We SO Did Not Expect This in Kazakhstan

Everyone has expectations when they are going somewhere new, but sometimes they get blown out of the water

Kazakhstan was unknown to us before we came here, and pretty much to everyone else.  It is not a place that would register on anyone's radar.  So when we got here we were surprised when we found this place is full of ... surprises.

The first few days were spent in and around the largest city Almaty (pronounced All-Moddy).  And then we went to the outback where it was hot and dry and remote and amazing.  

Last night, after our return from the hinterlands, we made our way - on the gleaming new subway - to the top of a nearby hill via cable car to a location that overlooks the city.  But we did not expect to find a vibrant and crowded amusement park.  It was also amazing.  

This picture above was taken overlooking the city, on one of those giant slingshot thrill ride things that shoots you up into the sky.  The picture turned out magical I thought.  Check out the image on the camera phone.

By the way, the new subway system here has the largest escalator in the known world.  We were rather astounded when we got to our final stop to see the escalator rise up from the underground rail - it was at least ten stories high, it was unreal!  It went on forever.  Pictures don't do justice to the distance covered by this mechanism.  Check out the riders halfway up. 

There were tons of people up there at the top, it was big amusement park, like anywhere else in the world, which was something we did not expect.  Especially after being out in the boonies where things are rough and there is ancient history around every corner.   

And what was even more interesting was that there seems to be a prosperous middle class.  These folks are well dressed with good haircuts.  They were spending money left and right.  They almost seemed to be affluent.  

We captured a moment at the viewpoint with the city of Almaty in the background as the sun dropped over the horizon.

 

Up to the Mountain Top we go! 

We had planned on going up into the surrounding mountains, looking forward to forest and rivers and nature, and today was the day for that.  And again we were completley stunned by what we encountered.   

We made our way up from the city by bus about 25 kilometers into the mountains.  It doesn't take long to get up high and soon we were at a large world-class skating rink with a backdrop of spectacular snow capped peaks. 

And there was a new modern cable car system that efficiently shuttles passengers for Six Kilometers into the mountains.  The views were so impressive that you would have thought you were high in the Swiss Alps or the Colorado Rockies. 

And once you get to the top, there is a new modern ski resort "village".  Apparently this is one of best in Central Asia.  People come from all over to ski here.  We did not expect this. 

And then there was yet another chair lift kind of thing to shuttle you up even farther, to an altitude of almost 10,000 feet, with incredible views - not only of the mountains, but the valley floor below.  It was an elaborate well planned system of gondolas and lifts designed and run by the Kazaks.  Again, very impressive.   

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I have to be honest here, full disclosure, I was a little nervous on this whole excursion, once we left the ground.  Certainly not because of the operation, it was top notch.  It was because of my "apprehension" about heights.  I get real uneasy being up high off the ground, and this whole day was a challenge.  We were way up super high on the cable cars and chair lift - way out of my comfort zone.  I guess I'm just wired that way.    

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But we never imagined that Kazakhstan would have something this sophisticated.  This is a well functioning country with a temendous potential. The same people who built the sandstone monuments in the desert that have lasted for a thousand years are the ones building these well engineered modern mechanisms that can tame mountains. 

Wednesday is our last day here in Kazakhstan.  We have really enjoyed the time here.  The people are friendly and we have felt completely comfortable and safe the whole time.  They seem to be well educated, productive, clean, and peaceful. 

This big city of Almaty is filled with wonderful big parks and trees.  And of course, as confirmation that the modern world has reached K-stan, they have a Starbucks! 

 

How Many Ways Can You Get Around in Kazakstan? Anybody Got a Camel?

In the last 24 hours we've been really active, traveling across a wide stretch of Kazakhstan

We traveled on foot, by car, and by overnight train.

I thought I would show a bunch of pictures in this blog post, because they can tell the story well.  

We started out yesterday in Turkistan, the place with the crummy hotel, and set off across what they call the "steppe".  This is the vast grassland that makes up much of K-stan.  I'm gonna use that abbreviation because it's hard to keep typing out Kazakhstan. 

It is pretty dry here.  They have water problems, as in - not enough.   But the hot and dry climate has been a tremendous aid in preserving the historical and ancient ruins that dot the landscape.

As we traveled by car for a couple hundred miles, we passed a lot of scenery, including a whole bunch of camels, just kind of walking down the road.

