A Personal Reassessment of Germany

On 3^rd October 1990, East and West Germany are reunited, ending 45 years of Cold War division. At midnight the Freedom Bell, a gift from the United States, was rung, and Germany was again a united nation. The East German state, which had essentially collapsed in 1989, was dissolved, and its people became citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Germany was divided between the four major Allied powers; the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France. In 1949, the United States, Britain and France combined their occupation zones to create the Federal Republic of Germany in West Germany, while the Soviets established the communist German Democratic Republic in East Germany.

At this time, and for some time after, I had never visited Germany but in 2007 I found cheap tickets to Friedrichshafen.  I really had no idea where this was and I really didn’t care, I was determined to have the flights so I booked them without giving the transaction a second thought.  After it had been confirmed I set out to discover where it was exactly and to learn something about our destination.  I was delighted to find that it was in the far south of Germany sitting alongside Lake Constance and within easy reach of Switzerland and Austria.

When we arrived in Friedrichshafen the weather was perfect and the sun was shining and we quickly took a taxi to the city that drove us through some, quite frankly, uninteresting suburbs, and it was a lady taxi driver to take us there so there was nothing very exciting about the drive either as she took us to our hotel with a sedate efficiency.

As it was about lunchtime we quickly organised ourselves and made our way out of the hotel and down to the lake to see what the city had to offer and we were absolutely delighted as the place immediately exceeded our modest expectations.  We had had no idea of what we might find so we were surprised to discover a broad sunny promenade with bars and restaurants overlooking the lake and a genuine holiday resort atmosphere.

Lake Constance is a vast freshwater lake on the upper River Rhine situated between Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and is the third largest in central Europe after Lake Balaton which is in Hungary and the second largest, Lake Geneva which lies between France and Switzerland.  It is sixty-three kilometers long and one-hundred and eighty-six kilometers around, at its widest point it is nearly fourteen kilometers across and it covers approximately five-hundred and thirty-nine square kilometers of total area.  Ninety per cent of the water is melted floodwater from the Alps and this supplies three-hundred and twenty cities and towns and four million people with drinking water, so this is a very big lake indeed and it is fairly important to an awful lot of people.

It is an interesting fact that there is no legally binding agreement as to where the boundaries lie between the three countries that border the shores of Lake Constance.  Switzerland holds the view that the border runs through the middle of the lake, whilst Austria is of the opinion that the lake stands in condominium of all the states on its banks. Germany agrees with neither of these points of view and doesn’t care too much anyway.

We walked for a while along the sociable waterfront and before very long selected a table at a bar with an expansive view of the water and in the full glare of the midday sun.  This was a perfect spot for a lunchtime sojourn and we sat in the warm sun and looked out over the water towards the snow capped Swiss Alps.  The water was busy with ferry boats either crossing over to Switzerland or simply stopping off at all the little towns that border the lake so later we walked along the promenade to check the schedules for our planned trip to the other side of the water.

The timetables were even more difficult to understand than the menus so after quickly running out of patience we returned to the waterfront and walked back along the promenade past the zeppelin museum and with the afternoon sun still pleasantly hot we found another bar and sat and enjoyed another beer.   We sat and enjoyed the beer and the wine in the afternoon sun and watched the people walking back and forth along the lakeside boulevard stopping frequently to buy ice cream or to stop like us for refreshment in one of the many bars overlooking the lake.

Even on this our first day, I found that I was being forced into a reassessment of the German people.  Here in their own country they were so obliging and polite and not at all like the loud pushy archetypes that I had encountered before usually on holiday in Spain or Portugal where in the 1938 style of the Sudetenland they notoriously commandeer the best pool side seats.  I have to say that it was a real pleasure to be here and not really what I was expecting, it felt relaxed, refined and cultured and I was glad of that and to have my national prejudices so quickly readjusted.

A Bonding Holiday with my Daughter

As Sally had recently broken the news about having a baby I thought it would be a good idea to have a last bonding holiday together as father and daughter before the big event as it is going to be a long time before we get this opportunity again.  I was straight to http://www.ryaniar.com and I quickly located cheap flights to Germany for 28^th May.

