For 18 years, ever since I moved away from Germany, I was always a little wistful on my birthday that I couldn’t visit a castle. You see, I was the one person in the family who never got tired of castles, so on Mother’s Day and on my birthday, I could always get them to go with me to dinner at one of our favorite castle restaurants or explore a new castle we hadn’t seen before.

On June 14, 2024, my 60th birthday, I got to go to a castle again!

I’d checked out some castles not far from Leipzig before I left. Nowadays, they have a website called Schloesserland Sachsen! In fact, the region of Saxony has made their castles and palaces family-oriented tourist attractions. This is very different from the castles in the Rheinland-Pfalz, as you’ll see in the later part of my trip. But when I went to these, I was envious for the sake of my kids. Not that they were exactly bored with the castles we visited when they were small, but the ones we saw in Saxony had activities and fun things especially for kids to enjoy. And there were historical displays for everyone, with English captions as well as German.

Anyway, on the morning of my birthday, I drove Kate (who still doesn’t drive on the Autobahn. It’s so much fun, Kate!) to one of the closest castles, Schloss Rochlitz, my personal Castle #169.

Much to my dismay, I forgot to bring my good camera, so I took far fewer pictures than usual, but maybe that helped me take in the fact that I was at a castle again.

I love the way castles always have a beautiful view.

And we got to climb the tower.

We did get rained on a tiny bit. But I love these passages either way.

And remember how I said there were fun things for kids? I had to try the jousting video game.

These lit-up ghosts were positioned around the castle for kids to find. A fun way to look a an old dungeon!

And I always have to show how BIG and tall I am by posing in a castle doorway.

After roaming the castle to my heart’s content, we had lunch at a little restaurant just outside the castle. Altogether, it was exactly what my heart desired to start off my 60th birthday!

I’m blogging about my 60th birthday trip to Germany, and I’m up to Day 3, June 13. I was staying with my friend Kate, and she suggested giving me a walking tour of Leipzig for the morning through early afternoon. That sounded absolutely perfect after so much driving the day before. They live a short walk from the Altstadt, and we saw all sorts of wonderful things. I love German cities with so many old buildings mixed with modern ones, which is what I love about the roofline in the picture above.

The weather was perfect, as it so often is in June in Germany, bright and sunny, not too hot, not too cold. We walked all over the city. Let’s see if I can remember what most of these buildings in the pictures are.

We went inside the University Library:

Here’s the Neues Rathaus:

Love those towers!

I was excited to see the Bachfest booth, because catching the Bachfest was why I went to Leipzig first.

And there’s a statue of Johann Sebastian Bach outside the Thomaskirche, one of the churches where he served for most of his life.

More sobering, here’s the Holocaust Memorial. Each chair represents 100 Jews who once prayed in the synagogue on this spot and were killed in the Holocaust.

And here’s the Altes Rathaus:

We also went inside some “Passages” – beautiful enclosed walkways.

Some of the passages have cool art.

We had lunch (later) at the restaurant on the left. It has a cellar where reportedly Goethe used to hang out as a student.

Here’s a statue of Faust being tempted.

And a statue of Goethe outside:

At the Nikolaikirche, which I didn’t get a picture of that day, we got to go inside and sit in on a bit of a rehearsal for a concert that was part of the Bachfest. The soloist had a crystal-clear voice that filled the large space. We didn’t stay long, because we still hadn’t had lunch.

The Nikolaikirche was the site of meetings that ended up toppling Soviet domination of East Germany, and there’s a monument outside, with a pillar similar to the ones inside the church.

I still love that skyline!

And I’m always a sucker for faces on buildings.

Here’s the Hauptbahnhof:

And inside, there was more about the Bachfest.

Here’s a statue in front of the GDR Museum.

I insisted on getting a picture with the statue of the great mathematician Leibniz:

And there’s the Neues Rathaus again:

I’m afraid after all our walking, I took a nap, while Kate walked Riley and then prepared a wonderful dinner. We had fascinating guests that night. I mentioned that Kate’s husband worked at the U.S. Consulate in Leipzig? Well, the U.S. Special Envoy for Global Youth Issues, Abby Finkenauer, was in town, and she and her aide came over and we had completely fascinating dinner conversation.

