In the fourth arrondissement of Paris, at the corner of Quai des Célestins and Boulevard Henri IV, there is a fine example of a belle époque apartment building from the beginning of the twentieth century. It is a solid stone building with seven floors above ground level, with the traditional Read More …
The Parc de la Villette is in the far northeast corner of Paris. It is a 55-hectare park with 35 hectares of lawns and gardens, on the site of the former slaughterhouses of la Villette. They say this is now the largest green space in Paris, and also “a laboratory Read More …
Before the old Basel Theater was blown up in 1975, parts of the old stage machinery were salvaged and given to the artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), who spent two years recycling this old machinery and making it into an elaborate and entertaining fountain, the Fasnachtbrunnen or Carnival Fountain, on the Read More …
>> Frankfurt Skyline Countdown # 2 << This quaint little building (by Dubai, Taipei or Shanghai standards) is the Messeturm (Trade Fair Tower). It is 256 meters tall and was the highest office tower in Europe from 1991 to 1997. Now it is the second tallest in Frankfurt Read More …
For those of us who arrive by train from central or southern Germany, this “grand” two-star hotel (grand being a French word for large) is conveniently located just half a block from the Gare de l’Est, i.e. the East Station. For a single room on the fifth floor I paid Read More …
One of the things I really love is cycling home at night after the opera. This is even more magical in Paris because you not only have the opera going through your head, you also have Paris all around you. You do have to look out for the taxis, though, Read More …
Markt Bibart is a town at the southern edge of the Steiger Forest, on the main railway line between Würzburg and Nürnberg. The first known mention of Bibart in any document was in the year 816, but it has only been a “Markt” (= market) since the fourteenth century, when Read More …
Scheinfeld is a happy town in the Steiger Forest in Franconia, northern Bavaria. You can tell it’s a happy town because some internet-savvy person has written “:D” with a felt-tipped marker in the upper left-hand corner of the sign. Up on a hill overlooking the town there is a castle Read More …
In the database of the now-defunct website VirtualTourist (VT) there were four places in Germany called Frankfurt. One was a large city in Land Hessen called Frankfurt am Main, which is best known for its huge, noisy airport. Frankfurt am Main is where I live and is also the home Read More …
All you loyal readers of my Markt Bibart post (thanks again to both of you) will no doubt recall that there are 386 towns in Bavaria which bear the official (modern) designation of Markt (= market), meaning that they have some slight degree of regional importance. Because of a quaint Read More …