I really had no idea where Friedrichshafen was and I really didn’t care, I was determined to have the flights so I booked them without giving the transaction a second thought.  After it had been confirmed I set out to discover where it was exactly and to learn something about our destination.  I was delighted to find that it is in the far southwest of Germany sitting alongside Lake Constance and within easy reach of its neighbours Switzerland and Austria and I quickly realised that here was a trip where I could pull in some extra countries in my quest to visit as much of Europe as possible using the low cost airlines to get me there.  After consulting the guidebooks and planning a suitable itinerary the final plan was to fly to Friedrichshafen then drive to Switzerland and visit Liechtenstein as well.

We arrived in Germany at three o’clock in the afternoon and picked up the hire car with a minimum of fuss and drove directly to the city to find the hotel Schöllhorn, which wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been but eventually we found it at the third attempt and checked in.  The hotel was a grand building in a good position with front rooms overlooking the lake but as I had booked a budget room ours had an alternative view over the car park at the back but this didn’t matter because as it was mid afternoon already we quickly organised ourselves and made our way out of the hotel and down to the lake to see what the city had to offer.

We walked for a while along the friendly waterfront and before very long selected a table at a bar with an expansive view of the water stretching across to Switzerland.  Not that we could see Switzerland however because there was a strange mist that hung over the curiously dead calm water that rather spoilt the view of the Alps in the distance.  A glance at the menu confirmed my excellent judgement in earlier purchasing a German phrase book at the airport because the menu interpretation looked especially tricky with very few words that meant anything to me.

This was a perfect spot for an afternoon sojourn and we sat and watched the lake that was busy with ferry boats crossing over to Switzerland or simply stopping off at all the little towns that border the lake and we sat and practised German fom the phrasebook and Sally impressed me with her natural grasp of the language.  Later we walked along the promenade to check the schedules for our planned trip to the other side of the water the next day.

Even on this our first day, I found that I was being forced into a reassessment of the German people.  Here in their own country they were so obliging and polite   and not at all like the loud pushy archetypes that I had encountered before, usually on holiday in Spain or Portugal where in the 1938 style of the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland they notoriously commandeer the best pool side seats.  I have to say that it was a real pleasure to be here and not really what I was expecting, it felt relaxed, refined and cultured and I was glad of that and to have my national prejudices so quickly readjusted.

After our drink it was time for food so we returned to the lakeside and not feeling especially adventurous found an Italian restaurant with a good menu and some vegetarian options for Sally.  We were a little perplexed however when the place started to close down around us and the staff dragged buckets of water from the lake to fill the plant pots and to start to chain the tables and chairs down.  When the lights went out we felt uncomfortably in the way so we finished our drinks, paid and sauntered back into the city.  It was a lovely evening and the sky was beginning to clear and there was the occasional glimpse of a star or two and that made us optimistic about tomorrow and we returned to the Schöllhorn and as it had been a long day we went straight to bed and to sleep.

Some Things That Make Switzerland Famous

On 27th April 2007 we visited Switzerland and driving through the meadows and hills on our way to Liechtenstein we stopped at a delightful place for lunch. It was a lovely setting and we sat in the sun and enjoyed our food but the best was yet to come because when we decided to use the washrooms before resuming our journey we were elated to find what simply has to be the best loo in the world with an impressive mechanical cleaning process that included a 360º scrubbing and disinfection of the toilet seat.

This was really impressive but I was a little concerned about health and safety risks associated with it beginning in advance of the occupier leaving the seat, which could have been especially painful for a man if he was to get his valuables caught up in the procedure.

This got us thinking and we tried to agree on five things that make Switzerland famous.

Our final choice might have included Roger Federer or Ursula Andress but in the end we agreed upon

1. Swiss watches of course – that was rather obvious.

2. Cuckoo clocks, because even though they are strictly speaking from Germany the Swiss were important for the ‘chalet’ style that they introduced at the end of nineteenth century and is the sort of cuckoo clock where it is common to have a  music box somewhere in the mechanism with tunes like ‘Edelweiss’ and ‘The Happy Wanderer’.

3. Muesli, which was introduced around 1900 by the Swiss doctor and nutritionist Maximilian Bircher-Benner for patients in his hospital in Zurich.

4.   Toblerone, the Swiss chocolate bar found in every airport duty-free shop that was invented by Theodore Tobler in 1908 in his factory in Bern but most of all we had to agree on:

5. The Swiss Army knife.

Various models of Swiss Army knives exist, with different tool combinations for specific tasks. The most common tools featured are, in addition to the main blade, a smaller second blade, tweezers, toothpick, corkscrew, can opener, bottle opener, slotted screwdriver, flat-head screwdriver, phillips-head screwdriver, nail file, scissors, saw, file, hook, magnifying glass, ballpoint pen, fish scaler, hex wrench w/bits, pliers and key chain. Recent technological features include USB flash drives, digital clock, digital altimeter, LED light, laser pointer, and MP3 player.

