Hessen

PURPLE: Along the Rhein River. Hessen only owned a small stretch of the Rhein River banks, but what a wonderful part of Hessen it was. Easily one of Hessen's best known destinations was Rüdesheim (pictured), sitting at a sharp bend in the Rhein as it wound northward into wine country. This city had loads of wine bars and markets, plus a chairlift to the massive memorial known as the Niederwalddenkmal. Meanwhile, the Roman bath city of Wiesbaden, also Hessen's capital, was just off the confluence of the Rhein and Main Rivers.	BLUE: KASSEL (4 Chapters). I used to label this section Fairy Tale Country because northern Hessen was the source of many well-known Fairy Tales, and the city of Kassel was one of the places where the Brothers Grimm assembled and published a collection of them (they also were the founders of the single modern German language, too). The Kassel travelogue has a chapter on the huge Schloss Wilhelmshoehe (pictured) with its Hercules monument and many waterfalls. There are also chapters on Downtown Kassel with the Brothers Grimm museum and the city's many parks along the Fulda River.
RED: The Commercial Heartland. The Main River cut across southern Hessen, and was the commercial and industrial heart of the region. The travelogues here focused on two large cities on or near the Main that blossomed during the post-War years. Frankfurt am Main (pictured) was certainly the best known in the area, with its huge international airport, glass-and-steel skyscrapers, and immense market squares. Anyone doing business in Germany was likely to spend time here. Meanwhile, just to the south was Darmstadt, a city with a tremendous amount of ex-pat influence.	GREEN: Bergstrasse and the Odenwald. The southeastern part of Hessen was high forest sitting above the Rhein and Main valleys. This was a very beautiful part of Germany, with small towns nestled in steep valleys, colorful palaces along flowered streams throughout and beautiful castle towns. Four travelogues are offered here -- the forest towns of Erbach and Michelstadt (pictured), the Bergstrasse town of Heppenheim and the monastery village of Lorsch. The first was dominated with a huge palace in the center of town, the second was a walled town with a very unique stilted town hall and charming cobblestoned streets.
TEAL: The Fulda Gap.The Fulda Gap region in eastern Hessen was once where soldiers from the US and Soviet Union stood in close proximity. This frontier of the Cold War was remembered through the Point Alpha Museum (pictured), split between the towns of Rasdorf in the west and Geisa in the east. Nearby was the prominent baroque city of Fulda with its gorgeous residential palace and huge domed Cathedral.	BLACK: The Neckar River Valley. There are two locations in Hessen on the Burgstrasse -- the four-castle town of Neckarsteinach (shown) was given its own travelogue here, while the adjacent castle town of Hirschhorn was lumped together in the Neckar River Photo Gallery in the Baden-Wuerttemberg section. Like many towns on the Neckar, Neckarsteinach and Hirschhorn were lovely river towns with lots of charm and beautiful castles and manors perched high on the riverbanks.
ORANGE: The Lahn Valley. The Lahn was a small tributary of the Rhine that flowed through Hessen. Included here was Marburg (pictured) with its beautiful Markgrafenschloss perched on a high hilltopped downtown overlooking half-timbered market streets on the Lahn River. Also included is the cliffside city of Limburg am Lahn further west, with its colorful cathedral and tight winding inclined streets.