A rainy weekend at home was the inspiration for me to perfume the house with aromas from freshly baked cinnamon stars. This traditional German cookie is a staple at every Christmas market and rather easy to make. Here they are fresh out of the oven! Golden brown and partially glazed. Note that half of the… Continue reading Resting from travel – baking instead

A week has passed since we returned from Germany's capital - a marker that inspired me to write these closing thoughts. We too LOVE Berlin -a city that in its myriad ways delights and surprises visitors. From historic buildings to fantastic food and its charming inhabitants, this city deserves a higher rank on people's travel… Continue reading Berlin for Thanksgiving – closing thoughts

Today we discovered an amazing project which will be revealed to the public in 2019. Located on Museum island, the former Prussian Palace which was heavily damaged in WWII and subsequently imploded in the 50s to make room for the Socialist Workers Party Headquarters, has painstakingly been rebuilt over the past 15 years. In an… Continue reading Germany for Thanksgiving – A palace rebuilt

Few cities share tumultuous histories like Berlin does. One excellent way to discover how ordinary people coped with the division and the wall is with the Berlin Undrground tours organization. Greg and I chose your M which introduced us to some of the successful tunneling projects that allowed Eastern Germans in small (8 to 15)… Continue reading Germany for Thanksgiving – digging through history

Instead of lining up at the break of dawn in a futile attempt to snag a TV on sale, we slept in at our fabulous Rocco Forte De Rome hotel situated in the best part of the city across from the Deutsche Staatsoper. Breakfast completes, Our leisurely stroll began at the Deutscher Dom built during… Continue reading Germany for Thanksgiving – Black Friday sightseeing

15 years after our first trip to Germany's capital, we returned to the former east Berlin for dinner in the Nikolaiviertel at Alt-Berliner Weissbierstube. The first sign that greeted us was the now brightly lit U-Bahn station sign above. The second sight was Berlin's tallest landmark the TV Tower peacefully scraping the lower reaches of… Continue reading Germany for Thanksgiving – Berlin

With a restful night behind us, we bundled up (windy and 37 degrees) and walked through the Western section from our hotel by the memorial church on Kurfürstendamm to the palace of the Prussian monarchs in Charlottenburg. Built first as a summer residence in the 17th century for the self crowned King Friedrich I and… Continue reading Germany for Thanksgiving – Charlottenburg

A short three hour train ride in Germany's high speed train network, we arrived at the birthplace of the VW Beetle back in 1938. Wolfsburg is the world's largest car plant, beating out the River Rouge complex by Ford and Toyota's mother plant. Below you can see the massive size of it all. Factory aside,… Continue reading Germany for Thanksgiving – Autostadt Wolfsburg

Picking up our tradition of Thanksgiving overseas trips away, Greg and I met in Frankfurt as I was already in Europe for work. Our journey will take us to the famed Wolfsburg plant of Volkswagen before heading to Berlin. Stay tuned as we explore the German capital and all this world-class city has to offer.

On this unusually warm and sunny winter day, I undertook a walking tour of Nuremberg's documentation site the NAZI regime called its headquarters between 1931 and 1945. My tour began at the exhibition wing of the building once designated to have become Hitler's plenary hall with room for up to 30'000 spectators. Built to resemble… Continue reading Nuremberg – Reflections on the Dark Day’s of history

With an afternoon to spare I chose to visit the railway museum for the German railway Deutsche Bahn which is considered the worlds oldest rail museum. One of the prime exhibits is the imperial train set built for King Ludwig II in 1866 which comprised of 8 rail cars. Due to two world wars (see… Continue reading Nuremberg – Deutsche Bahn Museum

With three days of meetings and a second overnight trip to Manhattan within a couple of weeks behind me, I thought I would share the newest architecture with you. On a sunny afternoon, I had a bit of time to meander through Manhattan before my flight and guided by my dear friends Jim & Kurt,… Continue reading New York’s evolving architecture – a new take

"Can you hear the drums Fernando" are the  opening lyrics to the song that escorted me for the past 42 years.  42 years - I cannot believe it! Now to be perfectly honest, I hadn't thought about writing a blog on music but when I heard the latest version recorded by legendary CHER for the… Continue reading Ode to the song of my life…

I had 9 hours to contemplate this trip and my experiences aboard SAS back to San Francisco. Stand out #1 Our last meal in Oslo at the we established Lofoten restaurant where fresh seafood delighted our pallets. Regular readers will have noticed that I didn't blog about meals this time in the same frequency. The… Continue reading Scandinavian Jaunt – wrap up