That is a startling collection of potential weapons in one utensil but I can’t help thinking that it was a good job Switzerland didn’t go to war with Germany in 1939 because I can’t imagine Hitler’s crack Panzer division being turned back by an army wielding nailfiles and toothpicks.

Manufacturers today  supply over fifty thousand a year to the Swiss Army which works out at a new knife for every soldier just about every three years or so.

Friedrichshafen and the first Flight of Airship LZ 129 Hindenburg

On 4^th March 1936 the Airship LZ 129 Hindenburg made its first successful flight from Freidrichshafen in south west Germany.  The Hindenburg was a large German commercial passenger-carrying rigid airship, the lead ship of the Hindenburg class, at 245 metres the longest class of flying machines of any kind and the largest airship by envelope volume (200,000 m³, 7,062,000 cubic feet).  It was designed and built by the Zeppelin Company (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH) on the shores of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) and flew from March 1936 until destroyed by fire fourteen months later on May 6^th 1937, at the end of the first North American transatlantic journey of its second season of service. Thirty-six people died in the accident, which occurred while landing at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey.

I went to Friedrichshafen in May 2008 and visited the Zeppelin museum, which is just about the most famous thing about Friedrichshafen, because this is where the airship was pioneered and developed.  Airships are a type of rigid hot air balloon pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century, and so successful was the Count’s design that all airships subsequently became referred to as zeppelins, even if they weren’t (a bit like vacuum cleaners all being called Hoover!)

Zeppelin was born in Konstanz, on the other side of the lake and in 1898 he founded the ‘Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Luftschiffahrt’ or the company for the promotion of airship flight, and construction of the first Zeppelin began in Friedrichshafen in 1899 which enjoyed a perfect location for launching the airships.  The first Zeppelin flight took place in July, 1900 over Lake Constance and lasted eighteen minutes.

The most important feature of Zeppelin’s design was a rigid metal alloy skeleton, made of rings and longitudinal girders. The advantage of this concept was that they could be built much larger than a conventional balloon which meant they were more useful for transporting people or commercial goods and they became great ships of the sky even making transatlantic crossings in the 1930’s.  But they were inherently dangerous as they relied upon the highly combustible gas hydrogen to keep them afloat and on May 6, 1937, in front of thousands of spectators in New Jersey, USA, the biggest aircraft ever made, the airship Hindenburg, caught fire, and within seconds burst into flames killing thirty-five of the ninety-seven people on board.   The actual cause of the spark that caused the explosion was never identified but it is a bizarre fact that the airship actually had a smoking room in the passenger compartment.  OK, it was lined with asbestos and the lighter was chained to the floor and there was a guard permanently on duty but it still sounds rather reckless to me.  This disaster was the end for great airships and the Zeppelin Company in Friedrichshafen.

There are still Zeppelins flying from Friedrichshafen and we could see tourist flights taking off from the airport for a flight over the city and the lake and across to Switzerland.  If there had been time I think I might have been persuaded to take the trip but bearing in mind the Hindenburg story and the fact that the museum had a whole room devoted to photographs of airship disasters we weren’t terribly keen.

A Year in a Life – 3rd October, Germany Reunited

On 3^rd October 1990, East and West Germany are reunited, ending 45 years of Cold War division. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Germany was divided between the four major Allied powers; the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France. In 1949, the United States, Britain and France combined their occupation zones to create the Federal Republic of Germany in West Germany, while the Soviets established the communist German Democratic Republic in East Germany.  At midnight the Freedom Bell, a gift from the United States, was rung, and Germany was again a united nation. The East German state, which had essentially collapsed in 1989, was dissolved, and its people became citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany.

At this time, and for some time after, I had never visited Germany but in 2007 I found cheap tickets to Friedrichshafen.  I really had no idea where this was and I really didn’t care, I was determined to have the flights so I booked them without giving the transaction a second thought.  After it had been confirmed I set out to discover where it was exactly and to learn something about our destination.  I was delighted to find that it was in the far south of Germany sitting alongside Lake Constance and within easy reach of Switzerland and Austria. 

