It all began early in 2006. At one of the first board meetings of the year Fred Young mentioned the possibility of a trip to Germany in the fall. At that early time I knew I would go. As the year went on I sent in a deposit, then a final payment, and applied to renew my passport. Then came more details from the travel agent and a conformation of our reservations at Oktoberfest. The time grew shorter and getting my things ready for the trip occupied my time.

In this narrative I will write about events that happened in Germany. I will mostly use German spelling and notation, followed by English translations where I think they are needed.

Each day of our trip will have its own page. This will make it easier and quicker for your browser to display the pages. I will put a link to the next day's page at the bottom of each page, or you can use the links below to go directly to a day's page. There is also a link to some general observations I made while on the trip. A link to that page is also below.

I am indebted to Google and Mapquest for helping me remember details of our trip. I started to keep notes the first afternoon after we arrived, but a bit of research on the internet sure helped me fill in some of the blanks.

A few words are in order here about place names in Germany. According to Bernice Hicks, our guide, here are definitions of suffixes used in names:

   stadt = city
   burg = fortress
   berg = mountain
   heim = house or group home

   schloss is the German word for castle
   münster is the German word for cathedral, but is often translated as minister

A city whose name had the word “Bad” in it has been designated by the German government as a place with mineral springs.

I saved these text files in a single  Rich Text Format , (.rtf). Click here to download this file. Almost any word processor should properly display the accented characters. If you view the text on line I have no idea how your browser will display these characters. I previewed some of the text using Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Netscape on my Mac. They all worked fine. But if you see characters that seem odd, just assume that they are the fault of your browser. I certainly would not make a spelling mistake. ;-)