I mean, did you even know the U.S. has a Special Envoy for Global Youth Issues? Here’s a description she posted today of what she does: “Since her appointment, Special Envoy Finkenauer has traveled the globe, consulting with young leaders and sharing their insights with colleagues across the U.S. government, to ensure that our policies and programs are thoughtful, impactful, and youth-informed.” That day (or at least some time recently), she’d met with young entrepreneurs. She was going to be traveling the next day to Chemnitz, where they were having “America Day” with a group from the USAFE Band participating. This was significant to me, because the reason I lived in Germany for ten years was that my then-husband was in the USAFE Band. I was glad I had other plans for Friday and wasn’t tempted to go to Chemnitz because that would have been a little too much. My husband had played in Chemnitz (and Leipzig) many times, though I had never attended one of those concerts – but I had attended many others.

Anyway, look at the website of the Office of Global Youth Issues. I was proud that our government is doing this kind of diplomacy. Abby Finkenauer was the youngest person in history to flip a Congressional seat, and she’s clearly an excellent person for this job. It was a beautiful evening, leaving me with lots to think about on my last day of being in my fifties.

I’m telling the story of my 60th birthday trip back to Germany, 18 years after living there for 10 years. Wednesday, June 12, started in Fulda, and then took me to the Bachhaus in Eisenach, through the village of Sondra, and then two hours on to Leipzig to stay with my friend Kate for a few days! I worked with Kate for years at the City of Fairfax Library, and she left to move with her husband, who works for the State department, to Istanbul. And last summer, they moved to Leipzig. Since I was already hoping to visit Germany for my 60th birthday, I made plans to visit her. She could not have been more wonderful and welcoming!

It was two hours from Sondra to Leipzig, so I got there early evening, settled in, saw their beautiful apartment with a balcony all the way around it, and had a wonderful dinner. After dinner, we walked to the nearby giant park in the middle of Leipzig. Here’s the lovely street right at the edge of the park:

Something I love about Germany in June is the long, long twilights, with the sun not going down until about 10 pm. We took a leisurely walk, for the sake of the amazing Riley the Wonder Dog. We got ice cream at a shop in the middle of the park. Riley knew that he gets a small cone of his own, though he was very interested in getting more (and that’s what Dave’s hiding in this picture).

We walked through the park and then along the river, taking a big circle back.

It was such a lovely finish to an absolutely beautiful day! I was back in Germany, and my heart was so full.

I confess, my next stop was one of things I’d most been looking forward to about my trip.

I’m blogging about my 60th birthday trip back to Germany. On June 12, my first full day in Germany, I was traveling from Fulda to see my friend in Leipzig, about a four-hour drive. But I’d noticed that smack in the middle of that trip was Eisenach (where I visited the Bachhaus), and I knew that Eisenach was near the village of Sondra.

Let me back up. My name is unusual. My Mom says her own mother had a piano student named Sondra, but I thought she’d made the name up because she didn’t want me to have a name that rhymed with Randy, her planned boy’s name. (And yes, my next brother is named Randy.) All my life, I’ve gotten mistaken for Sandy or Sandra, even when the name is written out in front of them. I’ve never ever found my name on a mug or a keychain. (Though as an adult, I’ve had those exact things specially engraved.)

So — when my family and I moved to Germany in late 1996, I was super happy to discover that Sonder is a German prefix meaning “special.” You can still find that fact on every page of my website. So one day I was looking at my road atlas, which I loved to peruse to find castles to visit, and I saw a nearby town called Sonderhausen, which of course means “special houses.” I was tickled by this, and then I got to wondering if there might be more German towns with the same prefix. So I flipped back to the index in the back. Well, my eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw a village with the name “Sondra”!

Sondra was 3 hours away from where we lived, in the former East Germany, but one weekend in August 1998, I dragged my whole family there to get pictures with the sign. We went to the nearby Wartburg castle as well, to add value to the trip, but the highlight for me was Sondra! A lady in an actual kerchief was out working in a nearby field, and who knows what she thought of us. Later, I went to a t-shirt shop at the BX and had a t-shirt and sweatshirt made from the image.

Here’s a picture from 1998:

And with my kids:

Now, before I tell more about the story, let me backtrack to a couple weeks before the 2024 trip. My much anticipated return to Germany was fast approaching, and I was beginning to freak out. This time, I was going all by myself, and there was a lot that needed to work out. I was planning a couple long days driving, including that day from Fulda to Leipzig, and I was really counting on my GPS working. I’d ordered via Amazon a chip that was supposed to work in Germany, but what if something went wrong? What if I was too jet lagged and wasn’t safe to drive so far? What if the timing was wrong and I was too late to check in that first night? And then there was worry about getting packed in time and catching my flights and all going well. What if I caught Covid on the plane, like I did going to Maui a year and a half before? (Note that I wore a mask on the way there and did not catch Covid. I did not wear a mask on the way back and did catch Covid.)

