France

Quaker Center Congenies

We left Darmstadt, Germany by train on November 1 by way of Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Strasbourg, and finally Lyon, France, where we spent the night.  The countryside through Germany continued to be interesting and mostly rural or forest.  However, about the time we crossed over to France at Strasbourg it got dark, so we couldn’t see any more scenery.  Lyon was only a convenient place to sleep because we were really aiming for Nimes.  The countryside on the second day was really pretty.  To my surprise we could see high snow-covered Alps for quite a while. 

 

Quaker Cemetery

At Nimes we caught a local bus to the village of Congenies where there is a Quaker Center with rooms to stay in.  It happened that there was a group of pacifists, les Couflaïres, living in the area from the early 17^th century.  They heard about Quakers in 1785 and some of them went to London to learn more.  They all converted and built a Meeting House in 1822 and there was quite a colony for a time with much visiting back and forth.  Eventually however, the group died out and the building went into other hands.  However, recently the house became available again and was repurchased by Quakers.  When we went to Meeting for Worship there were about 15 people present.  Most of them are British or Americans, but there are also some French members.  There are quite a few rooms to stay in, a nice large sunny Meeting room, a large garden area, and an old cemetery.  The current resident friends, Bonnie and David, are from Greensboro, North Carolina.  We were also invited to a delightful lunch after Meeting by a local couple along with another American couple from the Meeting.  This occupied all of Sunday afternoon.

Congenies town square

Pretty much everywhere we went was very pleasant and interesting.  The village of Congenies has a couple of small stores which open at odd hours.  There is one Catholic and one Protestant church.  We walked up a street and fairly quickly got out to olive trees and small walled fields and scrub land.  The houses in town are all of thick rock with sand-colored plaster and shutters.  The roads widen and narrow through town randomly.  There is a 22 K bike path that runs near the town along an old train track.  There is an hourly bus that goes into Nimes (or Sommieres in the other direction) and only costs 1.50 Euros.  Bonnie and David drove us into Sommieres on Saturday for the market, which is a combination of flea market and food vendors stretching along the river and into the town squares.  The old section of town is mostly pedestrian because the streets are very narrow.  It is very medieval-feeling and also very Mediterranean.  But it was also very bustling with all the people there for the market and felt very alive and vibrant.

Nimes Arena (Roman Amphitheater

Nimes is an interesting city with a number of Roman ruins.  The Arena, a smaller version of the Roman Coliseum, dominates the town square.  It is said to be the best preserved amphitheater remaining and it is still used for bull fights and rock concerts.  There is also an almost perfect temple to Augustus, or rather it was dedicated to his two grandsons and heirs (until they mysteriously died).  Nimes is named after the god Nemausus of the spring in the town, and the garden where the spring is looks very Roman and imperial but is mostly 19^th century.  There is one authentic Roman temple there.  Even though there was a good water source in town, the Romans used so much water for their baths that they, of course, built 19 miles of aqueduct as soon as they started to populate the town.  Plots of land were given to veterans of the legion which defeated Anthony and Cleopatra, so the town symbol is a crocodile chained to a palm tree.

Nimes' Roman Temple

Even without the Roman remains, the town is a delight to walk in.  The old city is again mostly pedestrian because the streets are very narrow.  They randomly open onto little plazas with tables and chairs set out for the cafes and restaurants.  The streets were filled with lots of shoppers, and Nimes also felt like a very modern and busy city, which spreads out far from the old center.  Unfortunately, in general France is a terrible place to try to eat in if you are vegetarian, but we managed.  It is also amusing to me that most places give you no choice about what wine to drink besides red, white or rose, and sometimes the local wine that they served was not all that good.  There was usually more choice among the beers.  In Germany most places had at least a page listing all the wine choices.  We also saw a lot less variety in ethnic cuisines, at least in this area of France.

Pont de Gard

We also took a day excursion out to the Pont de Gard, which is near the beginning of the Nimes aqueduct.  It is a magnificent structure, of course, over the Gard River with 3 tiers of arches.  It has been well preserved probably partly because it is far out in the middle of nowhere and also because the water system continued to work for a couple of hundred years.  There is also an archeological dig there in a big cave that has prehistoric remains from 20, 000 years ago.  There was not a lot of information posted yet, but we could watch the people working.  There is also a good museum with lots of information about Romans and their water use and technology.

Archeological dig

We really liked Southern France.  The countryside is pleasant and almost every village and town looked like it would be fun to spend time in.  There is a lot that we didn’t see, but after 5 days we decided to continue on to Spain.  We decided to avoid Barcelona for the moment, and so we took a train from Nimes to Toulouse and then to Bayonne on the Atlantic coast.  From Nimes to Narbonne, we could catch glimpses of the Mediterranean, and from Toulouse onward we could often see snowcapped Pyrenees.  Lourdes was the train stop closest to the mountains.

Bayonne

Although we were basically only in Bayonne for one evening and one morning in order to catch a train into Spain, we really enjoyed walking around the city.  It is in the French Basque country, and we could get a little flavor of that culture.  The architecture was more French than Mediterranean with iron work balconies.  The roads in the old town were still narrow and pedestrian.  It confirmed the thought that everywhere is picturesque.

Darmstadt

Cousins in Frankfurt

On Friday, October 26, we took the train from Munich to Darmstadt, a city near Frankfurt.  Ron has been here a number of times because his ancestors come from this area of Germany, but this is my first time.  Ron has two distant cousins here whom he has met and stays in email contact with.  They hosted and fed us often during our stay.  However, on our first night, we ended up being on our own, so we used the opportunity to go to the Opera – The Tales of Hoffman by Offenbach.  The Staatstheater is a very nice modern building and the Opera is very reasonably priced.  This is not an opera I was familiar with, but I enjoyed the music and production very much.

Waldspirale

Saturday we woke up to snow falling – quite unexpected as the previous weather had been pleasantly mild.  Nonetheless our cousin Andi and his wife Akiko showed up and we did a walking tour of Darmstadt, which is a pleasant small city.  Its claim to fame is as a center of the Jugendstil movement, the German branch of Art Nouveau, because of its arts colony called Matildenhoehe.  There was an interesting exhibit at the Museum Kuenstlerkolonie about the movement, and there are a number of houses in the area built in that style around the beginning of the 20^th century.  There is also a Russian Orthodox church built there for the wedding of Nicholas II of Russia to Alexandra of Hesse.  This couple and their children met an unfortunate end after the Russian Revolution of 1917.  Later we also saw the Waldspirale, an avant-garde apartment building by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, a modern architect, in 2000.

True love

Andi and Akiko also took us into Frankfurt the next day.  We walked across an iron pedestrian bridge over the Main River which I was amazed to see had hundreds, possibly thousands of locks attached to it.  I had recently read that this is a new fad based on a scene in a best-selling young adult novel.  A couple in love has their initials engraved on a lock; then you affix the lock to a bridge and toss the key into the river, and your love will last forever.  Some towns are disturbed by their historic bridges being defaced, not so much by the locks but by the graffiti of disgruntled lovers after it turns out not to be true eternal love.  I didn’t see any graffiti on the bridge. 

Goethehaus

The main attraction of our walk around Frankfurt was a visit to the Goethe house, where he was born and grew up.  The actual house was destroyed during the war but rebuilt.  Goethe’s parents were well to do, and the house was a well done re-creation of their life style.  My favorite piece was a large Grandfather clock that included an image of a man with a dancing bear.  When the clock needs to be rewound, the bear falls over on its back.

1806 Wetteroth house

That afternoon we had tea at the house of Ron’s other cousin Sabine.  On a different day Sabine took us to some town archives to do further research on some of the ancestors.  On our own, we also went out to the outlying villages of Greisheim, Babenhausen and Altheim, where various Wetteroths had lived and worked since at least 1725.  Ron had seen all these places before, but they were new to me, and I very much enjoyed them.  Many of the houses are built in a half-timbered style, and some of the towns are very quaint with narrow streets.  The countryside is pleasantly rural. 

Altheimkirche

I have enjoyed Germany.  However, we took the snow and the subsequent cold weather as a sign that it was time to head south rather than stay in Middle Europe.  Our next stop is the South of France where there is a Quaker Center near Nimes. 

Munich

View from our apartment

On Saturday, October 20, we left Vienna by train about 10 a.m.  to go to Munich for a week.  Typically for our excursions, the day was overcast, even occasionally rainy, and the visibility not good.  However, eventually the weather did clear up, so that by the time we reached Salzburg, the day was sunny, and we could get a good view of the mountains and lakes.  We arrived in Munich in the mid afternoon and our new landlady kindly met us at the train station.  Our new apartment is only a few blocks walk from the station on the fourth floor – with lift.  This is a much smaller apartment compared to Vienna, but has large windows overlooking an interior

Linderhof Palace

courtyard with a mural on the opposite wall to make the view more interesting!  This area of town is a little edgy – lots of casinos and strip clubs, but there are museums within a half mile and the town center.  In fact, our first evening we walked into the town center, which is pedestrian only.  Lots and lots of people out shopping and milling about and either pushy or oblivious.  There is the cathedral and other churches and the Rathaus (town hall) very neo-gothic and ornate.

Linderhof garden

Sunday morning we went to Meeting for Worship, which was in a Lutheran Church social room about 6 blocks from our apartment.  There were only 5 other people besides us because a number of regulars were at Yearly Meeting.  None the less, the meeting is usually under a dozen people.  Since it is so small, they have the nice habit of spending an extra hour or so with Worship Sharing, so we got to know them fairly well.  The area near the Meeting is also where a number of the art museums are, so after lunch we went to the Neue Pinakothek, which is newer because it has 19^th and 20^th century works.  We saw a lot of older works until we finally came to the last 2-3 rooms with a number of Van Gogh, Manet, Cezanne, and Rodins that were quite lovely.

