The biggest city nearby is Le Mans, which only gets busting with tourists once a year during the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans car race. During the rest of the year it is a pleasant mid-sized town with a well preserved medieval town.

Food wise, make sure you try Rillettes du Mans!  It’s kind of the local variation of the Pate, but more chunky. Best eaten with baguette and an alcoholic beverage during the compulsory daily apero

Afternoon around 4pm is the perfect time for a little break! On this both Germans and French do agree. While the Germans will go for Kaffee & Kuchen (coffee & cake), either at home or in one of the millions of Cafes, French will prepare apero (short for aperitif). This involves a large selection of alcohols, from beer and wine to strong spirits like Pastis or Schnaps, and several savory snacks, like cheese, pate, saucisson and chips.
How about your country? Any similar afternoon traditions?

We couldn’t leave the Loire region without at least seeing one of it’s many royal castles and drove to visit elegant Chateaux de Chambord (cf. title photo).

Designed purely for leisure, it has no proper defenses and in all aspects prioritizes the aesthetics. Looking huge from outside, the inside space is actually quite constrained (for a royal castle). The central building is symmetrical and cross-shaped with a beautiful white double-helix bridge in its center.

It has an elegant chapel and royal chambers, but somebody went totally overkill with the roof:

A few quarters are nicely decorated in their original style and you can learn how fashions of the royal court changed over time. Did you know it was a special honor to watch the king getting dressed in the morning?
This tradition also explains the funny balustrade in his bed chamber:

After five days we had to leave our peaceful country life behind as Yang Ke’s visa was running out and we headed to Paris to catch our return flight to Shanghai.
Just in time to still celebrate Chinese New Year among family and friends, but we also got a glimpse of celebrations gearing up in Paris:

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy new year of the monkey to all of you!

Being half-Dutch, I have to emphasize here on the subtle difference between The Netherlands and Holland. The latter, commonly used to describe the whole country, in reality only represents the two provinces of North- and South-Holland, covering the more famous and more prosperous coastal regions of the Netherlands.

After two freezing weeks in Germany, temperatures were finally rising again and the sun showed its face. We had a few lazy days, spending time with family, playing board games and going for little walks.

The Dutch are not famous for their culinary skills and instead focus on pragmatism when it comes to cooking. Netherlands has always been at the forefront in the innovation for pre-cooked meals and already twenty years ago the vegetable section of a supermarket would be dominated by small-sized portioned pre-cut and pre-washed vegetables in plastic bags.
Nevertheless I always crave to go back the Netherlands – not for any particular dishes but for all the snacks and sweets abound. My all-time favorite snack indeed is not the German-Turkish Kebap, but the Dutch Kroket.

This sinful delicacy is basically just a ragout with breading, deep-fried. You can use nearly everything as filling, but most commonly they are made of beef or veal. Apart from the classic one, my second favorite is the Satekroket, which includes peanut satay sauce – yummy
Most will eat their kroket together with fries, I will more often get it in a soft-bun, perfect for eating on the go!
Dutch snack cultur doesnt end here. Other classics are bitterballen (round version of kroket), Frikandel (deep-fried sausage), broodje garnalen (bun with shrimps from the North Sea), Hollands Nieuwe (raw herring).  Moving over to the sweet snacks you should not miss Pannekoeken (Dutch version of French crepe), Poffertjes (a smaller version on the go), bitterkoekjes (cookies with almand paste, best fresh from the bakery!) and Oliebollen (deep-fried dough with raisins, eat hot!).

As you can see we had a full food-agenda, but we managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing

Utrecht is a very charming yet lively mid-sized city. It is very typical Dutch with an old city center, loads of bicycles, loads of students and several canals, flanked by restaurants and bars.

Houses are mostly in the traditional Dutch design, narrow and low-rise, so you can always get a view on the very elegant cathedral (Domtoren).

