As one of Germany’s foremost bicycle cities, Münster (Westfalen) has the country’s largest bicycle station, with safe and dry parking spaces for 3500 bicycles. The bicycle station is located directly in front of Münster’s main railroad station, so people can ride their bikes to the station and then take the Read More …
Where the old city fortifications used to be, there is now a car-free “Promenade” that goes all around the city center of Münster (Westfalen). It consists of three paved paths, a wide path in the center for bicycles and two narrow paths on either side for pedestrians. The trees along Read More …
Around the edges of Paris there are at least fifty-six intersections whose names begin with Porte, meaning Gate. Seventeen of these, including the Porte de Versailles, were the main gates in a defensive wall that was built around Paris from 1841 to 1844. This wall was the largest and last Read More …
The Rue de Rennes is one of the long, straight streets that were cut through Paris during the Second Empire, under Napoléon III and his Prefect, Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891). Hundreds of old buildings that were in the way of the new street were expropriated and demolished. The street now runs Read More …
The Petite Ceinture de Paris (Small Belt of Paris) is a 32 kilometer double-tracked railway that was built from 1852 to 1869, encircling Paris just inside the current boundaries of the city. Its original purpose was to transfer freight between the various railroad lines coming into Paris from different directions, Read More …
It’s a wonder more Germans aren’t run over in Paris, because in Germany these zebra stripes painted on the streets mean that pedestrians have the right of way, no matter what. When a German town or city installs traffic lights at an intersection it is required by law to remove Read More …
At some point in the early years of the 21st century I learned a new French word (new to me, that is), canicule meaning heat wave. Despite the persistent efforts of my high school Latin teacher, Mr. Bridge, to sour me permanently on the Latin language, I still vaguely remembered Read More …
The Place de Clichy is a square where four of the Paris arrondissements come together, the 8th, 9th, 17th and 18th. During the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st this was not so much a public square as a motorized disaster area, with more than four thousand Read More …
Münster was one of two cities — the other being nearby Osnabrück — where the peace treaties were negotiated and signed to bring an end to the Thirty Years’ War that had ravaged Germany, or what is now Germany, from 1618 to 1648. The Hall of Peace in the Münster Read More …
At the Münster City Theater I also saw a play: Unter Eis (Under Ice) by Falk Richter, a German playwright who also stages operas — he was the stage director for a Frankfurt production of Elektra, by Richard Strauss, for example. The play Unter Eis is about consultants, people who Read More …