Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
The city of Regensburg was founded by the Romans in 179 CE. They created their military fortification called Castra Regina facing the river Donau. The main gate of every of these fortifications was called Porta praetoria and the Porta praetoria of Castra Regina has been preserved throughout the centuries. In fact, in addition to the Porta Nigra of Trier the gate at Regensburg is the only preserved Roman gate in Germany.
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Close to the city center of Regensburg a long bridge spans the river Donau, the Steinerne Brücke. It was built between 1135 and 1146 and was by that time the only bridge crossing the Donau between Ulm and Wien. The bridge is 336 meters long and eight meters wide. With its 16 arches it was the antetype for the famous Karlův most at Praha (516 meters long, built in 1357).
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When you’re visiting a small town with 65,000 inhabitants you’re not expecting to find impressive museums within. Fulda in the heart of Germany is an exception, as it hosts the Vonderau-Museum at the university square in the city center. It was founded in 1875 and is a surprisingly good combination of a natural history museum, an art collection, a lapidary and a planetarium.
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High above the city of Fulda you can find the Franciscan cloister Kloster Frauenberg. If you want to enjoy great views on the city or do some sports (the ascent is quite steep) you should choose to get up. On top of the mountain you can relax in the cloister gardens or a enjoy a coffee at the terrace of the coffee bar of the cloister.
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The Fuldaer Stadtschloß is a special castle: it is used by the city administration as the town hall building, but it is also a museum. When you’re visiting it you’ll have to search for the pompous representative rooms of the past between the many simple offices of the different departments of the administration. But it is a quest absolutely worth doing, the rooms are well-preserved with ancient tapestry, endless mirrors and very rich decorations.
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Close to the city center of Frankfurt am Main you’ll find a pleasure rather unexpected in this central location: the Palmengarten, a botanical garden between high modern houses and ancient homes. It is 22 hectares large and was opened in 1871. The garden expert Heinrich Siesmayer received the order to buy the trees and plants of the orangery of Adolphe, the Duke of Nassau. The garden was created following the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont and the buildings of the World Exhibition of 1867 in Paris. Some elements of that can be seen still today.
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To engage in politics belongs to the DNA of Göttingen, Germany. Every week you’ll see rallies and demonstrations on local, national and international topics. The city has today a strong left scene which is because of the importance of the university (of the 120,000 inhabitants 30,000 are students), but also as a reaction to the fact that the city during Nazi times embraced the NSDAP fast. Already in 1930 the Nazi party received 37.8 % of the local votes.
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We’re all used to modern buildings made of steel and glass. But where was the first of these buildings standing? At New York? At Frankfurt? At Singapore? No, it was built in 1911 in rural Lower Saxony, in a small town named Alfeld an der Leine. Why is that? It has to do with the story of Carl Benscheidt (1858-1947). He was an expert in making shoe lasts, an element still necessary today to produce shoes. A replica of a foot is created from beech wood (today mostly from high-density plastics) and the shoe material is formed around.
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One of the good reasons to visit Hildesheim, Germany, is the RPM; the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum. It is known because of its vast collection on Egypt and that’s something you typically wouldn’t expect: an Egyptology museum in a middle-sized city in rural Lower Saxony. Wilhelm Pelizaeus, a merchant from Hildesheim, was living for 40 years in Cairo and in 1907 he gave his private collection to his hometown. Four years later they were exhibited in a museum created only for this purpose, the Pelizaeus-Museum.
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The cathedral of Hildesheim is a Roman-Catholic church officially named the Dom Mariä Himmelfahrt. Together with the church St. Michaelis it is since 1985 a UNESCO world heritage site and a good example of religious art during the Holy Roman Empire. The composition of buildings itself is already worth a visit, but the site also includes a museum exhibiting the enormous treasures collected over time. Additionally the icon of the city, the so-called 1,000 years old rosebush is also growing in the courtyard of the cathedral – therefore nearly every visitor of the city takes a look inside this treasure box.
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