Starting an adventure on your own doorstep is something very exciting. With my Via Regia project I was able to do just that. As a warm-up to the Frankfurt to Leipzig route, I walked through the Rhine-Main agglomeration from Mainz to Frankfurt in search of an old long-distance trade route. The Old Mainz to Frankfurt …
What does a centuries-old road through the heart of Germany look like today? This is what I want to find out in the next couple of months, when I walk from Frankfurt to Leipzig on a route that is known as the Via Regia. History of the Via Regia For centuries the Via Regia was …
Globalization may be a modern buzz word, but it is reality in Hamburg for more than 100 years. The city built a whole warehouse district in the late 19th century for precious goods from around the world: the historic Speicherstadt (literally: warehouse city). If you’re in Hamburg, make sure the historic Speicherstadt is on your …
Frankfurt’s central location within Germany made the city into a transportation hub and a place to early medieval times. It was the site of an important annual fair and the place where the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire met for centuries. Today, Frankfurt is part of the Rhein-Main agglomeration of more than five …
Would you travel with a huge balloon-type vehicle filled with explosive gas across the ocean? The 1930s saw a brief period when airships had a technological edge over planes and transatlantic Zeppelin flights made an early service across the ocean possible. German airships are generally known as Zeppelins after Count von Zeppelin, the German …
Revolution had broken out in Russia in early 1917. The First World War had taken it’s toll on the country and unrest led to the end of Tsarism. The war however continued under the new government. Russia’s enemy, Germany, wanting to end fighting in the east, sponsored Lenin’s return to Russia. This led to the …
1848 was a year of unrest in Germany. Inspired by the new French Second Republic, created in February, Germans also wanted more democracy. On 13.April 1848 Friedrich Hecker led a column of about 30 men from Constance in an open attempt to topple the government of the Duchy of Baden and declare a republic. Seven …
In late April 1945, Joe Polowsky was about to be part of a historic event that is at a crossroads of the 20th century. It would change his life forever. It was the first encounter of American and Soviet troops in Nazi Germany, the meeting at Torgau. During Spring of 1945 allied forces were on …
November 2014 saw the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To celebrate the event, light bulbs were placed along a 15 km stretch of the former border in the heart of Berlin. For a whole weekend 8,000 of these lights showed where the city had been divided by the wall for almost …
The Hellweg is the most famous road in Westphalia. This historic region of Germany stretches from the Rhine to the Weser rivers. Following the Westphalian Hellweg today is a journey back in time more than 1,000 years when Charlemagne built this road. The Ruhr Area I was curios how much of the old Westphalian Hellweg …