We visited a friend of Yang Ke in a close-by city, which also gave us the opportunity to get to know a place not commonly on the tourist agenda – Delft.
Delft is known for famous painter Johannes Vermeer and for blue pottery, inspired from Chinese techniques and designs. If you like Venice, then this is the place for you. Walking through the city it felt like every second street was next to a canal.

With 100’000 population Delft is not that small, but on our Sunday morning it felt completely deserted which only got slightly better in the afternoon with a few people heading to the cafes and restaurants. We ended up in a cafe at 4:30 only to be kicked out after 30 min as the cafe was closing up.
Maybe it was the dreadful drizzling weather which made everybody want to stay in their cozy homes

I only knew Leipzig as an important historical city, being home to many famous musicians like Bach and Wagner and more recently being one of the main initiators of the massive peaceful protests in East Germany ultimately leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I was however surprised to see that since the German reunification Leipzig has fared much better than other East German cities and turned into a very modern, vibrant and livable place.

Leipzig has a nice historic city center, most of which renovated, mixed up with a few modern touches. Unusual for Germany, the city seems to have a strong preference for malls. And not only the usual anonymous modern collections of chain stores, but also several beautiful historic covered arcades, dating back to Leipzig’s history as important trading post.

The most striking example of historic-modern fusion for me was the Paulinum, an university building constructed on the spot of an old church.

Not only the outside is a fusion of church and university, also the interior manages to integrate the two different worlds

Moving on to more traditional sights, Leipzig can show off two town halls, the old one “Altes Rathaus” (cf. post title) and the, only 100years old, new one “Neues Rathaus”.

The city center has two main churches both worth a look inside, in particular the gorgeous white neoclassical interior of Nikolaikirche.

Even if you can’t be tempted by religious architecture you should drop by for their historic significance.
It is at Nikolai church where the Monday prayers started which later expanded to the famous Monday demonstrations, accumulating in 100’000s of participants and the peaceful fall of the Wall. The church hosts a small exhibition on this special part of German history.

Of very different fame is the Thomas church. Host to the Thomanerchor, a boys choir founded in 1212, it is here that J.S Bach spent the main part of his career.

At the church itself you can only witness his grave and a statue, but just opposite is the Bach museum, which gives an interesting and interactive walkthrough of his life.

One more sight I can strongly recommend is the free museum Zeitgeschichtliches Forum, which has a good exhibition on the history of East Germany during the division. During our visit they also had an excellent temporary exhibition on  Germany’s history of the Gastarbeiter, guest workers from Italy, Turkey, Spain etc. who arrived in the 70’s in the 100’000s, with interesting parallels to the current refugee discussions.

Your Christ a Jew
Your car a Japanese
Your pizza Italian
Your democracy Greek
Your coffee Brazilian
Your holiday Turkish
Your numbers Arabic
Your alphabet Latin

and your neighbor only a Foreigner?

We were lucky again and a friend invited us to stay with him. Just heading out of his apartment next to Karl-Marx-Allee you could immerge quickly into Berlin history. The extremely wide, 2km long avenue is lined with monumental socialist-style buildings, representing East-Berlin’s flagship project after  World War II.

What was once East Berlin’s most famous shopping area consists now mostly of apartment blocks, but several of the iconic cultural buildings are still in original use (or at least kept in original design), like Cafe Moskau (biggest East Germany cafe) or Kino International (most famous cinema)

If you are early then have a stop at Cafe Sybille for a good German breakfast and a small exhibition on the street’s history.

The Karl-Marx-Allee ends in the Alexander Platz, another famous location with Berlin’s iconic TV tower, where you find yourself already in the heart of the city and from where you can explore most of the city highlights on foot.

While showing the must-sees to Yang Ke I never got bored myself as there were always new things to discover.
Like the red-colored town hall, which is not only a very pretty sight from outside but now also invites to explore its ground level with several restored halls and small exhibitions.

Same at Gendarmenmarkt, where I never realized that the cathedral (Deutscher Dom) actually hosts an interesting museum on the history of German democracy.

