Richard Wagner slept here

On this house by the Quellenpark (Spring Park) in Bad Soden there are two different plaques, both with the momentous information that the opera composer Richard Wagner slept here on the night of August 12-13, 1860, which was his “first night on German soil” after “eleven years of exile from Read More …

Cruising on Lake Lucerne

Lake Lucerne in central Switzerland has always seemed mysterious to me because of its German name Vierwaldstättersee, which looks as though it ought to mean ‘Four-Woods-Place-Lake.’ But it turns out that Waldstätte is simply an old-fashioned regional word for Canton, and the name Vierwaldstättersee means that the lake used to Read More …