An ideal town of Italian character

For my birthday I wanted to see the town of Juelich again. Juelich is important to me because it was the first city I visited by choice my first time in Germany (after my mission work in Leipzig).

I also have a friend there who owns an Internet Cafe and I had lost touch with him so I wanted to drop in.

My man felt the trip would be enhanced by some geocaching so we did that too, and it helped us see parts of the town I had never seen.

But first of all, the most important thing about Juelich is that it has a citadel at its center, an old Roman fortress which is really lovely from above, and awesome at ground level.

America doesn't have these that I know of, so I was fascinated.

For the longest time in my cubicle at work I had only two pictures on my walls. One was a map of tech companies in Silicon Valley (what I wish I had now because of how dated it is). The other was a little picture of Juelich's citadel. I dreamed of visiting Germany and seeing this with my own eyes.

So yesterday we went and I talked all the way about my memories of being there, how confused and scared I was, not being able to speak much German. But how wonderful it felt to be free after such hard work for the church, and alone.

We parked near the Hexenturm (not my photo) and I saw a Burger King and suddenly had to have a whopper.

Do you know what a whopper costs in Germany?

This translates to $4.71. Just the whopper, no fries/drink. Crazy. This is why I only visit Burger King about once per year. Fast food should not be spendy.




The Hexenturm is right outside the window of the Burger King. I wanted to photograph this pathetic ice cream cone because I remember when the soft serve went WAY UP, like, in stacks of yummy ice cream, and it was only 25 cents. OK now it's more, but I think at least they make them tall still back home?




Oh, and I find it odd that milkshakes are located under Desserts. It's in a cup, you drink it with a straw. It's a drink!




Hey, there's a piece of the Berlin wall here! Weird, Berlin is very far away.




This is a monument to the women of the war, see the planes above her?

My first impression of Juelich (after Leipzig) was that it was so modern. I asked my friend and he said, "Everything had to be rebuilt after the war, this town was decimated."




My first glimpse of the citadel after 6 years, from a different perspective than I recall. Note the Italian flag and our state flag (coat of arms) above the entry.




This is our approach, showing the end of one of the triangles at each end of the square (if we were looking from above). Yah, it looks like a big wall. I was disappointed too my first time here. What did I expect? I don't know.

So in 2005 I walked around the entire thing, right up against those 16th century bricks. I did not heed the signs that said "Do not walk here, danger of falling bricks" because my German was shabby. My husband chuckled when he saw that warning sign, "This is the one you ignored?"





This little creek is all that is left of the moat that protected this city in Shakespeare's time.





This is the entrance, note the EU flag. I think they could have done a better job with that replaced bridge, at least make it of brick to match the structure?





Still outside the city, my husband consults his ipod for information about the cache.





I don't get it - how did they make a smooth, rounded edge to this structure out of brick?





This bit of history is fascinating. There were originally TWO citadels, but only one remains after the war, the one on the right on this figure. I did see remnants of the other, but I didn't know what I was looking at. This city is just so intriguing.





There were several of this plaques in a row, I photographed the English one.





See the Roman guard on top?





I wanna know how they mow that grass up there without falling to their deaths.





My geocacher husband: )





I don't know why you'd need a cannon if your moat was full of water. ???






And finally we enter. My husband noted that the entries (2) are both curved - was that for defensive purposes? The sign on the wall said that this entry had a swinging bridge/gate that would dump intruders into the water below.





At the other end of the entry tunnel, my husband said, "Oh you won't believe this..."

An American flag!?!






The inside of the citadel is not what you'd expect. After several centuries, the inside is now hosting a school building! This is it. My man was exclaiming how perfect it would be to have all the kids inside a citadel for protection. It was also very very quiet in there, you could not hear the autobahn outside.






This is the back entrance we left from. It was the gate I remembered in 2005, and I remember entering the curved tunnel, and then backing out in fear, thinking I was not allowed. I even remember I was listening to King's Cross by Pet Shop Boys on my ipod at that moment. Kings cross seemed a very appropriate song for this.







Only last night I found myself lost
By the station called King's Cross
Dead and wounded on either side...


Keep in mind that walking around this thing took me 45 minutes. We did not do it again, being illegal and all.






Up out of the moat, we came across a nice Jewish memorial. There are Jewish memorials all over Germany. This one was dedicated to the Jewish citizens of Juelich.






I think Lieselotta is a cool name. My man says the short form is "Lilo."





The inscription on the memorial says "In memory of the murdered Jewish citizens of Juelich and its surrounding areas."






I especially liked this. It means, "Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off."






Then we happened to wander by a Jewish cemetery from 1881. I noticed several gravestones had little rocks on them and I flashed back to Schindler's List - remember the end when the Jewish families came to pay respects to his burial site, and they all placed a stone on his grave? I just looked it up and that is a Jewish tradition, with many possible foundations. Perhaps that people were once buried in cairns, and placing a stone on top of the pile of stones symbolized the perpetual honoring.






There are many possible explanations for this tradition, and I have no idea which is true. See the stones on this grave? The last person buried here was in 1941.






In 1944 this cemetery was destroyed (vandalized) by Nazis and what we saw was an attempt to rebuild it later. How sad, but the Germans have certainly tried to show penance with all the Jewish memorials and museums around the country.

We were able to find the Internet Cafe and sure enough my old friend was working there. Times are rough for video rental shops, but he's hanging on. It was sure fun to greet him like this, "We know each other." and he said "LYTHA from Seattle!" He assumed I was visiting Germany and I said no, I live here, married now. He was stunned. I felt bad for not visiting sooner.

I drove home and emailed him an invitation to visit us, if he finds himself in the Cologne region.

What a great day. Everything I'd hoped for.