Rob and I (GC is the one with more hair) put behind us the cold and two feet of snow in Ottawa, Canada on a Friday and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany on a Saturday.

Actually, it looks more like this, nowadays. Notice the church in the old picture? That's the same one still standing. Frankfurt is quite a lively city and it seems like most people there speak English. Which is very handy, since all the German I know is what I learned watching Hogan's Heroes.

The first day, we also visited the nearby town of Friedberg where I saw my first honest-to-gosh castle. It was an exemplary castle with a moat and everything! It's funny there weren't more people in the old part of town but I wasn't complaining.

On Sunday, we drove our trusty rental car down to the beautiful Rhine valley where they grow tons of wine and have lots of castles.

On Monday, we headed toward Berlin and along the way we saw still more castles .

We also visited Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration camp that Anne Frank passed through. There is not much left standing but people come to visit the big monument or just to leave tokens. Unspeakable things happened here. Follow this link to a site containing lots of pictures and a history of the place, including stories about "the Bitch of Buchenwald." Generals Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton came here and ordered hundreds of residents of the nearby city of Weimar brought in to witness for themselves what this place was about. The clock above the gate always shows 3:15 - the Allied forces stopped the clock the same time they stopped everything else going on here.

We arrived late to our hotel Monday night, in part because a lot of the roads in what was East Germany are still being rebuilt and there were detours. On Tuesday, we found Berlin was in the process of being reconstructed, too. Here is a view from the spectacular Brandenburg Gate. Until recently, one could not easily reach the gate at all. But that's over with now.

The Berlin Wall was a nasty piece of work. There is hardly any of it remaining standing but we did buy a little piece of it at Checkpoint Charlie. They left the old sign in place,

Near the Brandenberg Gate is this memorial to people who were killed trying to escape into West Berlin. Next to the Gate is the Reichstag, their capitol building. It's in use, even though surrounded by construction.

The Reichstag has the most amazing dome. You can go inside and see out or else read about the history of the place. I really enjoyed taking pictures here.

I was impressed by Berlin. Everything was just so very grand. Though a little less so on the East side. Berliners didn't reconstruct quite everything. There is this reminder of the past.

The next day, Wednesday, we drove to Amsterdam. German's have the funniest word for Exit! We saw a lot of these wind-power thingies along the way, too. We planned to stop and meet Janes (pronounced Yann'-ess, in case you've ever wondered) in Osnabrück, but he happened to be moving that day. This is to prove that I really did try.

We arrived in Amsterdam quite late, but still in time for a quick look around. Sure enough, there are hookers beckoning from windows all over the place. (That photo was taken later on, surreptitiously. I was embarrassed and I didn't want them to get mad at me.) We also got harrassed by lots of drug dealers. Finally, we stopped for a drink and pretty soon some guys started having sex at the other end of the bar. Then we went back to our hotel. We didn't really see the canals and stuff until the next day. They're fabulous!

Amsterdam looked more "foreign" than German cities, with narrow little streets and narrow little cars to go in them. I knew that Amsterdam was well-"wired," but I was not prepared to find Internet access from a pay phone. We also noticed these very peculiar sidewalk urinals.

In the afternoon, we went to the Anne Frank house. It's a museum now. We went through the legendary secret bookcase and to the room where she lived. It is a sad place, but I'm certainly very glad we went there.

That night, we went to Marius' house and had a really good time. I felt like we were old friends! No pictures from that, but you can visit his web site where he has a lot of pictures. Later, he took us out to a nice bar where, as far as we could tell, no one at all was having sex. The next morning, Friday, we went on a bus tour and saw WINDMILLS! In fact, lots of them. It's a beautiful country, with a lot more to offer besides the legalized vices it's so famous for. Oh, there is one more thing it's famous for.

In the afternoon, we drove on to Brussels, Belgium, which is just full of beautiful and grand places. For example, consider this shopping mall.

There were interesting things to see everywhere, and not just the usual monuments that one expects to find. This great big thing was certainly the strangest, but a little statue of a boy pissing is the most beloved. Can you imagine? There is even a restaurant named for him. I liked Brussels a lot. It was not only beautiful, I liked the whole atmosphere of the place very, very much.

On Saturday, we headed for Cologne, Germany but not without making a wrong turn in Belgium. That's when we noticed this place - Waterloo is even more famous than Piss Boy! But we hurried onward, to reach Cologne by evening. The next day, we found that, sure enough, it was also a beautiful city. Especially this huge church. It was Sunday morning, but tourists could still come inside.

That afternoon, we drove through the former capitol, Bonn,on our way back to Frankfurt. On Monday morning we flew home to Ottawa and found, much to our surprise, that most of the snow had melted!