Dachau is a lovely town. The S-Bahn train zips folks between Munich and Dachau with hardly a hiccup, dropping you neatly near the center of this bedroom community and suburb of metropolitan Munich. Several buses converge on Dachau's train station to carry commuters back to their respective neighborhoods. But the biggest and most crowded bus sitting in the ring is number 726, marked "Gedenkstätte." “Gedenkstätte” is German for “Memor...

Guten Tag, Blogonauts! Normally I allow myself to get to know a new city on my own ... wandering about with a tourists' guidebook and a map, letting my curiosity determine my course. But while I was employing this haphazard habit soon after my arrival in Munich, I heard someone say, "Ah, there's someone with Rick Steves' guidebook! That's a sure sign of an English speaker." And that's how I was introduced to Lenny, of Lenny's Bike Tours, who talked me into joi...

Hello again, Blogonauts. Here's a treat. I'm on the train bound for Salzburg. At my seat is an electric outlet where I can power my laptop and finish off my Berlin blogs as the German villages and farmland whiz by. The steward just brought me coffee, which I'm sipping as I type. I feel like a modern-day Christopher Isherwood … except not bisexual … or a smuggler … or dead. So on to the writing -- From a rather shaky beginning, Berlin grew on m...

Hello, Blogonauts. So today we're talking hoity-toity culture. I happen to like hoity-toity culture. I particularly like typing the word "hoity-toity" and finding that my word-processor does not spasmodically freak out and warn me that I have misspelled a word. But back to the subject at hand: Berlin, via its odd collection of architecture, is itself a museum of sorts. After all, this city first arose as a composite of villages, had an off-and-on relationship w...

Hello, Blogonauts, Today was my first full day in Germany's restored capital city. I ventured out after arriving last night. But I was a bit discombobulated by what I saw: The monumental architecture looked a bit shabby; boring communist block buildings ranged from graffiti-clad to pristine; modern buildings that rival the world's finest were present but widely spaced; and there were more holes than a prairie dog town, each awaiting a new building. Tired and be...