Then we came to the ancient village of Otrar.  It is very remote, but was once a part of the Silk Road where goods traveled from east to west.  They mostly used ... you guessed it - camels - to travel back and forth.

There were some amazing buildings, and the area was described in one sense as a ghost town, but people still live and work around there.  I would describe it as a remote village that contains a lot of historic ruins.  There are a lot of such villages and towns in that region. 

One of the more amazing things was a giant mound that looked like a hill.  It was previously in ancient times a full-on town with a palace and other structures.  Then Genghis Khan showed up and conquered the place ... and killed everyone.  

He was generally a pretty fair player but for some reason he was really pissed at these guys.  Our guide told us the story.  

They are restoring the place basically by digging away all the dirt to reveal the buildings.  

There are a ton of archaeologists here involved in active research and uncovering the past.  Seems like the whole country is full of sites.  You can't stick a shovel in the ground here without finding another historical treasure or something of cultural significance. 

We spent a lot of time in the car on the way, and our driver stopped a couple times to encourage us to sample the local produce.  They are big on melons here, and they were delicious.  Fiona captured me with a big smile on my face eating watermelon on the side of the road.  It was a nice break on a hot dry day. 

We pressed on to the city of Shymkent (pronounced Shim Kent) where there were even more ruins.  I won't keeping bombarding readers with more ancient ruin pictures, but the landscape was interesting, and we began to encounter more mountains.  

This scene shows a special feature of K-stan - Apple Trees.  This country is known as the origin of apples, and they grow everywhere, with a vast variety, many we've never seen before.  And all kinds of other tree fruits: Plums, Pears, Apricots, Peaches, Pomegranates, plus Walnuts and Pistachios and a bunch of other stuff. 

At night we made our way to the train station in Shymkent to take the all night train back to Almaty. It was another decent sleeper car and we arrived back in the city in the morning.  On the way we were able to see the majestic mountains that surround the city. 

When you walk out of the train station, there is a statue of a soldier standing in the sun with the mountains behind him.  Couldn't resist the picture. 

After checking into the hotel, we went for a walk around the city.  We hit some of the local colorful street markets and eventually hit the central park that houses the massive Church of Saint Nicholas. It was nice to see a church, there are more mosques here in K-stan, although they are not known as a particularly religious society.  The mosques are mostly empty.

This is a Russian Orthodox church.  This being a former Soviet Union country, there is a lot of Russian influence here (I want to expand on that in another blog post).  Of course, the Orthodox church uses a lot of iconography in their worship.  The interior of this place was eye-popping.

We're back in Almaty for a couple days.  We are planning to take a trip outside the city tomorrow up into the mountains for some hiking.  It will be nice to be up in the trees and lakes.  

A Long Train Ride Into the Middle of Nowhere - A Mixed Bag in Kazakhstan

 

 

Getting deep into the heart of Kazakhstan, overnight on the train ... So far, so good, well ... read on 

We were not really sure what to expect in Kazakhstan,  It's a rather unknown place, so we spent our first full day walking around in the largest city and former capital, Almaty, to have a look.  The population is somewhere nearly 2 million, and it's more modern that we anticipated.  In fact, because of oil and other natural resources, Kazakhstan is the more prosperous of the "stans" (the former Soviet Bloc countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, etc.) 

This country has gone through a lot of positive changes since gaining official independence in 1991.  The place is  clean and relatively organized, and the people seemed quite good-natured. They immediately notice that we are not locals, and have been consistently curious about where we are from. 

The buildings here in the capital are on a rather grand scale, with exaggerated Soviet style architecture and wide boulevards. In the picture below, the building was so big I could only get half of it in the frame.

 
After we spent the whole day walking around and seeing the sights in Almaty, we finished up the day by heading to the train station. We were on our way to Turkistan, a distant city in a different region of the country.  A note about the name:  Most places ending with "stan" are countries, but our destination was a town in a place that used to be almost like a country back in the old days. 

It was late at night and it started to rain.  The train trip to Turkistan was going to take twelve hours, but we had tickets that included a sleeping cabin with two beds.  It turned out to be a nice compartment, with service minded staff.  After a rocky start, we left the station and rode off into the night. 

It was indeed a long trip.  You'd better have a good book or two, which we did.  Traveling by train can be relaxing to the point of boring(?) but we made the best of it, and since we were so darn tired, we slept all night until 6:30 in the morning, when the train stopped to load and unload some passengers.

