Posts Tagged with Germany

Going naked at a sauna in Germany

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Places to visit
Naïvely, I’d imagined that there’d probably be a nude sauna, for those who were into that sort of thing, plus an area where people continued to wear their swimming costumes. The part with people in swimwear would be where I'd spent my time. I’d searched but that bit didn’t exist.

New cars for the Rocky Mountaineer train

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News
Each of the new cars feature panoramic windows with electronically controlled tinting that can be lightened or darkened to suit the lighting conditions. The cars are air-conditioned and designed to operate with the outside temperature anywhere between a chilly -25˚C and sweltering 50˚C.

German beer purity law of 1516

Food and drink
In 1516 the Reinheitsgebot, regulating the pricing and ingredients of beer, became law across the Duchy of Bavaria. Some people herald it as a world first: a law governing food production had become valid across an entire territory.

Top things to do in Munich, Germany

Places to visit
Germany’s largest urban palace, the Munich Residence, is just a couple of minutes’ walk from Marienplatz. Visiting throws light onto the enormous wealth and power once held by the Wittelsbach family, who ruled over Bavaria for more than 700 years.

Berlin’s Cemetery of the March Revolution

Places to visit
A sailor with a rifle slung over his right shoulder stands under foliage on the edge of the Cemetery of the March Revolution (Der Friedhof der Märzgefallenen) in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district. Like the cemetery as a whole, the bronze sculpture is somewhat hidden yet a monument to tumultuous, formative times in Germany and Europe.

Görlitz, Germany’s most easterly city

Places to visit
If you’ve seen films such as The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Reader or Inglourious Basterds then you’ve already caught glimpses of Goerlitz. Some of the scenes that appear in those movies were filmed in Germany’s most easterly city. So to was Around The World in 80 Days, starring Jackie Chan.

Saalburg Roman Fort in Germany

Places to visit
In woodland close to Rainau, a small town a little over 80 kilometres eastwards of Stuttgart, I saw one of the tallest remaining sections of the stone wall that was a key element of the Upper German-Rhaetian Limes. Crunching across pine cones and bouncing over sun-dappled ground springy with fallen pine needles, I visited a remnant of the stonework accompanied by Dr Stefan Bender, an archaeologist working at Baden-Wuerttemberg’s Limes information centre in Aalen. “It was known as the Devil’s Wall,” said Dr Bender as we approached the stonework. “People thought in former centuries that the devil had constructed the wall.”