Hotel Schloss Hugenpoet
Schloss Thurnau
I’m about dead after a quick and exhausting trip to Germany to visit my dear friends Astrid and Jürgen in Düsseldorf, attend the 60th birthday party of my friend the admirable Professor Michael ZÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?¶ller, president of the Council on Public Policy, and attend the marriage of two friends from Oxford, Paul and Sigi, in Ratingen, near Düsseldorf. The problem was that the locations are verrryyy far apart and entailed a long plane flight to Germany (with 5 hours in Heathrow Airport), a long train ride (mostly spent in the comfort of the Speisewagen, with quite good German food and drink) to Kulmbach, near Bayreuth, a taxi drive to the SchloÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?¸ Thurnau, and then very early the next morning a long drive (courtesy of one of the Council’s dedicated activists) back to arrive just minutes before the wedding started. (In addition to seeing so many friends, I did get to spend time in two very fine old German castles: SchloÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?¸ Thurnau and Hotel SchloÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?¸ Hugenpoet.)
(I also managed a quick one-hour shopping trip in Düsseldorf to the Frankonia store, where I managed to get a sharp Janker, a three-piece Trachtenanzug, and other kinds of modernized traditional clothing that are rather hard to obtain in the U.S. I also brought back some of the excellent German mustards that are almost as hard to find in the U.S. The whole trip reminded me of how much I miss Germany.)