 
We had still had some time to kill so I went down to explore the dining car, and soon we actually enjoyed a nice breakfast, of four cups of coffee, three eggs each, a bunch of bread, and some kind of meat of undetermined origin.  And since everything in this country is inexpensive, the breakfast only cost around six dollars for the two of us.  

 


We arrived at Turkistan at 9:30 and were met there at the train station by our guide for the next couple days, and we went to check in at our hotel.  It was a Soviet style block building that looked rather foreboding.  It turned out to be just that.  I'll expand on that story in a moment.  

We had a full day of exploring to do, so we set off right away. There are some spectacular ancient buildings within walking distance and we made our way across the dry (and increasingly hot) landscape.  It can get pretty hot in this region of Kazakhstan, as we found out later in the day. 

 

Upon close inspection, the tiles coating the large structures are hand painted, and seem to last forever in this dry climate.  This one pictured below is about eight inches across.  It was placed on the outside wall in the year 1475.







This part of the world is one of the most remote and little known on planet earth.  When you walk up to a gigantic structure built in the 1500's, on a wind-swept, sweltering, empty, arid wasteland, you wonder - who built this in the first place and why?  Why here? What great civilizations have existed and vanished and most people never heard of them?

Okay, that's a lot of unanswered rhetorical questions, but that stuff does cross your mind.  It took twenty years to build this using thousands of captured slaves from all over Central Asia.  And despite the sands of time and a history of conflict, it still stands.

Not to mention, how did they pull this off?  Kind of like the pyramids of Egypt, just how did they have the engineering and construction know-how to get this done?

There is a lot of ancient history involved in these structures and this region. But the pictures help tell the story.  This is why you travel - or at least why we travel. 

So back to the Hotel in Turkistan ...  This is not why you travel

Okay let's be honest, our hotel looks like a Russian prison.  We get to our room on the fourth floor, walking up the stairs.  There are two elevators, but we are told they haven't worked in years.   The room looks serviceable, at least the air conditioning works, or on second thought the controls don't work, but it's running.  

We promptly leave on an all day walking tour.  We spent the day on a walking tour of the town of Turkistan, and after visiting the old ruins and fortifications, we made our way through the local bazaar. 

 



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Upon our return to the hotel at the end of the day, we enter our room and it smells like a sewer.  Really bad.  I go into the bathroom to have a look and I flush the toilet, and it backs up into the shower. The sink also backs up.  (Side note to my fellow Americans - and I've said this before - we have the best plumbing in the world).

And when I look at the drinking glass on the bathroom sink, it has a huge jagged break with open shards, and it's filthy and there is some kind of hideous liquid in the bottom of the glass.

So I'm still thinking I can cope with this and I will grab a towel and clean up the water coming out of the bottom of the toilet, and notice that we are supplied with only one small towel.  If I use it to clean up, then we have nothing for our stay.   All in all, the room is disgusting.

Okay, that's enough of this grief, I'm gonna go down to the desk and tell these guys we want another room.  Only, as I'm walking down the four flights of stairs, I realize they will not be able to speak English and I can't speak Kazak and will probably get nowhere.  So I try anyway and the front desk clerk just stares at me.  

Long story short, we are able to find our guide who instantly assumes the role of international diplomatic negotiator, trying to get these morons to move us to another room.  They are not having it, "so your room smell like poop and there are no enough towel and there is sewage on floor and you have broken glass with disease and disgusting unsanitary issue ... so, what is the problem?"

After haggling and kicking up a fuss, we finally get another room. So we move our stuff over the new room and the maintenance guy starts jamming a steel rod down into the sink because it is stopped up with cigarette butts.  Is this an improvement?

We get down to the lobby to go out for our dinner and the front desk jerk says, what happened to the towel in your room?  I tell him "we took it to the other room, because there are two people and one small towel doesn't cut it."

And our tour guide (still acting on our behalf) says, "just let them use it as a token for their inconvenience", and the hotel staff guys says rather indignantly, "what about my inconvenience - I had to move them to another room!"

They have a long way to go in terms of customer service. Oh well, it's only one night here.

Tomorrow we move on to another distant city, Shymkent, near Uzbekistan.  Then at the end of the day, we take another overnight train ride back to Almaty, so the next blog post is a couple days away. 

