The Hanseatic city of Lübeck, situated in the north of Germany, was founded in the 12th century, but remained an important trading centre throughout the following centuries. In the 14th century, Lübeck became the “Queen of the Hanseatic League”, the most important city of this commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds in central/northern Europe. Lübeck was also …
Between a sausage and a smiling angel: a hot day in Regensburg.
If there is one thing we learned from our visit to Trier last year, it is that the Romans have been doing some serious construction and city-building in once-Germania. A considerable number of German cities still contain original and well-preserved Roman architecture. The Romans’ never-ending thirst for conquering new tribes and annexing new lands eventually …
Upper Middle Rhein valley
The famous Loreley rock. To be completely honest, our experience with the Rhine valley consisted of two separate visits. We visited Koblenz on a sunny afternoon and enjoyed every bit of it: taking some time at highlights such as the Vier Turme, Alte Burg, Florinskirche and St.-Kastor Basilica, eating delicious ice cream on the Am …
Köln
The Dom of Cologne, a gothic masterpiece, took 6 (!) centuries to be completed. During all this time, the builders stuck to the original plans. The place where the cathedral was built has been a place for catholic worship since the 4th century. The Dom is the first building you see when coming out of …
Ancient history is always near… in Trier
OK, so it did take me several days to come up with a good title for this blog post. I wanted it to rhyme, but I always came up with lame titles such as “We were here… in Trier”, “No beer… in Trier”, “No fear… in Trier” and even “Wir liebten das hier… in Trier”. …
Camping out in a Unesco World Heritage site
Our tent at Gastätte Asel Sud. During our German stay this summer, we headed out for 3 days to the center of Germany. We wanted to visit two Unesco sites there: Kellerwald, which is actually named “Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and the Ancient Beech Forests of Germany” and Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. We had also …
The Mosel Valley
In our update about Koblenz you’ve already read that the Mosel flows into the Rhine in this city. For our visit to the Mosel Valley, we headed away from Koblenz about 60 km, to our final destination Cochem and the surrounding towns. We stayed in a little village called Ney and took some small roads …
Düsseldorf part 2: summertime
So, as I said in my previous post, we returned to Düsseldorf in the summertime. Twice actually: we started our German trip in the city, because Maarten wanted to visit an art-exhibition that had its last day on the start of our trip and after a week we returned, to spend some time with our …
Düsseldorf part 1: springtime
Germany was a rather blank spot for the both of us. We had been to Köln and Bremerhaven, but that was it. It’s a neighbouring country for us and I saw loads of wonderfull pictures by one of my travel addicted friends – Shira – who has been to Germany often. Time to explore Germany …
A snowy visit to Potsdam…
Visiting Potsdam was a treat-on-the-side for our citytrip to Berlin in December 2014. Our original plan was to have a full day of exploring the park on the 25th (Indeed, on Christmas day). This would have meant leaving Belgium on Christmas Eve, after an evening of fine food and presents (but no alcohol, since I …