One of the biggest transformations in central Berlin is the replacement of the rather ugly Palace of the Republic (former East German “parliament”) with it’s predecessor, the Berlin City Palace. Driven by a huge lobby group, this project to reconstruct the palace in its former glory took off in 2013 and is now already far advanced. A nearby temporary building nicely shows all the work involved and gives a first view on the future exhibitions hosted in the palace, mostly centered around ethnological collections.

Berlin is The place to be in Germany for artists which you can witness at every corner with uncountable funky cafes and shops.

You will also come across lots of unusual places, conserved for cultural use or other purposes:

If you are in the Prenzlauer Berg district have a look at the Kulturbrauerei, a former brewery turned into cultural center. We spent nearly a whole afternoon in a small museum on the daily life in former East Germany.

To visit the most famous icon of former German separation, head to the East Side Gallery, where a 1.3km part of the wall has been conserved and painted by many many artists. Unfortunately many paintings are suffering from graffiti and corrosion and the remaining in good conditions are currently “protected” by metal grids.

If you have a bit more time, make a one-day trip to nearby Potsdam. Former residency of the German (Prussian) kings it boosts several huge castles of incredible wealth, the most famous being Castle Sanssouci (“without sorrow”). We had a tour through another castle, which “only” served as residency for guests, but nevertheless had amazing rooms, one more crazy than the other. Just a shame that our last king Wilhelm II was allowed to take a train with 40 wagons full of treasures with him to his exile in the Netherlands after loosing World War I.

My favorite was the Grotto Hall, a room completely covered by marble and all kind of precious stones.

A completely different sight is the Dutch quarter, a small district completely built in typical Dutch red brick stones.

The weather was still pleasantly warm and we had long walks, explored the christmas market (with its numerous food options) and experimented with christmas cookies.

Having my 5y old nephew and 3y old niece around made gift exchange so much more exciting – and a nice excuse for the older kids to “help” with all the Lego constructions

For New Year celebrations we gathered with a few good old friends (and their five children) in a small city in the Ruhr Area (“Ruhrgebiet”).
This massive historic coal mining area was once an important pillar of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” after World War 2 and the population in the area exploded to 5 million, blurring all city lines and creating one big connected urban area.

Staying in Herne and going to a zoo in Gelsenkirchen while planning dinner in Bochum sounded like a crazy lot of travelling but turned out to be just a change of neighborhood.

German coal ultimately lost its competitiveness in the 60’s, but the government decided to subsidize coal mining and allow a gradual phase out of the industry. The second last German coal mine had just been closed a month ago and the last one is scheduled for 2018.
Even though this was a quite expensive endeavor it avoided mass unemployment and ghost towns in the whole area and seemed to have worked out pretty well.
We visited one of the older mines, now Unesco world heritage and large museum plus culture site, and had a great guided tour through the refurbished coal extraction facilities.

We continued north to visit my brother with his family in Hamburg. Within the short train ride the temperature dropped remarkably from +10 to -5 and weather remained very chilly for the next days combined with typical coastal winds.
We limited our city explorations therefore to short trips and spent more time with my nephew and niece.
Hamburg is a wealthy trading town which despite being the second largest city of Germany never feels crowded and has a relaxed pace.
A lot of its history relates to trading and it’s big port, still second biggest in Europe. Many sightseeing highlights are therefore related to the water, from a boat tour of the harbor over Fischbrötchen (fish sandwich) at Hamburg’s fish market to a visit of the Speicherstadt (revibed historic warehouse district) and adjacent modern Hafencity with the infamous new philharmonic hall, Hamburg’s new 800million Euro city symbol.

The warehouse district continues to be used with traditional lift mechanisms:

The area is filled with many other new wannabe attractions of which only the Miniaturland stands out. The model railways has become the biggest in the world (as well as tripadvisor’s number 1) and impresses with incredible level of  details. They had a small exhibition on the history of Germany, which alone kept us two busy for an hour!

If you are at the harbor anyway also have a look at the old Elbe tunnel! Built in 1911 it is accessed by four big lifts. It’s purpose has been taken over by bridges and a new, more convenient tunnel, however it continues to be used by pedestrian, cyclists and even cars. You need to be a good driver though as the single lane road is so narrow it only leaves a few centimeters of space for modern sized cars.