That gives you the idea — I was just plain fretting about my upcoming trip, worried about everything going smoothly. So one day, when I was walking by my lake, praying (I like to use my walks that way), I wanted to stop fretting and trust that God would look after me on my trip. And I prayed for that — and then I asked to see the great blue heron who often frequents my lake. I hadn’t seen it in weeks, and I did ask, just as a reminder that God is watching over me and God is listening, and I’d take it as a sign that I didn’t need to worry about my trip. I prayed this on my first pass by the lake — on my way back, sure enough, a great blue heron popped up and flew to the other side of the lake. I saw it again on each one of the three or four more walks I took before my trip. And yes, it helped with my fretting.

And when I got to Germany, my GPS worked! I’d had a little difficulty finding the right turn to the monastery in Fulda the night before, but by Wednesday I had it going well, and my ten years of driving in Germany – with stick shift – all came back, and I still felt so exhilarated to be there. That morning, I checked out around ten, got to the Bachhaus in Eisenach with no trouble, had lunch after enjoying it, and then was ready to drive about twenty minutes to the village of Sondra.

The day was beautiful! Blue skies, white puffy clouds, cool breezes, and my heart was light. I got to the village and found a place to park near the sign on the far side of the village. Sondra! I was really back!

I took pictures, happy to see they’d taken better care of the sign. They’d made some changes since 1998, probably having to do with how the town is incorporated. Comparing pictures later, there was a house closer to the sign and no evidence of a farm where there’d been one before.

Looking back at the village:

Looking at the field on the edge of town:

So I took lots of pictures. Both sides of the sign. Selfies.

Finally, I went back to my car. I stood outside it for a bit, just soaking up this beautiful place. To me, there was something so symbolic about being back in Sondra. It tells me that, yes, I am special. My life matters. Despite all that happened to me and my lost marriage, God has been with me. And I was just soaking all that up, looking across this field:

And in the distance, I saw a big bird approaching, with another behind it. I wondered what kind of raptor it was, though it wasn’t exactly shaped like a raptor, and I tried and failed to take its picture. But I put down the camera to get a better look. And, I kid you not – when it got close, I could clearly see – it was a great blue heron!

It flew right past, with another behind it. I didn’t manage to get a picture, but I had gotten a clear view.

That’s right, at the start of my Germany trip, in the village of Sondra, God sent me a great blue heron.

Yes, I’m taking all the symbolism I can muster out of that one.

I drove away marveling, even laughing out loud with delight. Remember, I was alone in my car. I did some shouting out loud, “Really God? IN THE VILLAGE OF SONDRA????!!!! Could you even be more obvious?!!!”

Let’s just say it was a wonderful moment, which I’m treasuring in my heart to this day.

In June, I took a wonderful trip back to Germany after 18 years away. On Wednesday, June 12, I began the day at Tagungskloster Frauenberg in Fulda and was planning to end the day a four-hour drive away at my friend Kate’s home in Leipzig. Right in the middle of my route was Eisenach, which is near the village of Sondra.

More about the village later. When I dragged my family to Sondra in 1998, we visited the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, but for this trip I had something of a Bach theme going, so I decided to visit the Bachhaus there. They don’t think it’s actually where Bach was born any more, but he was probably born in a home around the corner, and they’ve made a wonderful interactive museum out of this home where he definitely spent some time.

As planned, it took me a couple of hours to get to Eisenach and find the Bachhaus. A German man helped me figure out the parking system. (You could pay with a credit card!) And I thought to take a picture of the cute little Fiat that was carrying me around Deutschland.

I am not crazy about driving in cities. But Eisenach’s city center was simple enough and had a parking lot right in front of the Bachhaus. I love the old buildings.

Then it was on to the Bachhaus!

There was a whole lot to explore inside. Old instruments, rooms furnished as they would have been in Bach’s time, and even a back garden. Pretty much everything had a description in English as well as German and the many things set up for audio had narration in English with the push of a button.

I liked this room, very much set up for listening. You’d sit in one of these hanging chairs and hear a piece by Bach and get information about it. And there was even a view out the window to the castle on the hill.

After an hour of exploring, I had a ticket to attend a half-hour concert where a musician played about a half-dozen different keyboard instruments from Bach’s time.

After the lovely concert, I spent a little more time in the garden.

Then I had a delicious lunch at the Bach Restaurant out front and was ready for my next destination – the village of Sondra, where I was going to take a new picture of the sign, as I had done with my family 27 years before.

June 12, 2024! I woke up in Germany, for the first time in 18 years. Last time, I posted about how I got there. I had stayed in the Tagungskloster Frauenberg – a beautiful monastery on a hill in Fulda – in order to make my drive to Leipzig on Wednesday shorter. I was happy that I felt well-rested, and wasn’t worried about the four-hour drive.

But first was breakfast – which always seems to be included in European hotels. I wasn’t in the mood for an egg, and something on the menu called “Bircher Müsli” with fruit salad caught my eye.

When it came, I can’t even tell you how good it was.

I googled Bircher Muesli later to try to figure out what I’d eaten. Apparently the base is oatmeal soaked overnight in fruit juice. But I also noticed grated apples and other good things in there. It was so, so good and completely hit the spot. It turned out to be my favorite meal of all the ones I had in Germany.

I didn’t have to check out until 11:00, so I took a little time walking around the Kloster. First, I took a look inside the chapel.

But then I found this bench overlooking the valley and had a nice little devotional time, just marveling that I was really here, in Germany, ready for an adventure.

Of course besides my phone (with Bible), book and journal, I had my camera with me as well. Here are some pictures from that inspiring spot.

The weather, by the way, was perfect. I think the highest the temperature ever got was 75 degrees (how I like it), and that first morning was sunny and breezy and beautiful. (This is how I remember June weather in Germany, too.)

And then it was time to pack up my bags, bring them back down the stairs to my car, and set off toward Leipzig, with a first stop almost exactly halfway in Eisenach at the Bachhaus – to keep it a Bach themed vacation. I set out with a light heart and a big smile.

I originally set up this Sonderjourneys blog with the plan to tell about my travels. And then it ended up being more about spiritual travels. But now it’s time to go back to it’s original purpose and write about my 60th birthday trip to Germany.

Here’s the background. I lived in Germany for ten years, from 1996 to 2006. That was where my kids grew up and where my marriage thrived – and then fell apart. Some of the most joyful and most sorrowful moments of my life happened there. Meanwhile, I was living in Virginia and hadn’t been back to Europe at all in 18 years. Every time a friend posted pictures from a European vacation, I felt nostalgic and yes, envious. I’d remember how hard it was the first few years in Virginia to have a long weekend and realize that I couldn’t use it for a quick trip into France.

But during the pandemic, I refinanced my mortgage and got rid of mortgage insurance and finally had a little money in my budget to put toward travel. I started thinking about my looming 60th birthday. How did I want to celebrate?

My 50th birthday had been on a Saturday, so I’d thrown myself a party. But on a Saturday in June, most of my friends had other things going on. So this time, I wanted to do something I’d been wanting to do for 18 years – go back to Germany.

To make it even better, for two years now I’ve been working in a job where I select books for my public library system. When I worked in a branch, June was the busiest time of year because of the start of the summer reading program. But in Collection Services, our fiscal year ends on June 30th, so we have to stop ordering for the previous fiscal year well ahead of that deadline. Which makes it perfect timing to travel for my birthday.

Now, the year before, my sister had gotten married in May – so no June travel for me. But that was when I started thinking about my 60th birthday coming up and began making plans. I knew I wanted to go back to Germany, but where in particular would I go? My initial plans included driving across France. But the more I looked at details, the more I remembered how we used to travel when we lived in Europe – travel to one place and spend a week or so there, rather than flitting from place to place.

And then in late summer 2023, a good friend from my library in Virginia announced on Facebook that she’d moved to Germany. She was in Leipzig, in a part of Germany I’d never visited. When I reached out to her, she was happy and welcoming. So I began thinking about focusing my time two places: Leipzig with Kate to balance out time in the Kaiserslautern area where I’d lived before.

Then as 2024 got underway, more and more small disasters happened, each one costing a chunk of money. I thought maybe I was irresponsible to follow through on my plan to go back to the place my heart loves. But as I was thinking that, my youngest told me they’d gotten a bonus at work and they wanted to give me money toward the trip! So I went on planning my 60th birthday trip, guilt free.

At first, I’d planned to start the trip with my old stomping grounds. But then Kate sent me a message that there was an international Bach Fest going on in Leipzig at the start of June! I checked the Bachfest website – and it was finishing up the weekend after my birthday. So I got us tickets to a Bach Choral Cantatas Concert on my birthday in the Nikolaikirche, one of the churches where Bach actually served!

I bought tickets and sketched out my time. I was planning to rent a car, and I ordered a sim card via Amazon that you can put in your phone to switch it to a European system. Just in case that wouldn’t work, I printed out lots of google maps to the places I was planning to go.

So that brings me back to Day 1 in Germany.

My flight took off at 11:05 pm on June 10. I’d spent the day packing but still got to the airport pretty early. There was a short layover in Iceland, in an airport so small they don’t even tell you the gate until they’re ready to board the plane. I got some sleep on the first leg (I hoped), and even had an empty seat next to me. Fortunately, one worry that I’d end up being too tired to drive did not happen. In fact, my planning was good. It’s five hours from the Frankfurt airport to Leipzig. I planned to drive one hour the first night, and I found a Tagungskloster – a monastery with a hotel – in Fulda. So that was my plan.

I arrived in Germany at 4:10 pm, tired but excited. At the airport, I made sure the European sim card worked. It did! Hooray! I used an ATM to get some Euros. And I picked up my rental car. Which all took a good bit of time.

I’d realized just before I left that the rental car would be manual transmission. Could I remember how to drive it? I think the last time I drove stick was in Germany, in fact. When I got it, it was an adorable little Fiat 500 – with six speeds! Yikes! But I used the rule that if the engine was revving loudly, I should probably shift.

And then I headed out! I got google maps pointing me to Fulda, but I stopped at a gas station before I got on the Autobahn because I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the air conditioning (which my reservation said it would have) or make the GPS voice go over speakers or roll down the windows. There was a moon roof letting in sunshine and it was hot in the car.

It turned out, there was no air conditioning. But the rest I solved. The buttons for the windows were in the middle of the dashboard, rather than on the doors. So I ended up driving through Germany on a gorgeous evening in the 70s (Fahrenheit) with my windows down and a moon roof above me. When I got to Kate’s, I discovered you could plug in your phone to the car and the map would show on the display in the car! But on the first drive, I was mainly using the voice directions, plus glancing at the phone in my purse. It wasn’t until Day 9 that I realized that the current speed limit would also show up in the corner of the screen, which ended up being super helpful.

And then I was off! Driving on the Autobahn through the German countryside! There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic between Frankfurt and Fulda, the weather was beautiful, blue clouds and white puffy clouds, a cool breeze outside, and I was really back in Germany! Oh, and I was figuring out how to drive stick again. I don’t remember any scary moments on that first drive, and both stick and the Autobahn was all coming back.

Fulda itself was a little trickier. I got to the right neighborhood after some wrong turns (google maps wasn’t giving me a whole lot of notice, which I did get used to as time went by), but then it tried to make me turn into a road that was marked as closed for construction. I finally parked at the bottom of the hill below the monastery in a public lot, and trudged up the hill to check in. It was more like two hours than one by the time I finally got there.

Later I took a picture of the road I climbed to get there:

At the desk, they told me how to get to the place where I could park my car closer. My room was on the third floor, and there was no elevator, so some more work getting my luggage up the stairs.

The room was monastery simple, but cozy:

I took pictures out the windows right away.

But alas! That ended up being a mistake. There was a restaurant on the premises of the monastery and I’d seen that its terrace had a beautiful view. I went down to have a lovely dinner overlooking the city at 7:10 pm – and discovered that they’d closed to the public at 7:00 pm and were holding a private event.

After the difficulty I’d had even finding the monastery driveway and feeling tired and jet lagged, there was no way in the world I was getting back in my car to try to find food. So dinner that first night was a Kind bar I’d brought in my bag.

And then I did enjoy the Kloster for a bit. Something I adore about Germany in June is that the sun doesn’t go down until about 10 pm. I went out in the Klostergarten and enjoyed the flowers, the breezes, and the wonderful sideways light, all before winding down enough to get to sleep.

I was already remembering things I love about Germany – the beautiful countryside, beautiful weather, long twilights, polite and helpful people, the sound of the German language (they all spoke English as soon as I opened my mouth, but still.), the windows (when I got to Kate’s, she laughed and said I was the first visitor they had who knew how to open them.), driving on the Autobahn, and that feeling of being back home – at least a place that had been home for many years.

Oh, and the bonus? When we’d lived in Germany, my family counted the castles we touched and got to 167. To count, the building had to have a name, be at least 100 years old, and either be fortified or be a residence for nobility. The Kloster Frauenberg had some hefty fortifications, so I decided it qualified. Castle #168, Tagungskloster Frauenberg!

My German vacation was off to a great start, and my heart was full.