Why on Earth Would You Want to Go to Kazakhstan? Well, Here We Are!

If travel is in your blood, you just want to go places ... a while back Fiona and I set our minds on Kazakhstan for a few reasons, and we arrived here late last night.  

When we would tell people that we had planned a trip here, the first response we would usually get was  - Why?

The inspiration to travel comes from a lot of different sources - curiosity, adventure, wanderlust, and to experience different cultures, sights, language, food, and music.  In this particular case, I had been looking at an old magazine with a story and pictures about Kazakhstan, and it looked like a really fascinating but unknown place.

So I walked in the other room and said to Fiona, "I want to go to Kazakhstan", and she replied "Me too!"  She was reading a book about the place called:  Apples are from Kazakhstan.  

Apparently, apples are said to have originated in Kazakhstan, and tulips too.  Not completely sure on this topic, but hey, who are we to argue the point.  Why not go there and find out!

So we flew here and landed late last night, arriving at our hotel here at about 1:30 in the morning, and it was raining hard.  It's thirteen hours different than Oregon, so as I write this at 10:00 on Friday morning, it's 9:00 Thursday night at home.  

Today's Geography Lesson

Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world, with a population of 18 million.  It's one of the "Stans" - you know, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and a few others.  Considered to be mostly part of Asia, it is a former Soviet Bloc country, but has been independent for about thirty years.

It is a country rich in natural resources, with a lot of oil, making it one of the more prosperous in the region.   Almaty is the capital, a fairly large city, surrounded by mountains.  There are remnants of the Russian influence here, but the people speak Kazak and look like a combination of Middle Eastern, India, Mongolia, and China. 

I took this from Wikipedia:  The name "Kazakh" comes from the ancient Turkic word Qaz: to wander - reflecting the Kazakhs' nomadic culture.  The name "Cossack" is of the same origin.  The Persian suffix "-stan" means "land" or "place of", so Kazakhstan can be literally translated as "land of the wanderers".

At one time, the Silk Road ran along here

We stay here until tonight, when we take an overnight train to Turkestan, an historic city some 560 miles away.  The history of this area runs back to ancient times, when the East and West would trade spices and tresures on what was known at the Silk Road.  It's how Marco Polo made his way to China.  Genghis Khan conquered a lot of this territory back during his empire in the year 1200.

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The southern border of Kazakhstan is formed by the Himalayas, and the city of Almaty is tucked up against the mountains (shown in the picture below).  There are some pretty spectacular views here.     

 

This is a huge country and since we only have a few days, we will not be able to cover much except across the southern region.  Kinda of like taking a train trip from Los Angeles to Dallas.  We will see some parts of the country, but much of Kazakhstan spreads out to the north and becomes a vast expanse of farm land, like the great plains. 

So far we've just spent some time in the city, but it seems mellow with tree lined streets and pleasant people.  I took this picture below when we went for a walk this morning.

 

And I will leave you with one amusing note:  We grabbed a tourism pamphlet and were leafing through it when we came to the following statement, shown in the picture: 

"Almaty is now in the top 10 most attractive cities in the world as far as tourism is concerned ... blah, blah ... sharing this recognition with (places such as) Rio de Janiero, Sarajevo, Liverpool ... Glasgow, and ... Portland!"  

Hey man, they even know about Oregon in Kazakhstan!

 

 

Tomorrow we will be on the train all day, so probably no blog post.  But there seems to be some really interesting sights we will encounter and I look forward to sharing. 

Never Trust What A Brochure Says - Unless It's This One!

 

The front of the brochure said:  "Whoever is interested in seeing and experiencing how a community has grown up organically over the centuries ... This in the right place"

As a history and travel buffs, how can we turn down a teaser in a sentence like that?  Actually we had already decided to go the the well preserved town called Budingen in the hills about an hour away from Frankfurt.  It's a nice train ride out of the big city, through the countryside, and back in time ...

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Actually, hold on a bit ... when we left off yesterday Fiona was still on her way here to Germany from Senegal.   I made my way to the other side of this incredibly vast Airport in Frankfurt and collected her off the flight from Dakar via Amsterdam.  We were happy to see each other, it had been very busy ten days for her in Africa on behalf of our Andando Foundation. The first thing she wanted to do was have a good shower. 

After she got cleaned up and caught up, we made our way into the city center by train.  Frankfurt is a rather modern city compared to many others in Europe, and it’s a financial center with high-rise office buildings.  But despite that, there is a lot to see and do, and the walking was great, with a lot of historic sites and nice parks to wander through.   

And of course the River Main - pop quiz, who remembers how to pronounce the name?  - Hint: "Mine" -  There were some local sportsmen (with a female coxswain) engaging in ... crew?

We had dinner at a sidewalk cafe, Fiona got the schnitzel.  There was a choir (a group of students) singing in the middle of the plaza. They were very pleasant to listen to.  

   

There was also a guy playing fiddle and flute.  Oh, and a guy playing accordion with a sax player. Lots of music, everywhere, gotta love that.  

We walked and walked, we had a lot of things to catch up on. 

 There were some awesome parks, and we found ourselves by the big, dramatic, Opera House.  Get it?  Dramatic ... Opera?

And we came across this rather bizarre piece of artwork.  I was gonna try a caption contest on this ... but, you would never guess the title ... David and Goliath.  Sure, if you say so!  The thing was huge, about 20 feet tall.  Weird. 

After all the travel and time zones, and walking, we had a good night's sleep.

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We wanted to get out of the city  

We had received some advice that a really nice out-of-the-way historic town/village was worth a visit.  The advice mentioned that “it was not bombed during WWII so all the medieval historic buildings are still intact”.  I guess that’s a major qualifier for German towns.  It was called Budingen.  (pronounced Booed-in-Gin)

The transport in Germany is excellent and we traveled by efficient modern train for probably sixty miles, with a couple of transfers on the way.  It was a beautiful way to see the countryside on a very nice summer day.  We didn’t know a whole lot about where we were going, but y'know, we often just kinda like to roll with it.  
We were not disappointed.  

The info said: (once you get there) just leave the train station, turn right, and start walking.  As we passed through the small town, the buildings kept getting older ... and older.  It was a really interesting town, and eventually we came to the old city wall.  It was well preserved - from the 1300’s.  

In the old days, - I beg your pardon in advance if I use that phrase too much - people built castles and surrounded themselves with a wall and a moat, and cannons (once somebody invented them), among other methods of protection.  This place was a living example.

Into the old city, we passed ... (hey I borrowed some Olde Englishe from Chaucer) ... through a gate ... known as the Jerusalem gate.  In the old days, there were some Jewish people living here, but well, eventually ... everyone knows the story in Germany. 

Actually the “gate” was a giant archway hole-in-the-wall where locals could pass through but it kept out the thundering herds of Huns, Goths, and Vandals, the nasty heathen Germanic tribes of old. 

At one point, Europe was comprised of walled city fortresses - what most would call “fiefdoms”.  You did your best to keep the locals friendly and indentured, and keep the “enemy” out. The town of Budingen was no different.  What is really great about this place is that it’s in such great condition.  History has spared this place.  

You can learn a lot by visiting a place that is over 700 years old. 

It’s not ancient like Athens or Rome, but it's been around since long before Columbus sailed to the New World.  As the great Yogi Berra once said “much can be observed by just watching”.  We saw churches that dated from the 1500’s and houses, castles, and fortifications from medieval times.  It was amazing.  


And it wasn’t crowded or touristy.  In fact, very few people know about Budingen - it’s off the radar of most travelers, the kind of place we like best.  But it’s not a museum (although there are several around the village).  Indeed, people still live there and occupy these homes.   Must be a maintenance headache!

And right on cue, we saw the workplace of an old "maintenance man", known as the village blacksmith.  Just like old times, lots of tools and bellows - seemed like the guy could just show up tomorrow and start forging iron and pounding metal and making parts for ... I dunno, iPhones?

Some of the views were just stunning.  But of course, I offer the lame claim that photos just don't do it justice. 

Hey, you wanna attack our castle, Mr Attila the Hun?  Just try climbing this fortification!  And we have stone cannon balls, or other primitive weapons to inflict pain on you!

This place has done a good job of preservation; combined with the accommodation for present day visitors.  It's a very pleasant place to walk around.  In the picture below, you can see the old city wall. 

And guess what?  All this history and walking around makes a person hungry! ... so we went to the modern equivalent of an ancient eating establishment - the ice cream parlor!  Ha! Ha!  It was an awesome lunch, crowned with Oregon Hazelnuts ?!?!   Dude!  What could be a better lunch than that!