In difference to the top of the Eiffel tower, where the large crowds will give you little time to enjoy the beautiful scenery, the Montparnasse tower sees usually only few guests and we spend easily an hour, learning about the various sights with the help of several media terminals.
Another advantage of the Montparnasse view is that you also get a good look at the Eiffel tower

Over the next days we continued with short trips, focusing on one area at a time, giving us enough time to wander around and explore Paris’ many beautiful neighborhoods.

Montmartre, former artistic heart of Paris, now has a quite touristy reputation, but that shouldn’t discourage you from visiting it with beautiful white Sacre Coeur.

During the week of our visit was the big Climate Conference, which as we know now became an unexpected big success, and the conference was supported by several activities across town.

Of course we also explored the French cuisine, integral part of the French culture.

And for any Asian visitor, who can’t survive on French food alone, don’t be afraid. Paris has a big Chinatown with authentic Chinese and SE-Asian food!

We finished our Paris visit with a trip to Disneyland, as celebration of our wedding anniversary

Staying at Disney’s own hotels is outrageously expensive, but luckily there are several excellent and cheaper hotels in vicinity of the resort with free shuttle service to train station and resort.

We had bought our tickets online in advance (much cheaper and faster than at the park entrance!) and ventured into the park at opening time. Not a lot had changed since my first visit more than 15 years ago, bringing back lots of memories.
Of course we visited all the big rides but also did a lot of smaller attractions – usually in company of hundreds of kids

As you know, we are more the spontaneous type and usually don’t plan much in advance of a visit. However after reading about waiting times of one to two hours for many of Disneyland’s attractions, Yang Ke did a thorough research on how to optimize our visit and experience the most within our one day-only visit.

Well, turns out the researching was a total waste of time! The longest wait we had was 15min and mostly it was less than 5min. We could do all the rides available and did some several times. I even got convinced by Yang Ke to make time for the “charming” Frozen show

As part of Disney’s huge marketing campaign for the new Star Wars movie, they also had several Star Wars activities for kids. During our lunch break we got to see the “Star Wars Academy”, where kids could play a role in a battle with Darth Vader. Must have been pretty impressive for the kids!

In the late afternoon some rides turned totally empty and by 5pm we went home as we didn’t know what else to do (and it was getting cold)

If you are planning a visit to Disneyland however don’t expect the same level of emptiness. I think we were just lucky as several factors played together. Winter is generally low-season, we visited on a weekday (avoid Wednesdays as schools are off in the afternoon!), the weather was quite grey and cold and many tourists cancelled their trips after the Paris terror attacks.

It didn’t start too well as our arrival in Bern in the early evening was greeted with a little snow storm.

Luckily we didn’t get discouraged and braved the cold weather to have a first view of the city center.
It was getting colder by the minute and we were about to return to our cozy hotel room when we spotted a group of people gathering on one of the central squares with, most importantly, a little hot wine stall next door. Turns out we were just 15 minutes away from a light and sound show, to be projected on the Parliament Building. It was an impressive light spectacle, telling a local story of the Matterhorn.

[See image gallery at 2young2simple.debraaf.eu]

Bern has a large homogeneous old town, which you can nicely observe from the cathedral.

The main street is especially inviting with its wide, car-free cobbled street, little fountains and view on the “Zytglogge”, a medieval tower.

Bern is however less known for its history, than for its most famous citizen, Albert Einstein. It is in Bern where he was born and where he started his career. The city has a modern and interesting museum on Einstein, whose only negative point is the early closure at 5pm, which was imposed with Swiss like perfection and prevented us from finishing our tour.

We continued our journey with a very scenic ride through the countryside, sitting in the comfortable (but expensive!) Swiss train and admiring the now snow-white landscapes.

Next stop was Lucerne, the quintessential little Swiss mountain village, perfecting the postcard view of old-town plus lake plus mountain. We didn’t know about its fame before arriving, but it became soon obvious when we arrived in town and came across more Chinese tourists than locals!

