GERMANY: PFORZHEIM CEMETERY, DOWNTOWN, ENZ RIVER, WALLBERG

 May 23, 2025

When we got up in the morning, we knew we had a big day ahead that involved meeting cousins we didn't know we had because our mother chose to keep their existence a secret from us, if she even knew about them (and we are pretty sure she did). The day would also include a visit to the Pforzheim cemeetery, a trip to one of the archives that our researcher used to uncover some of the information that had been in hiding for 85 years, a visit to the street where our mother and her family lived until 1945, the installation of a Stolperstein in our grandfather's honor, and more.

But since parking is an issue in Pforzheim, and since the cemetery had a big parking lot, that is where we began. We could park our two vans there and walk to our other destinations during the day, then pick up the vans at the end of the day.

A map of the cemetery at the entrance had this information: "Pforzheim's main cemetery is considered one of the most beautiful park cemeteries in southern Germany. Eighty percent of its total area of approximately 33.4 hectares (82.5 acres) is protected as a historical monument. These areas are characterized by stately tree stands and . . . garden design from the imperial era. From 1877 to 1945, the basic strcture of long avenues and numerous neatly trimmed hedges, which still characterize the cemetery today, gradually emerged.The historical fabric is still largely intact."

I love cemeteries, which I've said many times in this blog. Every grave and monument represents a life and a story, and that seems especially apparent in a cemetery as beautiful as the one in Pforzheim. If I understand correctly, plots are leased for a specific period, usually 20 to 30 years, rather than purchased outright. If the lease is not renewed, the remains are moved or cremated and the site is "recycled" for another burial. Beautiful, well-maintained gravesites are a staple of German culture. Visiting the cemetery is almost like strolling through a botanical garden. Each grave is distinct from the others around it and artfully decorated as if it is a separate room. Take a look at these examples:

ISRAEL, EGYPT, AND JORDAN: A GRAND PILGRIMAGE, MARCH 2015

When my husband and I were dating, he had plans to save his money and travel to Israel. Well, one date led to another, and pretty soon any money he had was being set aside for our journey into marriage. Israel was placed on the back burner--for 36 years.

We had been watching for the right tour to the Middle East for a couple of years.  Last year we learned of one scheduled for 2015 that had everything we were looking for: the right tour company with a lecturer we had on a previous trip and really liked (Fun for Less Tours with Michael Wilcox), the right date (March, including my spring break), and the right combination of destinations (Israel, Egypt, and Jordan).

Once I started looking at maps, I was
shocked by how tiny Israel is
in comparison to its neighbors.

We enlisted my sister and her husband and two other couples who are good friends to join us in our grand pilgrimage, we all signed up, and we waited ten long months for the day to come.

Our four couples planned to fly separately (from the larger group and from each other) and to meet up in Tel Aviv, Israel. After a private tour there, we would join the larger tour group in Jerusalem and sightsee throughout Israel before taking a long bus ride to Taba, a resort town in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. From there we would fly to Aswan, Egypt, take a river cruise down the Nile River to Luxor, then fly to Cairo. After seeing the pyramids and other sights in Cairo, we would fly to Amman, Jordan, explore the country north and south of the city, and then fly home.  It would be an ambitious trip encompassing eighteen days.

White lines represent flights; blue lines are land and water travel.

Miraculously, it all turned out exactly as planned.

Benjamin Disraeli said, "I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen." This is an excellent description of what our weeks in the Middle East were like for both my husband and me. Between us we took about 8,000 photos, and I took 120 pages of notes. (Granted, my notebook had small-ish pages, but still!) Honestly, I don't know how anyone can fully appreciate a trip like this without addressing it in retrospect in a methodical, day-by-day fashion.  A blog is a perfect vehicle for that kind of exploration.

We've been asked many times what our favorite part of the trip was. How can we choose? Was it the private, back-room tour of the Franciscan monastery in Tel Aviv? Our first sighting of the Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock? Plodding through water well over our knees in Hezekiah's Tunnel? The peaceful Garden of Gethsemane? Singing "I Am a Child of God" in the church at the Pool of Bethesda? Or was it the archaeological dig Beit Lehi? Or the night-time boat ride on the Sea of Galilee and the lecture about Jesus walking on water? Or wading in the Mediterranean Sea at Caesarea? Or surveying the broad valley where David slew Goliath?