Stay tuned for our next stop - to a mystery destination ...

Germany Ain't What It Used To Be ... On the road again ...

So we have resumed our traveling.  Only, we're not exactly heading West ...

As I write this, I am sitting in Frankfurt, Germany.   I flew here today - well, I left Oregon yesterday, and flew all night to get here and landed at about 11:30 in the morning.  This is the beginning of hopefully an adventurous journey, not quite around the world but ... pretty far away to an unusual place.   More on that later ...

The grand Central Train Station in Frankfurt

 

 

I flew here by myself.  Actually, well, y'know, the plane was full of people, but I was alone.  My lovely wife Fiona is already here (not actually here, but in Senegal, West Africa) and she will join me here in Germany tomorrow.  We are going to continue on to somewhere else, but we'll get to that eventually.

I was able to enjoy a Special Event while flying from Portland overnight, and "over the pole" or close to it.  In other words, when you fly from the Pacific Northwest to Europe you don't go across the US and pass, like New York, and fly across the Atlantic. 

No, Oh-no-ho-ho - you go way North, up across Canada and up and over the Arctic, more or less.  So the flight crossed over remote upper Canada and Greenland and passed by Iceland and flew over Scotland and landed in Northern Europe.  I know all this because I am an experienced traveler (full disclosure - I regularly checked the flight progress on the airplane screen!). 

Did you ever realize that everywhere on Earth is south of the North Pole?  Bet you never thought about that, eh?  If you are standing on the North Pole exact spot (which has always been a source of debate) then you own the North-est spot on Earth.  

Okay, ...hey man, get to the point ... so what was the special event that I "enjoyed while flying from Portland overnight"?  

So this time of year the sun stays up late in the Northern Hemisphere, y'know, "the land of the midnight sun," etc. - and I was traveling across the extreme Northern Hemisphere, and I was able to track the sun going down as we flew along.  

It was a spectacular sunset, although poorly captured by a photo out the plane window. 

 

And guess what?  In about 45 minutes, the sun came up again!  HA HA HA! - bet that was a short night for someone (me?).  I have always been fascinated with the time zones and sunset and sunrise and daylight savings time.  Never could quite wrap my mind around the clock gymnastics ... is it just me?

And while we're at it, what's up with that 24 hour clock stuff?  What time is 21:32?  Have to stop and think about it for a minute. 

Anyway, I was able to capture a second picture, I got the before-and-after.  It seemed pretty special to me.  You could see Greenland down there, only it didn't look very green (epic fail on naming a country!) it looked really cold, even in the height of summer. 

 

 

So why is Germany not like it used to be?

For one - there is a very wide range of ethnicity here, a tremendous cultural mix of people.  Germany has become a very racially diverse nation. You see cultures from all over.  It didn't used to be like this.  There was a terribly unpleasant fellow here at one time who tried to "purify" the nation.  

Which brings up another point.  ... how do I say this? ... Germany has an un-glorious past. There are some atrocities that will never go away.  You can wash your hands as many times as you want, and some stuff you can never wash off.  

Germany has made a conscious decision to let refugees in and diversify - an admirable choice in today's world.  

But in many other ways, times have changed.  After years of peace and prosperity, there is a level of violence here that has not been seen for decades.  For starters, there are a lot more guns here than there used to be.  For a long time, Europeans didn't typically own guns. 

Fiona and I travel a lot, and there are certain realities you have to face.  But in the last week, Germany has suffered through three terrible tragedies, with serious bloodshed.  Kind of makes you think twice before you get on the plane.  But of course ... ahem ... America has its own problems with violence. 

Anyway, to see Germany these days is to see a different country than it was many years ago.  Heck, when I was growing up, it was even called West Germany (there was East Germany too.  It has now grown to be the largest and most prominent country in Europe. 

In some ways, it looks sort of like it used to.  But sometimes it can be deceiving.  The picture below shows a traditional square in Frankfurt, but it was actually rebuilt to resemble this style of architecture after the place got bombed during World War II.

 

I went for a walk along the river this evening, with beautiful views of the River Main (pronounced Mine) that flows through the city center.   It was a lovely evening, warm and clear.  

 

And I even had a chance to stop for a nice pint of that good German beer.  Hey, that's one thing that hasn't changed ...

Off to a nice start!