The background is this: Australia is, strangely enough and no doubt in contravention to all human-rights law, managing to keep its own citizens out of the country, owing to some Kafkaesque lockdown, and also preventing those who do manage to get in from getting back out.
Friend Alice had to move back there recently, and the government-sponsored repatriation flight left from Frankfurt. Sad as it was to lose Alice to Down Under, can you say “road trip”?
I planned the trip so that no day’s driving was longer than 4-6 hours and no moving from place to place every day. Happened upon a recommendation for Trier, the oldest city in Germany.
People, when I say old, I mean OLD.
Take this bridge, for example.
It was built in 149.
Yes, THAT 149, as in the year, AD, year of Our Lord, in the Common Era. As in 1,872 years ago.
Trier has a tagline that goes something like, when Rome was built, Trier was already 1300 years old!
The place had a wonderful feeling. Thanks to a pedestrianized center—even though some people who cannot be named might have accidentally driven through it, all the while locals were running over to the car, waving a finger in admonition—loads of people were out, strolling, window-shopping, stopping here and there for a beer or a coffee, and we saw people running into friends and acquaintances over and over again.
The city is also famous for POTATOES. The king of Kartoffeln!
Indeed, all that keto nonsense went right out the window. . . .
There’s a Roman gate and Roman baths. Everywhere you turn, there is something old, old, OLD.
There’s plenty of much darker history in Trier as well. This little public space was right around the corner from our hotel. I couldn’t read the inscription in the memorial stone very well, but later discovered that it marks the site of the local synagogue, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1938.
Also nearby, sobering and deeply moving, these “stumbling stones,” or stolpersteine, which commemorate those murdered by the Nazis.
At top left, the rabbi of the destroyed synagogue.
Much more Nazi stuff to come, as I went later to Nuremberg.
On a cheerier note, wouldn’t it be fun to drive this?
NOW that is old stuff! And “no” to driving that toy car!
Beautiful pictures!