Wait! What about Egypt and the pyramids and the ruins and the museums and the river cruising? Or maybe our horse and carriage rides in Luxor or our hot air balloon ride near the Valley of the Kings? What about Jordan--Amman's Old City and Petra and Jerash and camel rides?  What about some of our amazing dinners or delectable street food treats?

It's impossible to choose a favorite moment, or even ten favorites!  I'm looking forward to reliving them all as I process my notes and pictures on this blog.

As usual, I've done (and continue to do) a fair amount of reading in connection with the trip. The two books I read while we traveled provided a particularly good overview of Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. I'll be using quotes and insights from both of them in many of my posts.

READING

We don't think about our lives in terms of "making pilgrimages," but all of us are on a journey of some sort, whether it be a physical or spiritual journey. The idea of a spiritual pilgrimage is as old as Adam and Eve finding their way back to God in the lone and dreary world.  In describing the origin of this book, author Bruce Feiler notes, "This elemental act [of walking] has always been deeply connected to our spirituality. For as long as people have walked, they've walked to get closer to their gods."  In search of an understanding of his Jewish past and spiritual heritage, Feiler undertook a 10,000 mile pilgrimage through the lands discussed in the first five books of the Old Testament. His insights and personal growth are the subject of Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land through the Five Books of Moses.  

"Instead of just accepting a tradition that's been handed down from others," Feiler writes, "a traveler is forced to engage, to consider, to decide. But above all, the sacred journey is a chance to experience. In a world in which more and more things are virtual and ephemeral, a trip like [this one] makes you feel something real."  Feiler's book as background reading for our own walking in the Holy Land merits five stars.

The Innocents Abroad  is Mark Twain's chronicle of his somewhat frenetic journey through Europe and the Holy Land with a boat-load of Americans in 1869. Assembled from a series of newspaper articles Twain sent back to the States for publication, this book is a typical Twain-ian pastiche of humor and wisdom. It became one of the best-selling travel books of all time and was the best-seller among Twain's books when he was living. Irreverent though it may be (Take, for example, his description of his room on-board the ship: "Notwithstanding all this furniture, there was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat in, at least with entire security to the cat"), it is full of great descriptions of what Israel and Jordan were like almost 150 years ago--in some ways the area was very different from today, and in others almost shockingly identical.  Twain also tosses out plenty of nuggets of travel wisdom, including:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

One must travel to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.

BEING A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD

Last summer we took a big trip to the Balkans, and during our journey we were constantly reminded of the war-torn history of the former Yugoslavia. Our cameras were often turned on bombed-out buildings, and we marveled at the history, resilience, and beauty of the countries we visited that had been so recently destroying each other.

Belgrade, Serbia

Prizren, Kosovo

Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Traveling in this former war zone made the reports of the conflict we read so casually in the 1990s suddenly engage our interest and touch our hearts.

HOME AGAIN

"No one realizes how good it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow."  

~Lyn Yutang

However, I will miss turn-down service and chocolates on my pillow.  Bob, could you continue that? Oh, and fresh towels every day. That would also be nice.

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." 

 ~G.K. Chesterton

You mean a soda costs ONE DOLLAR?  Not FIVE DOLLARS, as it did in Norway and Sweden?  Wow, the USA is not so bad after all!  Now if we could just get Orangina Rouge and Bitter Lemon at our local grocery store.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." 

 ~Mark Twain

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries." 

 ~Aldous Huxley

Our favorite destination on this trip?  Moscow, Russia. We were stunned by the scenery and we loved the people and the history.  As our guide said, "Russia has had some of the worst governing in history, yet they still managed to  create a Tolstoy, a Dostoyevsky, a Pushkin, a Chekhov, a Baryshnikov, a Rachmaninoff, a Tchaikovsky, and many others.  The Russians know how to overcome."

