The PENguin Blog

We are now back from Germany having spent a rather wonderful short week renewing an old friendship and gathering in a last few pretty great pens, as it turned out. All the time enjoying the great weather and fine sights of Nürnberg. On arriving in England Tuesday, we set off from Heathrow mid-afternoon and got into Bedford in the evening. Wednesday brought us to York, and today, Thursday, we set out to explore the city, which we last visited in the 1970s. To be honest, for a number of reasons the trip back found me grumpy, but not so much so that I did not enjoy perhaps the best response to pens since the institution of current security procedures, bearing in mind that I fly an average of five or six times a year, often more, with a significant number of pens in my carry-on luggage. At Schiphol (Amsterdam) you go through security at the gate (often for a second time, if your flight originates elsewhere, as ours did), a really efficient manner of dealing with the problem. So we go thr...

Nürnberg exists within, though it was not historically part of, Franconia. On Sunday and Monday, Ekke and Gudrun gave us a taste of Franconia when we visited Bad Staffelstein, Lichtenfels, the Convent of Viertzenheiligen and the Kloster (cloister) Banz. Taken all together, these sites make up a major regional cultural and recreation area and are a place that Ekke and Gudrun visit on a weekly basis to take the waters as is common German practice. We accompanied them and in the course of the afternoon got a nice taste of regional history through the two religious sites which featured two lushly baroque/rococo churches as well as the baths. On Monday Ekke had an appointment in Erlangen, but before going there detoured us to visit Bamberg, a wonderfully intact city that showcases several centuries of southern German architecture and culture. A castle on the site is first mentioned in the early 10th century, though the city rose to prominence with the election of Heinrich II and his queen...