When we arrived in Friedrichshafen the weather was perfect and the sun was shining and we quickly took a taxi to the city that drove us through some, quite frankly, uninteresting suburbs, and it was a lady taxi driver to take us there so there was nothing very exciting about the drive either as she took us to our hotel with a sedate efficiency. 

As it was about lunchtime we quickly organised ourselves and made our way out of the hotel and down to the lake to see what the city had to offer and we were absolutely delighted as the place immediately exceeded our modest expectations.  We had had no idea of what we might find so we were surprised to discover a broad sunny promenade with bars and restaurants overlooking the lake and a genuine holiday resort atmosphere. 

Lake Constance is a vast freshwater lake on the upper River Rhine situated between Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and is the third largest in central Europe after Lake Balaton which is in Hungary and the second largest Lake Geneva which lies between France and Switzerland. It is sixty-three kilometers long and one-hundred and eighty-six kilometers around, at its widest point it is nearly fourteen kilometers across and it covers approximately five-hundred and thirty-nine square kilometers of total area.  Ninety per cent of the water is melted floodwater from the Alps and this supplies three-hundred and twenty cities and towns and four million people with drinking water, so this is a very big lake indeed and it is fairly important to an awful lot of people. 

It is an interesting fact that there is no legally binding agreement as to where the boundaries lie between the three countries that border the shores of Lake Constance.  Switzerland holds the view that the border runs through the middle of the lake, whilst Austria is of the opinion that the lake stands in condominium of all the states on its banks. Germany agrees with neither of these points of view and doesn’t care too much anyway.  I expect they would get their own way if they really had a mind to.

We walked for a while along the sociable waterfront and before very long selected a table at a bar with an expansive view of the water and in the full glare of the midday sun.  This was a perfect spot for a lunchtime sojourn and we sat in the warm sun and looked out over the water towards the snow capped Swiss Alps.  The water was busy with ferry boats either crossing over to Switzerland or simply stopping off at all the little towns that border the lake so later we walked along the promenade to check the schedules for our planned trip to the other side of the water.  The timetables were even more difficult to understand than the menus so after quickly running out of patience we returned to the waterfront and walked back along the promenade past the zeppelin museum and with the afternoon sun still pleasantly hot we found another bar and sat and enjoyed another beer.   We sat and enjoyed the beer and the wine in the afternoon sun and watched the people walking back and forth along the lakeside boulevard stopping frequently to buy ice cream or to stop like us for refreshment in one of the many bars overlooking the lake.

Even on this our first day, I found that I was being forced into a reassessment of the German people.  Here in their own country they were so obliging and polite and not at all like the loud pushy archetypes that I had encountered before usually on holiday in Spain or Portugal where in the 1938 style of Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland they notoriously commandeer the best pool side seats.  I have to say that it was a real pleasure to be here and not really what I was expecting, it felt relaxed, refined and cultured and I was glad of that and to have my national prejudices so quickly readjusted.

A Life in a Year – 28th May, A Bonding Holiday with my Daughter

As Sally had recently broken the news about having a baby I thought it would be a good idea to have a last bonding holiday together as father and daughter before the big event as it is going to be a long time before we get this opportunity again.  I was straight to http://www.ryaniar.com and I quickly located cheap flights to Germany for 28^th May.

I really had no idea where Friedrichshafen was and I really didn’t care, I was determined to have the flights so I booked them without giving the transaction a second thought.  After it had been confirmed I set out to discover where it was exactly and to learn something about our destination.  I was delighted to find that it is in the far southwest of Germany sitting alongside Lake Constance and within easy reach of its neighbours Switzerland and Austria and I quickly realised that here was a trip where I could pull in some extra countries in my quest to visit as much of Europe as possible using the low cost airlines to get me there.  After consulting the guidebooks and planning a suitable itinerary the final plan was to fly to Friedrichshafen then drive to Switzerland and visit Liechtenstein as well.

We arrived in Germany at three o’clock in the afternoon and picked up the hire car with a minimum of fuss and drove directly to the city to find the hotel Schöllhorn, which wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been but eventually we found it at the third attempt and checked in.  The hotel was a grand building in a good position with front rooms overlooking the lake but as I had booked a budget room ours had an alternative view over the car park at the back but this didn’t matter because as it was mid afternoon already we quickly organised ourselves and made our way out of the hotel and down to the lake to see what the city had to offer.

