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By the Way: Travel Letters Written During Several Journeys Abroad

Chapter 55: GERMANY
By Agness Greene Foster
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About This Book

A collection of travel letters recounting sojourns across England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Greece, and European and Asiatic Turkey. The writer blends shipboard anecdotes and personal impressions with practical observations about accommodations, local customs, and travel routines, offering vivid sketches of towns, monuments, and everyday scenes. The revised edition adds further journeys and provides a list of pensions, a bibliography, and numerous illustrations that complement the episodes. The tone is conversational and episodic, alternating personal reflection with useful advice for those contemplating a first trip across the Atlantic.

GERMANY

For now I am in a holiday humour.

Shakspere, As You Like It,

Act IV, Scene 1, Line 68.

MUNICH:

My introduction to Bavaria was through Salzburg. It was a happy presentation, as few towns can compare with it in situation.

Salzburg is surrounded by mountains with castles on every peak. It was the home of Mozart, and is overflowing with interesting memoirs of that great musician.

Munich is a city of wealth. It is the Mecca for students of art and music and the starting-point for the three wondrous castles built by the Mad King of Bavaria, as well as for Oberammergau. Nestling at the foot of the Austrian Alps, a long chain of mountains may be seen on a clear day, in all its splendor, from the statue of Bavaria. Munich possesses a lion's share of public buildings architecturally notable.

NÜRNBERG:

While in Munich we were entertained in the home of Baroness von H., giving us a glimpse into German intimate life, and here I have had the privilege again of being in the home of an American girl who married a German officer. I find their life ideal.

I love Germany and the Germans. They move quicker than any of our foreign cousins, notwithstanding the slowness ascribed to them in story, and there is always something doing.

This fancy of mine about rapidity is, I presume, accentuated by a hurried glimpse of the Empire which these German friends have given me. And right here let me say that foreigners need no longer poke fun at us for the "lightning conductor" manner with which some of us see the world.

The itinerary took us first to Berlin; and dancing through my head are pictures of Brandenburg Gates, Sieges-Allées and Thiergartens; of Charlottenburg with its mausoleum of the much-loved Queen Louise of pictured fame; of Potsdam with its Sans Souci; of Frankfort-on-Main with the renowned Palmen Garten; of Dresden and its Academy of Arts; of Wiesbaden, its tourists and springs; of Metz, with its Conservatory and its high-bred women.

MODERN NÜRNBERG

OLD NÜRNBERG

Nürnberg is unlike any other place in the world. I never have seen such odd bridges, fountains and oriel windows. It is the home of the Faber pencil, and leads the world in the manufacture of wonderful toys; and yet this busy little city has preserved to a larger extent than any other in Germany the appearance of the Middle Ages. Its quiet quaintness makes it a gem.

If you can see but one place in Germany, let it be Nürnberg.