Yet another post!

Did I lie? 

So, another long(ish) weekend, another trip. This time, the wife took Friday off and we drove to Bastogne Belgium, the site of the Battle of the Bulge. Gonna be a bit of history in this one, but I'll try to get it out of the way early. How early? Let's just press through it now...

After the push from Normandy (after D-Day) toward Germany, the Allies paused to regroup in the Ardennes area of Belgium. The location was easily defensible due to geographic factors (thick forests and sparse roads), and General Eisenhower chose the area as a rest area for the 1st Army. The Germans had an area immediately across the border that they were using as a rest and refit area for their own troops; taking those two factors into account, the area was expected to be fairly safe.

The German High Command hatched a plan to stop the Allies use of the port of Antwerp, punching through the Allied line into Belgium (which would split the Allied line in half), and allowing the Allied forces to be surrounded while the main German force drove straight up to Antwerp. They committed over 400,000 men to this effort. The weather and poor road conditions were on the side of the Allies, and after 40 days, the Allies handed the Germans their biggest defeat of the war, breaking the back of the German war machine.

One important part of the story (at least to the people of Bastogne): On December 21st 1944, the American forces in the town of Bastogne (about 23,000 men) were surrounded by two tank divisions and an infantry division - about 54,000 men - and conditions in the town were rough. Most of the medical supplies and personnel had been captured. Food was scarce. Ammunition was being rationed: 10 rounds per gun per day. The German commander sent a message into the town, requesting its surrender. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, the acting commander of the 101st Airborne onsite, sent back a one word reply: "NUTS!" It had to be explained to the Germans that that specific term was an American slang term essentially meaning (at that time, of course!) "Go to hell!"

While researching this post, I discovered an entry in one of my favorite online resources about part of the city (which I'll touch on in a moment): Atlas Obscura. That's one of the places I look to find weird things to see in the cities we visit. That link tells the "Nuts" story, better than I could hope to. 

The Battle of the Bulge was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in WWII. The Allies took around 81,000 casualties, with over 8,400 of those being KIA. 

Anyway, we rolled into town and checked into the hotel. I haven't talked about hotel showers for a few posts, but this one gets a special mention. One of the things that we've found to be all too common over here are what I'll call "half walls." Whether there's a tub or just a standalone shower, a lot of the hotels that we've stayed at over here have no doors, just plexiglas or glass for half of the width of the opening. Every time I encounter one of these, I dread taking a shower and go about my business. The setup in this hotel though - it deserves special mention.

That's not an optical illusion. They cut a corner off of the bathtub so the door would open. Here's a better shot:

Water pressure was outstanding in the showerhead, I'll give them that. Water pressure was so high in the showerhead that you couldn't turn the faucet all the way on, or else the showerhead would spray water all over the bathroom - no real shower door or curtain, remember? So, you had to leave the pressure very low, barely shooting out. Which meant that you had to wedge yourself into the skinny area of the tub to shower. Every single movement, you'd rub against the water line for the showerhead and move it around, paranoid that it would start spraying all over the place again.  

I hated this shower.

Returning to the story though, the boss had to do some work, so I ventured to the main square downtown to get my bearings.

One of the reasons that Bastogne was such an important objective for the Germans was its location at the intersection of several different roads. While all of those roads don't directly lead to the main square, it's still pretty impressive, with the four largest roads in town (that we saw) all meeting up in one place, in a square with a bit of parking in the middle, and the square lined with restaurants - with traditional cafes, full blown sit-down restaurants, and fast food all represented. Leading down one of the main roads was a little shopping area, but there weren't a lot of "tourist" type shops. In all of the sections of town that we ended up exploring, there was one single tourist shop that we saw. There very well may have been more shops of that type, but I doubt it, as the rest of the city didn't feel very walkable - everything was pretty tightly grouped around the main square. 

Of note: their City Hall has some interesting decorations on it. As we discussed above, the Siege of Bastogne was in December of 1944. Our visit was in April of 2026. There was a prominent sign above the door to city hall celebrating the 81st anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. Either they've been slow to take down the signage, or a sign just stays up there all the time and they periodically increment the number.

