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2001 Tour of Bavaria and Austria
29 September 2001
through 11 October 2001
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29 September
(Saturday morning) we met all our arriving Members at the
Frankfurt Airport. PHIL BROWN was a great help by meeting planes at one end of the concourse while HARRY
COOPER was at the other.
This is a very large airport. Our
friend GERD DIETRICH, a cannonneer from the Crimean Campaign, was there with the deluxe motorcoach that had
wide seats, great legroom, full service galley (stocked with beer and soft
drinks), toilet and even a small office area in the rear.
We went to the
little town of Kiedrich near the Rhine, and checked into our hotel.
It looked like a photo off a postcard!
The entire town looked like Hansel and Gretel would come walking along at
any minute. There our SHARKHUNTERS
gathered for dinner this night, and it was the usual rousing time, with old
friends seeing each other again, and new travelers making new friends.
Actually, about 75% of those on this tour had been with us on other tours
in the past. That speaks well for
the high quality of our SHARKHUNTERS tours.
Our entertainment was a German guy in a tall black topper hat, playing a
hurdy-gurdy. If you are too young
to know what that is, ask your parents.
30 September
(Sunday) found our group at the sumptuous breakfast that included many kinds of
breads, rolls, cereals, jams and toppings, cold cuts of meat, sausages, fruit
and juices and of course, eggs. There
was more great fellowship as the conversation began to flow between friends, and
the hotel owners put American dance band music of the 1940’s over the music
system in the breakfast room, just for us.
After
breakfast, we walked 200 meters or so for church services – in a church that
was built in the 15th century. The
congregation was somewhat amazed the see three full rows of Americans at the 9
O’clock services. They made us
feel welcome, as if we had lived there our whole lives.
The priest gave a sad and impassioned commentary on the 11th
of September attack on America and said that the whole world wept.
Our
breakfast - we had a separate
room
the Niederwalddenkmal
Our motorcoach took us to the beautiful Rhine River and
the Niederwalddenkmal – which is the German way of saying the Monument to the
German unity in the 1800's.
This is a magnificent monument, about 100 feet tall and sitting atop a
mountain along the Rhine. On the way there, WW II German military marches played on the overhead
sound system of the bus while GERD DIETRICH and HORST BERGMANN sang them aloud.
Then came the highlight of a day filled with highlights
– we boarded our boat for the cruise on the Rhine River, with castles around
every bend. The tour was given in
both German and English over the loudspeaker, so we knew exactly what we were
seeing. Every place we looked was a
picture postcard view of this famous river.
Members shot photo after photo, and tremendous amounts of videotape
footage as well. Watch for a SHARKHUNTERS
tape on the Rhine River cruising, available soon.
Our
Rhine River cruise
boat
Castles abound all along the Rhine
When the cruise boat dropped us off, there was time for
souvenir shopping and all soon retired to a nice café for wine and beer.
The band was playing 1950’s American rock and roll, and several German
girls were dancing on the stage. GERD
DIETRICH spoke quietly to one, about 22 years old, and she immediately
grabbed HARRY COOPER from his chair and they began to
dance. (photos below) GERD had to check HARRY's pulse;
he hasn't been 22 for about 44 years!
the
dancers
still alive?
The group left soon and
went back to the hotel for a quick shower, change of clothes and the beginning
of the Welcome Dinner with speeches, toasts with great wine, and more friends
meeting over outstanding food. Sleep came early to some this evening, while others
closed the hotel bar in the wee hours.
1 October (Monday) we departed this fairy-tale little
town of Kiedrich and headed to Heidelberg.
Our group took the tram up to the ruined castle. (photo
below) It was good to be the king - even the prince lived pretty
good........the barons and dukes did all right, too
the castle at
Heidelberg, destroyed in
Outside of the Sinsheim Museum.
the 'Thirty
Years War'
Inside was even more fantastic!
After lunch, we rode to Sinsheim and a fantastic museum.
On entering the first hall, we were confronted by a 1954 Corvette and
then more and more Corvettes and other American classic cars of the 1950’s.
There were cars of every era and from many countries as well as many
racing cars, but that’s not all. There
were extensive and intricate military exhibits with tanks, planes (inside and
outside) as well as dioramas of trench life, soldiers in foxholes – just about
every phase of military activity. There
were many planes outside the museum for all to see – inside and outside,
including the Russian SST. We
walked through all these planes, some suspended as much as 200 or 300 feet in
the air. Two weeks would not have
been enough to cover this huge museum.
We had some light food, then boarded our bus for the ride
to Nürnberg and our four
star hotel there.
2 October (Tuesday) something must be said about this
Four Star hotel and its breakfast buffet. We
measured it off, and the breakfast buffet is some thirty yards long!
It’s got champagne and other fines wines to go with our breakfast.
This is all just the normal breakfast here.
We met our friend MICHAEL KAISER before 0900 and headed out on
our tour of this famous city. We
toured the Hauptmarkt which had been Adolf Hitler Platz in the 1930’s until
1945, when it was renamed Eisenhower Plaza and finally, back to its original
name of Hauptmarkt. There is a
famous fountain there & a beautiful old church (photo below).
We toured the grounds of the three castles and we learned how the city
got its colors of red over white over red then went into a special room, not
open to the public, where the truce of the Thirty-Years War was ended with a
feast. Since a feast was in order,
we enjoyed lunch at an old sidewalk café.
The beautiful old church in
Nürnberg
Room 600 where the trials took place
Then we went to the ‘Palace of Justice’ where
we once again, we allowed into the famous ‘Room 600’ (photo above) where the Nürnberg
trials took place more than half a century ago.
This room is not normally open to the public but then, SHARKHUNTERS
are not the public and we had free run to shoot as many photos and videotapes as
we wished.
What did they think
of our 'Patrol'?
This was the first SHARKHUNTERS
'Patrol' that DAVID STALTER ever took, and he wrote this:
"I
had a fantastic time! I liked best the boat tour on the Rhine, the
Nürnberg tour conducted by our German friends in that city, and the fellow SHARKHUNTERS
on the trip. My best memory is being with a great group of people in a
beautiful country."
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