We look down Menenstraat towards the center of Ypres from the same position at Menin Gate 100 years apart. Behind us, the street crosses the rampart and moat of the old fortifications and leaves the town towards Menen. Narrow, three-story brick houses line the cobbled street. It leads to the famous Gothic cloth hall …
Traffic on the main street of Salmünster is reduced to a few cars of the local people as a result of the freeway and the modernized road that is avoiding the historic center. A large number of the buildings along the main street are either half-timbered houses or have their walls covered with wooden shingles …
Office buildings, car dealerships, fast food restaurant and retail outlets line up for five kilometers on both sides of the road that leaves Frankfurt to the east. The Hanauer Landstrasse seems to have nothing to do with a historic route. But then again, you can find one of these traces of the past: Hidden between …
Imagine a railway pulling super-heavy trains across a mountain range in the Arctic. That’s the Ore Line from Kiruna to Narvik. There are several ways you can explore this impressive route. Iron ore from the mine at Kiruna in Swedish Lapland is shipped by this railway for more than 100 years now to the ice-free …
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 …
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 …
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 …
The Kokoda Track is a great example of how a historic route can be meaningful for people today. Site of a decisive jungle campaign in the Pacific War, it is a place for both commemoration and personal challenge today. Every year several thousand people travel to Papua-New Guinea to walk a jungle track across the …
42.195 km or 26 miles and 385 yards. Those numbers are familiar to the hundreds of thousands of people, who take up running as a sport. It is the distance of a Marathon Race. Many runners know that it commemorates the Battle of Marathon in ancient Greece. However, there are some surprising facts, when …
After loosing the Battle of the Marne, the German offensive according to the Schlieffen plan had failed. The exhausted First Army had to retreat and entrenched north of the Aisne river on the slope of the Chemin des Dames (Ladies path) ridge. The allied forces soon attacked the position without success and entrenched as well. This …