We had read about a pretty castle cum not-too-expensive-hotel and treated ourselves to a room with gorgeous view on the town (cf. title photo).

Apart from its spectacular view, Lucerne has several unique features, from a well preserved city wall over antique wooden covered bridges (with beautiful decorations) to the “Lion of Lucerne”

We continued to our main destination Zurich, visiting friends, and the chance for me to introduce Yang Ke to another insurance metropolis (and therefore a potential job location).

We took the compulsory tour via famous Bahnhofstrasse and explored the old town, but also got inspired to some culture. Zurich’s museums do not have the fame of Paris, but thanks to a lot of local money Zurich often has good exhibitions without the crowds of the larger cities. Our choice fell on a Miro exhibition in the “Kunsthaus”, which was a tad too modern for our taste, but also had lots of nice pieces.

We continued our journey across the Zurich lake with a super modern ferry boat and got introduced to the local life in a small city.

We braved the deep snow and explored the surrounding boundless nature, where first people were doing cross-country skiing and villages seemed deep asleep like in hibernation.

Graced with more sunny days we enjoyed walking along the beautiful lake and taking the water taxi across, admiring the huge water fountain.

Despite the blue sky the temperature was quite chilly, which however didn’t prevent the weather-beaten locals to go for a swim during their lunch break.

Being Yang Ke’s first steps in Switzerland we started with a thorough exploration of the local food specialties. The Swiss department store Manor is a great place for such, with an amazing floor full of delicatessen.

Swiss food is a lot about cheese and after six years without decent cheese fondue, I was very looking forward to a proper Swiss fondue. I wasn’t disappointed!

Historically Geneva is less impressive than many of its counterparts, but it scores when it comes to museums and shopping. We went for a guided tour at the United Nations office, which was really interesting. It is offered in English and French and you get to see many areas of the big headquarter and learn about it’s activities and history.

Just opposite of the UN is the headquarter of the Red Cross, including it’s own comprehensive museum.
Initially we didn’t plan to go there but were keen to see a temporary exhibition on the life of Mahatma Gandhi. The exhibition had a small but excellent collection on Gandhi and several inspiring art pieces related to his philosophy on non-violent resistance.

With the same strategy we were heading into our little Europe tour. Apart from a few fixed cornerstones (total time frame = 3 months,  spend time with my family, show Paris to Yang Ke, visit several friends) we had nothing else fixed.
When the news of a reunion party with my French university classmates landed in my inbox, many of whom I haven’t seen since several years, we therefore quickly adjusted our plans, rescheduled our flight a few days earlier and were set for our first destination: Grenoble in South Eastern France.

We landed in Paris after an uneventful flight with Aeroflot and headed to the lovely town of Lyon, for a short sunny stop on our way to Grenoble.

Apart from beautiful historic squares and buildings, Lyon also shows off two pretty rivers and some very charming antique alleys.

Grenoble, while a happening student town, is not a real tourist destination by itself. However at the base of the French Alps it offers lots of excursions for mountain lovers in summer and winter, and invites to explore more picturesque smaller cities further up the mountains. We therefore decided to head towards the Alps and crossover to Switzerland with next major target set to Zurich.

First up was the little known Chambery, standing in the shadow of more popular Annecy. Lacking a beautiful lake like Annecy, we were more than compensated with an impressive old town. As capital of the royal family of the Savoy in the 14th to mid 16th century, it has a rich history and a well preserved homogeneous city center inviting you to explore its little alleys and backyards.

Apart from a historic castle close to the city center (which was closed due to the terrorist attacks), Chambery’s most famous landmark is the unusual Indian inspired elephant fountain.

We still had lovely autumn weather and Yang Ke enjoyed the colorful greenery.

We even took the opportunity for a little hike up the neighboring hill.

We continued our journey to Annecy, the quintessential French mountain village, with a charming old town set right next to an azure lake with high mountains in the background.

