Freistaat Bayern Travel Blogs | Travelogues | Travel Journals

I promised some of you more photos of my hometown. I didn't get to take as many as I would have wanted but there they are!!! My friend and I were driving around the city for a while trying to get good pictures of things but the weather was just not working with us. Once we found a nice spot there was a snow storm rolling in and it got dark and nasty in about 15 minutes. lol Plus it's March and some of the places I'd love to show you just don't look nice enough without snow covering it or flow...

My hometown Passau is known as the City of Three Rivers because the Danube River is joined here by the Inn River from the South, and the Ilz River coming out of the Bavarian Forest to the North. But Passau offers not only lots of water, it is also the site of the St. Stephen’s Cathedral. The “Dom”, as it is called in German, is famous for being a masterpiece of Italian Baroque architecture and for having the world’s largest church pipe organ with a total of 17,774 pipes (the sma...

Every Febuary or March, my husband and I to go Austria for a week of skiing with friends.  And every year we travel the same route through west Germany.  This time we decided to leave a few days early and take a more eastern route.  So out came the '1,000 Places To See Before You Die' book and laptop-website for UNESCO.  Destination...Bamberg.  The fact that this town is over 1000 years old appealed to me and it's reputation as a beer drinker's eden (over 30 varieties...

The city is best known for its association with the composer Richard Wagner, who lived in Bayreuth from 1872 until his death in 1883. Wagner's villa, "Wahnfried", was constructed in Bayreuth under the sponsorship of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and was converted after World War II into a Wagner Museum. To the north of Bayreuth is the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, an opera house specially constructed for and exclusively devoted to the performance of Wagner's operas. The premieres of the final two work...

Herrenchiemsee (Men's Island) The castle on the Men’s Island is one of the biggest tourist attractions in upper Bavaria. In 1873 Ludwig II acquired the island and erected a pompous castle modelled after Versailles. He revered the French Sun-King and created with this castle, a monument to absolute monarchy. It serves less as living quarters, and more as a symbolic spreading of his fame. After his death in 1885 the building was left unfinished. Frauenchiemsee (Women's Island) The Women's...

my trip thru europe by rail.

Mari met me at the train station in Bayreuth and took me on a tour of town.  Mari was my sister's German Exchange Student in High School.  I hadn't met Mari because I was away at college, so this would be our first meeting.  Our first stop was the famous Festspielhaus - where Wagner operas are held to sold out shows for a month in summer.  People travel from all over to come here for the Wagner Festival and operas or just to see this building.  There is a wait list of...

I remember Passau as my lovely city, as i am a child. Every year i stay with my mother thers. In the yeat 2005 i come back with my mother to this beautiful city. Thats was a great holiday!

In the year 2005 my High-School choose the best ten students, who master the German language and reward them with a language course in Munich. I had the luck to be part of them. During this time we got the chance to visit Dachau.  I read and heard a lot about Dachau, but really standing on this ground of evil exceed all my expectations. It was a day full of emotions, teariness about those who had to die, felling sorry for those who survived all the cruelness, and a huge anger of t...

So - time to explore Bamberg then...   We three thousand kings of Bamberg are! When we set off in the morning we were met with the sight of some oddly dressed children scurrying ahead of us.  Further investigation led us to the town square in front of the Rathaus where they were gathering in front of a stage.  It appears that they were engaged in some sort of ‘Three Kings Festival’ organised by the local Catholic churches.  There were thousands of them, all dre...

I took a trip from Munich out to Dachau (about a 25 minute train ride) to see the concentration camp. I saw the crematorium last and wrote in my journal afterwards:"Friday the 13th - what a fitting day to tour a concentration camp. I'm sitting outside the main crematorium (yes, there were 2). Seeing a concentration camp in person is sad, surreal, perplexing, unbelievable (that people can do such things to one another), etc. There is an ample amount of evidence that pain, suffering and tort...

THE MOTHER OF ALL XMAS MARKETS IN EUROPE........ Nuremberg is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. It is situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal and is Franconia's largest city. It is located about 170 kilometres north of Munich, at 49.27° N 11.5° E. Population (as of 01/2006) is 500,132.   Culture   Nuremberg was an early center of humanism, science, printing, and mechanical invention. ...

Fairy tale castles indeed! OK, I admit I was a little sceptical about how beautiful this castle could be, as everyone had raved on about it, but even I, the cynical critic, was flabbergasted. Neuschwanstein is really really beautiful - it's a beautiful white castle, set on a beautiful mountain, surrounded by beautiful forests, and topped off with beautiful lakes! It truly is quite inspired in it's prettiness, as compared to other castles which are fairly blocky or imposing, Neuschwanstein com...

We set our alarm for 7:25am as our goal was to have showers and eat and be on the road by 8:30.  But the shower was a bit of an ordeal for me.  You’d think that after 37 years, I’d have that part of my daily routine down.  But it’s usually the most unexpected things that can throw a wrench into your plans. I got to the shower house, and was happy to see that there were three shower booths open.  I went into one, pleasantly surprised it was dry, and proceeded to lay ...

Oberammergau, Germany, is the location of the famous Passion Play produced every ten years. The tradition began in 1634 in thanksgiving for the town having been spared during the Bubonic Plague. The play is cast and produced entirely by the residents of this Bavarian town. I was fortunate to be able to be there to see the 1970 production of this legendary, and often controversial, dramatic work. In Oberammergau, the townsfolk open their homes to the throngs of visitors co...