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” 

~ Mark Twain

"Spend your money on experiences, not on things."
~ Doris Kenison

CHRISTMAS TREE ORNAMENTS: TRAVEL

I've gotten in the habit of picking up new Christmas tree ornaments when we travel. I think it all started with this ornament, sent to us from Hawaii by my mother-in-law a few months after we visited my in-laws there when they were on a two-year assignment for my father-in-law's work:

After we got this ornament, I just couldn't stop myself.  On the domestic front, we have these:

Purchased on a Church History tour in 2003, Palmyra, NY

Valley Forge

Louisiana's Bayou country, 2005

 Andrew even got in on the act WITHOUT my urging.  On his 8th grade trip to Washington, D.C., he came home with this gift for me--a tree ornament:

 

It's been especially fun to purchase international ornaments.  We got most of the ones I include below in the country itself, but a few (the mosque and the Chinese dancers) were purchased at World Market here in Redlands. 

King Henry VIII came from the very first international trip Bob and I took together: 

England, 1999

 We returned to England a few years later:

On that same trip we spent a few wonderful days on the Isle of Man, site of much Cannon family history:

Over Christmas and New Year's 2000-2001 we all traveled to France to pick up Rachael from her study abroad semester in Paris:

On that trip we also met up with my mother in Germany.  One of our favorite stops was the Weihnachtsmarkt in Salzburg, where I bought two long strands of these straw ornaments.  When I brought them home, I cut them apart into forty individual ornaments, and they are now one of the main design items on our tree:

At that same market we purchased these two woodland fairies:

In 2002 we took a winter trip to Italy.  Unfortunately, on the day we were in Pisa, the Tower was closed and we did not get to go inside:

 

In 2007 we traveled to Japan to see our cute new granddaughter Savannah:

 

While there, we took a little side trip to China:

In 2009 we went to Peru with the other partners in Bob's law firm and their wives:

  This past year we went on a cruise that included, among other countries, Turkey:


. . . and Ukraine (where I lost control as far as ornaments go, but they were all so cute):

. . . and Greece

 

I realize that I don't have any ornaments  from our trip to Spain with Andrew in 2006.  We'll have to go back so I can get one.   I'm also hoping for lots more ornaments from other countries in the years to come! Maybe an Egyptian camel, a Polish grandma, an Indian elephant, a Dutch tulip, an African warrior, an Australian kangaroo . . .

MOANING LISA, THOUGHTS ON MCDONALD'S AROUND THE WORLD

I just couldn't resist posting this cartoon. Bob and I just watched the movie Super-Size Me, the anti-McDonald's, anti-ALL fast food movie made by Morgan Spurlock in 2004. In spite of its VERY inflammatory approach, it definitely will make me think twice before I eat fast food.

Aside from the connection the cartoonist is making between obesity and fast food, this cartoon also reminded me of being in the Forbidden City in Beijing and not seeing any food vendors--except a Starbucks. Yep. However, after seven years of outrage, Starbucks was finally kicked out. Apparently the Chinese did not think it was conducive to highlighting their culture. I also remember a McDonald's across from the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, so this newest Paris location should not be much of a surprise. Maybe they can come up with new menu items. The Bernini Burger might be a big seller. Any other ideas?

I know all the arguments about Mickey D's (and Wal-mart, and Disney) taking over the world, and the negative things about that, and for the most part, I would agree.

However, to be totally truthful, if we see a McDonald's in a foreign country, we stop in to see what is unique. We've decided the french fries are best in France (ALL food is better in France), although we like the way they serve them with cider vinegar in Vancouver, Canada. Japan makes a mean hamburger with a fried egg on top of the patty, and Japan also has the best sundaes--mango ice cream with chopped mangoes on top. Even domestic McD's get into it. My sister Angie has had a McLobster burger (she called it a "Lobsta roll") at McDonald's in Rhode Island during lobster season. I'd love one of those!
There's an interesting article about McDonald's adaptation to various cultures and foods here.
Quite honestly, I think it is a bit of marketing and public relations genius on McDonald's part. Have any of you tried any of these regional dishes? Are there other McDonald's specialties out there that Bob and I need to try?