Taking into account the decorations on the rest of the building, I'm inclined to believe that they just leave the decorations up - but honestly, I just don't have enough information. I would just be extrapolating from a non-representative sample set. If you've visited Bastogne, I'd love to hear:

1. What time of year did you visit?
2. Were these posters (or similar ones) on City Hall during your visit?

Also, there was a (what appeared to be permanent) display in the lobby of City Hall, but... well, just take a look, and tell me if you think something's awry:  

I don't remember reading about Ukrainian participation in the battle, and I really would expect for the flag of Belgium to be there instead - but I'm not a historian or professional memorial designer, so there's a good chance I simply don't know what I'm talking about.

In the main square, there was a Sherman tank on display, next to a bust of General McAuliffe. The tank was disabled by an anti-tank weapon, and the farmer on whose land it was found refused to let it be cut up for scrap - not for any altruistic reasons, but for fear that leakage of the fluids inside would poison his well.

I walked back to the hotel and (im)patiently waited for the boss to finish her work. Once she was done, we walked down to the main square and found a place to eat. Evidently, she'd seen something on some travel show or other about one of the restaurants, and we were able to get a table (despite not having a reservation). Part of the restaurant is built with converted train cars.

The next morning, we drove to the outskirts of town to the War Museum:

Very well done museum. One thing they did is introduce you to 4 different "narrators" on your audio guide as you enter: An American soldier, a German soldier, a young Belgian teacher (and member of the resistance), and a Belgian child. As you traverse the museum, the audio guide would tell you parts of the story from each of their perspectives, humanizing this part of the war.

There were several different films presented in the museum, and I made the mistake of sitting through the first one. Turns out, it was in 3D, and the glasses gave me the beginnings of a headache. I skipped the rest of them, but it turns out that the other films were traditional films, with some special effects (fog machines blowing fog through the trees, etc.). 

Behind the museum is the Battle of the Bulge Monument, maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission. It's a 40 foot tall five pointed star, with arms about a hundred feet long. All 50 48 state names are engraved around the top. It was begun in 1946 and dedicated in 1950 - there were only 48 states back then. Of course, that didn't stop me from expressing my righteous indignation to the boss that they'd missed the biggest state (with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek). Unfortunately, it was closed for renovations when we were there, so we didn't get to climb the stairs and walk around the top. 

As part of our museum ticket, we also got tickets to a couple of other sites, so our next stop was the "War Rooms." This was the site of the command post where General McAuliffe received the communique from the Germans, and where he wrote his response. The upper floor of the building was a very well done museum, followed by a trip through the "bunker" downstairs. As good as the museum was, I was quite disappointed with the setup downstairs. You'd walk into an empty room with a translucent screen. Because of the lights behind the screen, you could see through the screen that there were sparse furnishings behind the screen, perhaps a table and chair. You'd sit on a bench for a few minutes, then the lights would go down behind the screen and a little show would project on the screen, walking you through a short scene. One of them was of one guy writing a letter home before going on watch, talking to the watch supervisor and the soldier he was replacing. I'll give them credit for trying, but it was a swing and a miss for me.

After coming back up from the bunker, there was a temporary exhibit of the B-17 bomber, Bull Session. This plane was shot down in January 1945 while on a bombing mission to Cologne, killing 8 of the 9 crew members. The survivor was captured by the Germans and was sent to a POW camp, and held for 105 days before being rescued by Patton's army. The wreckage of the plane was finally found in 2017, and to date they've recovered around 8,000 pieces of the plane, including equipment and personal effects belonging to the crew. They had (what I found to be) a quite moving exhibit set up almost like a work room where they displayed some of the pieces they've recovered. There was a display with pieces of the ball turret assembly mounted into a frame to show where the pieces belonged, and they had a mockup of part of the fuselage set up with recovered artifacts installed in the proper places within the fuselage. For some reason, this particular exhibit had more of an affect on me than most of the other museums we saw that weekend.

Here, you can see the frame with the parts of the turret mounted in their approximate layout

The inside of the mockup of the fuselage

We decided to go ahead and head to the battlefield (the third site from our museum tickets) that afternoon, as we didn't have anything else planned. If you've ever done any reading about the Battle of the Bulge or seen Band of Brothers, you know exactly what the battlefield looked like. For those of you who aren't familiar with it...

Now, whether this is the actual site or not - I'm just not certain. All of the material from the museum led me to believe that this is the site where "Easy" Company was stationed during the battle, but I had a conversation with a gentleman in the parking lot who told me that he'd been a tax collector in that area for years, and that this site was just used for filming and to give tourists a place to crawl around, with the actual battlefield a couple of miles away. My research on the internet wasn't able to get me any clarification one way or the other.

Regardless of whether this is the actual site, people seem to treat is as such, as evidenced by the mementos and crosses that visitors have left here:

The museum developed an Augmented Reality app that you could use while at the battlefield to look around. The way it works is that you point your camera at things, and the app puts additional items/people on your screen, to let you look at what it was "really" like. 

Unfortunately, this was a swing and a miss for me too. Nice idea, but there was no way to change the language of the app, so the whole introduction was in French - which, if you've paid attention in the past, you'll know that I don't speak. Additionally, the actors portraying the soldiers were Europeans (Belgians, French, not sure which one), and I couldn't get past their strong accents. They sounded like Pepe le Pew, and it completely pulled me out of the right mindset to appreciate the battlefield.

That night, had a couple of drinks at the hotel bar, before wandering back through the town trying to decide where to eat. We got all the way through the business area before deciding on a local restaurant. Unfortunately, the waitress spoke no English, and... we've already talked about my French... so we translated the menus with our phones and ordered by pointing.

The next day, we headed back, and on the way out of the region, passed an interesting feature, which we had to look up. We didn't manage to capture a picture as we passed, so... here's the next best thing, Google Street View!

Turns out, there's a story there - who would've thunk it? More history ahead - sorry.

In the late 1930s, seems like everyone in Europe knew it was about to get messy. The French installed a defensive feature called the Maginot Line. The Maginot Line was a system of fortifications meant to keep German forces out of France, and allowing the French time to mount up a response force to a German attack, while pushing that attack into Belgium or Switzerland, avoiding a repeat of the trench warfare scenarios that played out in WWI. 

In response, Germany built a defensive fortification between itself and the west (France, Belgium, the Netherlands) called the Westwall, but referred to by the Allies as the "Siegfried Line."

Here's a picture from Wiki of another section of the Siegfried Line:

Turns out, there was an eight month long portion of WWII where almost nothing happened on the western front (of Germany). Allies and Germans essentially stared at each other from behind their respective defensive fortifications from September 1939 to May of 1940. This portion of the larger war was initially called (with typical British wit) the "Bore War." This was supposed to be a punny reference to the Boer War of 1899-1902. Their name for this period caused nothing but confusion, so everyone started calling it the Phoney War - yes, the same "phony" that's spelled without an 'e' nowadays.

Anyway - the Siegfried Line. Turns out, there are still portions of it that you can see, and that's what we drove past at a random traffic circle in Gouvey, Wallonia, Belgium.

Of course, we knew none of that at the time, so we kept driving toward home, and stopped for lunch in the Moselle Valley. Interestingly enough, we had lunch at a monastery that we'd taken a picture of just a week before!

The picture from the week before

The overlook we took the picture from the week before

Same building, from ground level

So... that was our trip to Bastogne. We don't have any more trips immediately lined up, but I'll let you know when we go somewhere else!

Another one, so soon? Yep!

See? I told you another one would be coming!

So, my folks took a river cruise in Portugal, and flew out to visit us for a few days. They landed on Friday morning, and we had a pretty full itinerary planned.

Early that afternoon, we drove up to Freudenberg... if your Facebook algorithm shows you European touristy posts, chances are, you've seen posts about this town... considered one of the most picturesque in Europe. 

In 1540 (and again in 1666), the town burned down. To help speed up the reconstruction, all of the houses were rebuilt with the same material, in the same style... so, on the hill overlooking the town, you see a sea of what are called "half timbered" houses. Evidently, from a historic perspective, these types of houses were typically built with logs which are split in half from end to end, with the flat sides facing outwards, and visible from outside. Once you see the pics below, you'll say "Oh, I know what he's talking about!"

See what I mean? Here are some more pics of the town, because I'm a generous, benevolent narrator:

I hate pictures of myself, as we all do. There were way too many selfies of the four of us, but I will share a few of them. Benevolent and generous, remember?

Anyway, a little bit more about Freudenberg. Turns out that Freudenberg has only been a real town since 1969, when 16 (or 17, depending on who's counting!) constituent communities merged together. Two of the constituent communities were first mentioned in writing in 1079, while the first written occurrence of the name "Freudenberg" dates to 1389.

And now we all have about the same amount of information about Freudenberg.

Nothing was open in the town, as it was the Friday before Easter, a national holiday. We parked and walked around for a few minutes, took bunches of pictures.

Next stop, Cologne. We drove straight to the hotel, which is conveniently located right next to the famous cathedral I've written about before.. you'll have to do your own searches on this site to find them, I'm not gonna do EVERYTHING for ya!

We got checked into the hotel, then headed into the downtown area to show my folks around.

First stop, the cathedral... but let me paint a picture for you. When you exit the train station in Cologne, you come out in a little plaza area with the cathedral right in front of you, straight up a big set of stairs. If you don't feel like taking those stairs, you can follow the road to the right, where it circles around the front of the cathedral. Once you take the stairs up you turn right, and circle around the base of the cathedral, but on the level of the cathedral (if that makes sense). Picture the cathedral (from above) like a clock face, with 2 circles around it. If the main entrance to the cathedral is at 12 o'clock, the train station is at 3 o'clock, and the only difference between the inner and outer circles is that to get to the inner circle, you have to climb about 2 or 3 stories worth of stairs. The road (the outer ring) climbs more gradually, with only a couple of stairs.

Well, we climbed up the stairs to get to the level of the cathedral, and found the inner ring closed due to construction. Our two options: go back down the stairs, and use the outer ring to get to the front door, or circle the entire cathedral in the other direction. We chose to circle the cathedral, because I don't know anyone who actually enjoys stairs. If someone says they do, they're lying.

So, we circled all the way around one of the largest churches in the world, and entered the front door. My folks hadn't seen it before, so we took them through as much of the inside as we could. Once everyone had seen their fill, we headed toward the front door (at 12 o'clock, remember?) - to find that they'd closed that door for some reason. Now, they were funneling everyone through the door at 3 o'clock... at the top of the stairs overlooking the train station.

Fine, you win. We'll take the stairs. We walked down the stairs and circled back around to 12 o'clock (on the outer ring) to continue into the town. We had dinner at one of the oldest brauhauses in Cologne, Brauhaus Sion - dating back to 1318. I'm pretty sure I've talked about it in previous posts.

We wandered around the city for a little while, then headed back to the hotel. But first, random pics of Cologne and the cathedral... generous narrator, you say? Oh, behave! 

The little pirate guy lives on the City Hall building, and sticks his tongue out at the statue across the square. The statue across the square is of a guy mooning City Hall. Cologne's a wonderfully weird city.

Next morning, we hit the road, but first, dad asked me about adding a stop to our itinerary since we'd be passing relatively close - sure, no problem!

Next stop, Nürburgring. What's that? This was a new place for us - I'm glad you asked about it!

Nürburg is a tiny town in western Germany, with a population of only 156 people. It's also the site of a famous race track dating back to the 1920s. For 16 weeks each year, car manufacturers from around the world bring their cars to the track and rent time to use it to test their cars, then using their performance around the track as advertising fodder. The rest of the time, the track attracts members of the general public, as you can pay €30 and drive your own car around the track, or rent a car to throw around the track for between €150 and €1500 (depending on whether you want to drive a subcompact or a supercar... or anything in between). You can also pay some money and have a professional driver take you on the track, with a wide price range for that service too, depending on whether you'd like to ride in a car you'd see every day, or a Porsche, Ferrari, or Lamborghini. Evidently, it's quite the Mecca for auto enthusiasts, as the roads around town were full of loud cars with lots of stickers on them proclaiming their favorite aftermarket car parts.

We didn't know what to expect as we approached as it's in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest big city about an hour and a half away. We were quite surprised by the facilities that were in place, with a massive shopping mall area with all kinds of stores and places to buy different tickets for the different activities. The building was big enough that it had a full sized roller coaster running through and around it. It wasn't running that day, so I did some research about it for this post. Honestly, the story surrounding the roller coaster is worth its own paragraph.

The new commercial area opened in 2009, and as part of the improvements, they planned a pneumatically launched roller coaster that would accelerate from 0-135 mph in 2.5 seconds, with the initial launch parallel to the race course (to thematically tie the theme of the coaster to the course itself). During testing, they'd been running all of the systems at a reduced capacity. As they ramped up the power to the launch system, there were two major component failures leading to a series of huge explosions in the pneumatic system, injuring seven people and breaking multiple windows in nearby buildings. After addressing most of the issues (more about that in a moment), they finally were able to open the coaster on October 31st, 2013. Its last day of operation was November 4th, 2013. The big issue that they weren't able to address turned out to be the fact that there was no economical way for the coaster to be run, with operating costs well outpacing the amount of money it brought in. According to the state, it cost around €12 million euros to build. It's still just sitting there gathering dust 13 years later, after being open for all of 4 days.

Boss took a 20 second video while standing outside, you can see cars racing by in the background, and the roller coaster both in the foreground, and as the camera expertly pans to the right, you can see the track disappear into the building. I'm guess there was some kind of opening there to let the trains in, but after 13 years I don't think that door gets lots of use.

We continued on toward Luxembourg City, passing through part of the Moselle Valley, stopping at a flea market in one of the little towns on the river. We also stopped in Trier, as they'd never been. We walked through the cathedral and dad wanted to see Porta Negra, the Black Gate (that I've written about here before... I'm sounding like a broken record, huh?!?). 

Eventually, we found our way to Luxembourg City.

We checked into the hotel and started exploring, looking for someplace to eat. Our hotel was next to the train station, and most of our exploration on previous trips was throughout the old city, so while I had a general idea of the layout, a quick Google pointed us in the right direction. We ended up heading to an area a few blocks away that I'd seen some restaurants in when we'd driven through.

The next morning, mom wasn't feeling well, so she stayed at the hotel, while the boss and I took off to show dad around town. We walked over to the old city and showed him the Gold Lady, and the "Most Beautiful Balcony in Europe," about which I've written extensively in previous blog entries here... that little search icon at the top of the blog is your friend, people!

Afterward, we headed back to the train station where the car was parked, and headed out to the American Cemetery. 

One of two recipients of the Medal of Honor at this cemetery

General Patton actually died in a car accident in Heidelberg about an hour south of Frankfurt. He specifically requested to be buried at the cemetery in Luxembourg with his men.

We did our own thing for dinner that night, dad went out to pick up something for mom to eat, and got something for himself then too.

Mom was feeling better the next day, just in time to pile into the car and head home. One fun thing that happened... there's a big bridge over the Moselle Valley (and river) that we've seen every time we've been there, but this was the first time that our travels have taken us over the bridge. There's an overlook where you can walk around and take pictures... (if you want some bonus points, remember the bridge and overlook when you get to the next blog entry!).

Next stop, home!

The next day, we were planning on all of us heading down to Rothenburg, but the boss had to work the next day, so I took the parents by myself. We wandered around the city, and had lunch in a place I've only walked by - so that was something else new for me!

Some crazy lady we bumped into in Rothenb... oh wait - we brought that crazy lady with us!

I talked a couple of blog entries back (in the entry about Den Bosch) about "snowballs" from Rothenburg, and how I didn't expect that I'd like them very much, as they just looked like a ball of pie dough. This visit to Rothenburg, I picked up a couple of snowballs, and I'm sorry to report that my expectations were met. I picked up a cinnamon-sugar one for dad, and he wasn't very impressed. I got a lemon creme one for myself, and while the icing on the crusty pieces of pie crust wasn't bad, the creme that was piped into the middle of it tasted strongly of some nasty sort of medicine. Neither of the snowballs were finished.

Their final night in Frankfurt, we went to dinner at a local tapas restaurant we've discovered - it's a place that has tapas and steaks. I figured dad could have a steak, and mom could have "funky" food that she normally wouldn't get a chance to have. She still wasn't feeling great, so she didn't eat much, but it was a good meal nonetheless!

Folks flew home the next day - all in all, a successful visit!

Continuing a recent pattern, watch this space for another blog entry shortly!