We walked for a while along the friendly waterfront and before very long selected a table at a bar with an expansive view of the water stretching across to Switzerland.  Not that we could see Switzerland however because there was a strange mist that hung over the curiously dead calm water that rather spoilt the view of the Alps in the distance.  A glance at the menu confirmed my excellent judgement in earlier purchasing a German phrase book at the airport because the menu interpretation looked especially tricky with very few words that meant anything to me.

This was a perfect spot for an afternoon sojourn and we sat and watched the lake that was busy with ferry boats crossing over to Switzerland or simply stopping off at all the little towns that border the lake and we sat and practised German fom the phrasebook and Sally impressed me with her natural grasp of the language.  Later we walked along the promenade to check the schedules for our planned trip to the other side of the water the next day.

Even on this our first day, I found that I was being forced into a reassessment of the German people.  Here in their own country they were so obliging and polite   and not at all like the loud pushy archetypes that I had encountered before, usually on holiday in Spain or Portugal where in the 1938 style of Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland they notoriously commandeer the best pool side seats.  I have to say that it was a real pleasure to be here and not really what I was expecting, it felt relaxed, refined and cultured and I was glad of that and to have my national prejudices so quickly readjusted.

After our drink it was time for food so we returned to the lakeside and not feeling especially adventurous found an Italian restaurant with a good menu and some vegetarian options for Sally.  We were a little perplexed however when the place started to close down around us and the staff dragged buckets of water from the lake to fill the plant pots and to start to chain the tables and chairs down.  When the lights went out we felt uncomfortably in the way so we finished our drinks, paid and sauntered back into the city.  It was a lovely evening and the sky was beginning to clear and there was the occasional glimpse of a star or two and that made us optimistic about tomorrow and we returned to the Schöllhorn and as it had been a long day we went straight to bed and to sleep.

A Life in a Year – 4th March, First Flight of Airship LZ 129 Hindenburg

On 4^th March 1936 the Airship LZ 129 Hindenburg made its first successful flight from Freidrichshafen in south west Germany.  The Hindenburg was a large German commercial passenger-carrying rigid airship, the lead ship of the Hindenburg class, at 245 metres the longest class of flying machines of any kind and the largest airship by envelope volume (200,000 m³, 7,062,000 cubic feet).  It was designed and built by the Zeppelin Company (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH) on the shores of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) and flew from March 1936 until destroyed by fire fourteen months later on May 6^th 1937, at the end of the first North American transatlantic journey of its second season of service. Thirty-six people died in the accident, which occurred while landing at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey.

I went to Friedrichshafen in May 2008 and visited the Zeppelin museum, which is just about the most famous thing about Friedrichshafen, because this is where the airship was pioneered and developed.  Airships are a type of rigid hot air balloon pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century, and so successful was the Count’s design that all airships subsequently became referred to as zeppelins, even if they weren’t (a bit like vacuum cleaners all being called Hoover!)

Zeppelin was born in Konstanz, on the other side of the lake and in 1898 he founded the ‘Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Luftschiffahrt’ or the company for the promotion of airship flight, and construction of the first Zeppelin began in Friedrichshafen in 1899 which enjoyed a perfect location for launching the airships.  The first Zeppelin flight took place in July, 1900 over Lake Constance and lasted for eighteen minutes.

The most important feature of Zeppelin’s design was a rigid metal alloy skeleton, made of rings and longitudinal girders. The advantage of this concept was that they could be built much larger than a conventional balloon which meant they were more useful for transporting people or commecial goods and they became great ships of the sky even making transatlantic crossings in the 1930’s.  But they were inherently dangerous as they relied upon the highly combustible gas helium to keep them afloat and on May 6, 1937, in front of thousands of spectators in New Jersey, USA, the biggest aircraft ever made, the airship Hindenburg caught fire, and within seconds burst into flames killing thirty-five of the ninety-seven people on board.   The actual cause of the spark that caused the explosion was never identified but it is a bizarre fact that the airship actually had a smoking room in the passenger compartment.  OK, it was lined with asbestos and the lighter was chained to the floor and there was a guard permanently on duty but it still sounds a bit reckless to me.  This disaster was the end for great airships and the Zeppelin Company in Friedrichshafen.

There are still Zeppelins flying from Friedrichshafen and we could see tourist flights taking off from the airport for a flight over the city and the lake and across to Switzerland.  If there had been time I think I might have been persuaded to take the trip but bearing in mind the Hindenburg story and the fact that the museum had a whole room devoted to photographs of airship disasters we weren’t terribly keen.