing in the street!

Marienplatz

This is where the city hall is located. It’s probably one of Munich’s most recognizable buildings.

St. Peter’s Church Church Tower

Germany doesn’t really have a lot of skycrapers, so the tallest observation points that tourists can find are typically in church towers. It usually costs a few euros to go up, and there are no elevators since the architecture is so old. Going up is a pain too as the only way up is usually a very very long spiral staircase with a width that only fits one person going up and one person going down. But at the top, there is a really clear view of the city.

Lunch at the Hofbräuhaus

Every single time I’ve been to Munich, I’ve eaten at probably the most touristy restaurant in Munich. This time was no different. This makes it the third time I’ve been to this place. And of course, I order a pork knuckle with a liter of beer.

After a very filling lunch, we went back to the English Garden to just relax for a little bit before going home. For dinner, I had dinner with Tobia’s family. I met his parents and his brother and sister. His whole family was super nice. They totally did not have the typical German stereotypes that German parents were super strict. They joked around with their kids so much and even went as far as to making Nazi jokes, which I thought was completely taboo. In their family, it wasn’t.

During my stay, I got to practice my German with them and I was surprised that I could even say as much as I did, even if I talked slow. It definitely increased my confidence and ability with the language. All the time I spent learning German was paying off!

Link to photo album here

Last Saturday, our original plan was to go to Neuschwanstein Castle, but while we were on our way there, it started raining really hard.  After seeing the rain go on for more than two hours non-stop, we wondered what the weather would have been like in Schwangau (where the castle is).  We figured it would be raining at the castle too and it wouldn’t be fun in the rain, we chose to go to Munich instead.  I’ve already been to Munich before, but I think we decided to go there for the Hofbräuhaus because we were all hungry at the time (I hate it when my stomach does the talking).  Since Neuschwanstein and Munich are somewhat close (~ 130 km), it was easy to change to a different train to Munich.

This time, I had the chance to try the Bavarian Weisswurst (white sausage).  According to Wiki, it is a “traditional Bavarian sausage made from very finely minced veal and fresh pork bacon.”  It was served in a pot of hot water and a special sauce with a sweet flavour.  Even though it is a breakfast food, we managed to get it in the afternoon (I guess their supply hadn’t run out for the day yet). 

It looks kind of disgusting in the picture but it tasted so good.  I also ate this dish that had roasted suckling pig.  It tasted like Chinese 燒肉.  It even had the same crusty skin on the surface.

After we ate, we walked around Munich in the rain (that part sucked a lot because I had no umbrella) a bit to see some of the attractions.  I didn’t really take a lot of pictures of these because I saw them the first time around.

For some reason, we also went to look for poker chips.  Apparently my friends couldn’t find them in Stuttgart.  We walked around the toy section of the Galleria Kaufhof and actually found some.  At the same time, I saw also saw some cool toys (almost like being a kid again).

Afterward, we walked around the city some more and stumbled on a statue that got turned into a giant Michael Jackson tribute.

I still have no idea why that’s there, but I guess that’s for a good cause.  We then proceeded to the train station to go home.

On the way home, we passed the time by playing Poker using the newly purchased poker set.  We even played Asshole (a weird variant of Big 2).  But then, in our card playing, we failed to pay attention to the fact that our train had stopped and just idled in Treuchtlingen, which wasn’t the end stop.  Everyone else had already left the train.  We were sure that we boarded the right train, but I still have no idea why our train didn’t go to the stop that we needed (it was the end stop).  We think that the train may have split and we got stuck in the half that stayed behind.

When we realized this, I asked the one of the DB employees (in German ^_^) how to get to Stuttgart and he told me.  While we were stranded in Treuchtlingen, we killed time at a nearby park until our train came.  Luckily one of our friends brought a Frisbee so we threw that around for about an hour.  When we headed back to the station for our train, we found that the doors to the station were locked.  With one minute to go to find a way into the station and to the platform we needed, we sprinted to the next entrance and onto our train.  We made it with just a few seconds to go.  I would not have liked to stay a night here.

We were supposed to return to Stuttgart at around 7:30, but that delayed us and we ended up getting back at around 11:30.

More photos here