Oberammergau

The absolute high point of the week was a bus tour out to King Ludwig’s castle of Neuschwanstein.  Once again, the day started out overcast, almost foggy, but as we climbed into the mountains, we got above the clouds.  Our first stop was the mountain retreat palace of Linderhof, a comparatively small but amazingly ornate lodge.  Ludwig frequently did not like people around him, so his dining room table was on a piece of floor which could sink down to the kitchen, be set with all the food, and then raised back into his dining room.  One of the rooms was octagonal and had mirrors on all the walls,

Hohenschwangau Palace

so the room seemed to stretch out to infinity in all directions.  There is something of a peacock motif, and 2 large porcelain peacocks were placed outside the entrance when

the King was in residence.   We then had an hour’s stop in Oberammergau, where the once a decade Passion Play is held.  It has many shops with carved wood and other souvenirs.  Many of the houses are painted with scenes and designs on their exterior, a common practice in Bavaria to show of your wealth.  All through this area we were passing along high, craggy Alps.

Neuschwanstein Castle

Finally we got to Neuschwanstein.  For me it is really the setting itself which is the most moving, almost whether there were a castle there or not.  There is a little alpine lake, a larger lake, many craggy peaks, and a wide plain.  To top it off, there were beautiful fall colors on the trees.  We elected to take a shuttle bus up the mountain rather than walk.  The bus lets you off so that you can walk to a marvelous bridge (Mariabroecke) which spans high over a gorge with waterfalls.  The bridge overlooks the castle.  It is all just incredibly gorgeous.  The castle itself was not completed because of Ludwig’s

View into gorge from bridge

death, but the parts that are complete are on view.  I guess because of the large number of tourists, the tours are timed and quite regimented, and you can’t take pictures inside.  You do not have time to look at the many paintings on the wall, all of which are based on various German myths, most of which were turned into Wagnerian operas.  The palace is an homage to Wagner, although he never got there.  He did, however, often visit the palace of Ludwig’s parents, Hohenschwangau, which is in the village below Neuschwanstein, and is where Ludwig mostly grew up.  We bought a book about the castle in the gift store which gives us a good look at the paintings.

One of the views from castle

Tuesday, back in Munich, we went to the Alte Pinakothek, which is the old art museum.   It was pretty overwhelming after a while.  There were Jan Brueghel and Peter Brueghel, Lucas Cranach and Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Durer, Da Vinci, Raphael, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, and Canaletto.  The museum particularly favored Peter Paul Rubens.  His monumental The Last Judgment has pride of place in the central gallery.  The piece is so large – 6 meters tall – that the room was especially built to house that painting.

Front of the castle

Wednesday we went to the Deutches Museum, which is their museum of Science and Industry.  Again, we probably tried to see too much.  We enjoyed their display of sailing vessels (or models) of different types, cultures and eras.  Actually there were modern, non-sailing vessels also.  They also had a beautiful exhibit of musical instruments.  After lunch we took a tram over to the “English” Gardens, which is the

Rathaus

main city park.  English tends to mean naturalistic, with winding paths through woods, rather than French, which straight walks through formal gardens.  We then took the tram back into the city center, looking into various churches, including the main Cathedral, which is huge and very gothic.  Almost everything was destroyed in part or whole during the war, and it is interesting how much was rebuilt to look the same as before the war, particularly because many of the churches had already been rebuilt 2 or 3 times since maybe the 12^th century.  We were lucky to chance to be in the main square at 5 o’clock when the clock strikes in the Rathaus tower.  First a

Clockwork joust

circle of peasant dancers went around twice and then on the level below a set of knights jousted.  The second time around one of the knights tumbled over.  All this time, of course, there is a great peal of bells.

Not even the full panorama of Nymphemburg Palace

Entrance to palace

Thursday, our last day, we took a tram out to the Nymphenburg Palace.  This was mostly occupied by rulers a couple of generations before the famous King Ludwig, but they were pretty odd in their own way.  This is a typical palace, enlarged many times with a huge garden and hunting grounds around it.  Folks used to boat around on gondolas in the basins and canals.  It was a summer palace and one of the expansions was to please the queen, who named it Nymphenburg, because she envisioned herself out there surrounded by maids and children.  Later one of the kings created a Hall of Beauty with 36 portraits of some of the most beautiful women he could find.  I’m not sure if his queen was included.

Hall of Beauties

We enjoyed our five days in Munich, and we think that we could enjoy more of the Bavarian countryside and Alps, but don’t feel compelled to return to Munich.   On Friday October 26, we boarded the train to Darmstadt, a city in Hessen near Frankfurt where the Wetteroth ancestors are from.