My Travel blog
Tips, Trips, and Stories From Our Worldly TravelsWasserliesch — Where the Saar Reaches the Moselle
Wasserliesch lies only about ten kilometres south-west of Trier, close to Luxembourg and almost exactly where the Saar reaches the Moselle. It is not a large place, but its position makes it much more interesting than it first appears. The village sits between the...
Monschau: Cloth, Timber-Framed Houses and a Town Built into the Rur Valley
After the open landscapes around Dreiborn and the monumental National Socialist Ordensburg Vogelsang, Monschau felt completely different. Here everything is compressed into the narrow valley of the River Rur: steep hills rise almost immediately behind the houses,...
The National Socialist Ordensburg Vogelsang: Architecture, Ideology and the Training of a Nazi Elite
From Dreiborn we eventually went to the National Socialist Ordensburg Vogelsang, one of the largest surviving architectural complexes created by National Socialism in Germany. Our own visit was quite limited. We reached the National Socialist Ordensburg Vogelsang and...
Dreiborn: Three Springs, a Castle and the Edge of the Eifel Wilderness
By the time we reached Dreiborn, the landscape had changed again. We were now well inside the northern Eifel, surrounded by high ground, fields and forest rather than the flatter parts of Germany we had crossed earlier. We arrived in Dreiborn and then had to decide...
Leykaul — A Tiny Belgian Village on One of Europe’s Strangest Borders
Leykaul is easy to drive through without realising how unusual it is. It is little more than a scattering of houses among forests, streams and open countryside in the German-speaking part of eastern Belgium, immediately beside the German border. Together with...
Travelling with a Dog in Belgium — The Rules That Actually Apply
Travelling to Belgium with a dog is relatively straightforward, particularly when arriving from another European Union country, but there is no single Belgian rule covering everything that happens once the dog is inside the country. Entry requirements are largely...
Camping in Belgium by Motorhome — What Is Actually Allowed
Belgium is one of those countries where the rules for motorhomes are often explained far too simply. The useful distinction is between parking, sleeping in a parked motorhome and actually camping, because legally they are not necessarily the same thing. As of...
Bad Oeynhausen: The Town Built Because of a Drilling Accident
After Petershagen, our route continued to Bad Oeynhausen, and this was another place whose present appearance makes much more sense once you know why the town exists at all. Unlike many of the towns we had been passing through, Bad Oeynhausen did not gradually grow...
Petershagen: The Weser, Windmills and Storks
After the dinosaurs at Rehburg-Loccum, Petershagen was a completely different kind of stop. Instead of prehistoric footprints and reconstructed animals, this part of the journey was about the Weser, flat countryside, old villages and an extraordinary number of...
Rehburg-Loccum: Where the Dinosaurs Really Walked
Rehburg-Loccum was one of those stops where the name of the town mattered much less to us at first than the reason for going there: dinosaurs. More precisely, the Dinosaurier-Park at Münchehagen. It would be easy to dismiss it as a large family attraction filled with...