Walking Along the Rose Route in Hildesheim, Germany.

Walking Along the Rose Route in Hildesheim, Germany.

We were able to stop in Hildesheim for just a few hours on our way to Hamburg, Germany in August 2016, although the lovely city certainly deserved more of our time.  I had developed a deep wanderlust for German cities that were full of half-timbered houses and so Hildesheim had quickly risen to the top of my must-see list.  Walking along the rose route in Hildesheim was a bit inadvertent, however.  I had planned a walking tour for our visit and it just […]

Half-Timbered Houses in Erfurt. | My Meena Life

Half-Timbered Houses in Erfurt.

Erfurt is the capital and largest city of Thuringia, a state in central Germany.  While it’s a popular destination for German tourists, it’s often overlooked in favor of bigger or more well-known cities by foreign tourists.  There are so many reasons to visit the city, from its old town being one of the most intact medieval cities in Germany to seeing the Dom St. Marien, where Martin Luther was ordained.  I’m looking forward to sharing all of the details about […]

Walking Along the Wall of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. | My Meena Life.

Walking Along the Wall of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

The stairs were uneven, the path was narrow, and some portions seemed on the verge of crumbling, but I loved it nonetheless.  Walking along the wall of Rothenburg ob der Tauber may not be for the faint of heart, but it’s a rewarding experience that is worth the possibility of risk.  The city of Rothenburg will gift you with sights of half-timbered homes, stretches of green valleys on the horizon, and peaks of the inner city between rooftops. As my […]

Berlin, I Love Your Trash Cans.

Berlin, I Love Your Trash Cans.

We were walking the streets of Berlin, surrounded by history and beauty, and yet I was looking for trash cans (and bears).  Thankfully they aren’t all that hard to find given their bright orange color.  I thought they were so entertaining that I started taking photos of them about halfway through our weekend there. Why should you love Berlin’s trash cans, too? Because they represent Berlin well. This one is fitting because there are 149 embassies in Berlin (not counting […]

Coming Home to Schweinfurt.

Coming Home to Schweinfurt.

How long does it take for a new place to start feeling like home? Probably not long if you’ve only moved across town, but it took seven months for me after we moved across an ocean. I wasn’t sure that Schweinfurt would ever feel like home during the 13 months we planned to live here, but yet I started having unexpectedly warm fuzzy feelings about going home at the end of a long train ride back from Berlin. Perhaps the […]

About the Schweinfurt Volkfest and Our Next Coaster Trip.

The Schweinfurt Volksfest and About Our Next Coaster Trip.

I’m not going to pretend like Schweinfurt’s Volksfest was impressive, because it wasn’t.  At least not after we’d already been to the larger ones in Würzburg and Nürnberg.  I was also a bit upset when I realized the people running the Schweinfurt Facebook page were using photos of the Volksfest from the previous year (without stating that they were doing so), which led me to believe there were different rides available than there actually were. But it’s not every day […]

The Way of Reflection in Bad Kissingen.

The Way of Reflection (Weg Der Besinnung) in Bad Kissingen.

Bad Kissingen is a small German town that’s only 20 minutes down the train tracks from our own.  The Bad in the mean means ‘bath’ and it indicates that the town has natural hot spring (sorry, there’s no ‘Good Kissingen’ anywhere).  Bad Kissingen has been known as a spa town for an impressive 500 years and (I’ve been told) it’s a magnet for seniors who like to wear matching pant suits. We had lovely spring afternoon to spare while my […]

More Photos of the Nuremberg Volksfest.

More Photos of the Nuremberg Volksfest.

I’ve already shared about our experience at the Nuremberg Volksfest, but I had so many more photos of it to share.  I mean, it had pretty much everything you could ever want… such as a mouse coaster. And musical rides. Plenty of Disney characters. A colorful place to sit and drink beer. A place to get turned around, literally. Cigarette vending machines… Because one in four Germans smoke, you know.  They have these suckers about every few hundred feet (I mean, uh, […]

The Berlin Bears.

The Berlin Bears.

Unlike the Schweinfurt pigs, I didn’t need to work hard in order to find the Berlin bears.  I saw four in my first ten minutes in the city after dropping off the car.  In the end I photographed 24 of them, although I saw a few more than that. The Buddy Bear movement started in Berlin in 2001 during their Buddy Bear Berlin Show.  The idea behind the bears was to welcome people to the city with raised arms, which are […]

A great time at the Nuremberg Volksfest.

A Great Time at the Nuremberg Volksfest.

After our eye-opening trip to the Würzburg Volksfest we knew that we wanted to make the most of the larger one happening later on in Nuremberg.  We decided to spend most of our Saturday there even though we were leaving for Amsterdam early the next morning – and I’m glad we did.  We arrived early via regional train, stopped briefly at the (very disappointing) Nuremberg Easter Market, and then made it to the fairgrounds nearly an hour before the attractions […]