Annecy has several charming spots in its historic center and along its little river and with the right weather is a great place to spend time in cafes and exploring its delicatessen shops.

As particular highlight comes an old dungeon set right into the middle of the river, which includes a little but interesting museum.

Being famous for such diverse things as spicy food, pandas and gorgeous mountain lakes, the Sichuan province is a very popular tourist destination among many Asians.  We have always been a big fan of Sichuan restaurants in Singapore and were keen to verify their authenticity for ourselves!

Together with Yang Ke’s mum we took a direct flight to Chengdu from Wuxi’s own airport and installed ourselves in a very cute apartment discovered on airbnb

How by fate the apartment was in proximity of a popular food street – first stop of our city tour
The street’s architecture is inspired from previous dynasties and there is some interesting street art, but all of this is just a pretext for the real highlight: The Food.

[See image gallery at 2young2simple.debraaf.eu]

The great advantage of these street markets is that food comes in snack-size portions, allowing you to savor a wider range of options. Nevertheless we barely got to the middle of the street before being full and were forced to switch to other activities. But no worry, Chengdu has loads of impressive sights to fill your time between lunch and dinner.

Jinsha, a massive archaeological site of the ancient Shu kingdom (around 1000 years BC) has only recently been discovered. A part of the original site and many of its very well preserved artifacts (lots of ivory and gold) can be visited in a modern museum, which also includes a large and quiet park.

[See image gallery at 2young2simple.debraaf.eu]

After so much culture it was time for a food break. A friend of Yang Ke’s mum invited us to a posh Hotpot restaurant (ShuJiuXiang), another famous specialty of Sichuan.

Whats makes Sichuan spiciness so particular is the devilish combination of spicy chili and mouth-numbing pepper, called MaLa in Chinese (mouth-numbing spicy), which assures you a high body temperature even in the coldest winter.
After receiving the hotpot-broth filled to the brim with chilies and peppers, we took out a whole bowl of those before even daring to try a spoon. Of course it remained very spicy, which we had to cool down with sour plum juice.

The main reason for many to come to Chengdu are the cute and chubby pandas, native to Sichuan province and surrounding area.
The best way to experience them is with a visit to the large panda breeding and research base in Chengdu, giving birth to around 100 pandas every year. It is a large zoo-like area with separate outdoor camps for different aged pandas and indoor facilities to get a glimpse at newborns and babies. Some of the areas for adult pandas are pretty large and the lazy pandas can be difficult to spot, but there are also lots of smaller spaces where the less camera shy ones spend hours munching on their favorite bamboos. As bamboo is quite low on energy, pandas have to spend half of the day eating, while sitting on their fat butt and will spend the rest mostly napping or slowly strolling around.

The pandas have quite different characters, some being more shy and individual, others more playful and curious. They seem usually rather lazy, dosing in trees after eating  but you can also spot some playing with each other

Next up was (you guessed it) more food! You would think that after one food street you have seen it all and everything else will just be copies of the same things, but not in Chengdu!
We ventured to another popular food street and spent another dinner just snacking from one stall to the next.

[See image gallery at 2young2simple.debraaf.eu]

My favorite sweet snack is this delicious pineapple rice combo:

Another cultural highlight of Chengdu is the temple of WuHou, a royal advisor called ZhugeLiang who is considered the embodiment of intelligence and wisdom in China. He lived during the Three Kingdom period, a very dramatic era which still inspires many movies and TV dramas.

A worthwhile day trip is the visit of the ancient town of HuangLongXi (Yellow Dragon River), a pretty little historic town of the Qing dynasty (1700 years old), named after the river flowing through it. In summer it must be an even more charming place to meet and drink tea in one of its many small streets.

We concluded our visit with the highlight for Yang Ke and her mum, the transformation into a beautiful opera singer.
At the backstage of an actual Sichuan opera house you get to choose your preferred figure among a huge selection, from little princess to funny clowns and serious generals.

Most of the time goes to the makeup, creating the very expressive face through many layers

The one hour waiting is definitely worthwhile when you see the results: