RESEARCHING CHANNEL OF THE GRAIL, EUROPE 2011
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Picking up where I left off on August 28, 2010
A bit over a year ago I completed the first half of a research tour planned so as to follow the footsteps of the protagonist in my current novel in progress, The Perfect. That portion took me through the castles, fortifications, caves and Pyrenean mountain passes of the Languedoc region of France, the Catalan province…
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Coming to you live from…
My favorite quote, one embossed on the coffee cup I use every day, is from Henry David Thoreau: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. Today, I sit in my apartment, yes, in New York City (thus the Saturday Night Live line). In a couple of days, I…
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Dachau-Munich, Germany, Thursday, October 06, 2011
That Dachau, site of one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps, was the first item on my trip agenda shows, I hope, how intensely focused on my mission I was. After all, it was in autumn in Munich, and for most visitots that meant Oktoberfest with beer and oompah bands in abundance. After flying…
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Austria. Friday, October 7, and Saturday, October 8
Heading out of Munich Friday morning on highways matching Long Island’s for congestion, the weather turned nasty and stayed that way for two days, making what should have been a glorious trip through the Alps quite a tiring go behind the wheel. And this was a stretch where I’d planned on vigorous hiking to hone…
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Dornach, Switzerland, Sunday-Tuesday, October 9-11
Why Dornach, a destination barely connected to the novel in progress, for three of the sixteen days of the trip? Not to sound flippant, but I did it because I could. In scheduling a lengthy journey, I’ve learned to build in some flexibility; attention overload can sometimes strike when attention is needed most. With Internet…
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Schwarzwald-Odenwald, Southwest Germany, Wed., Oct 12, through Fri., Oct. 14, 2011
Bear with me as I detour briefly from the travelogue to a personal reflection I had on leaving the serenity of Dornach for the mysterious and somewhat melancholic region of southwestern Germany where I was now headed. After all, every worthwhile journey, actual or virtual, pits our inner world against a further aspect of the…
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Wewelsburg, Saturday, October 15, 2011
In a startling, if sensational, statement in the Introduction to his 1973 book, The Spear of Destiny, author Trevor Ravenscroft states that Sir Winston Churchill “was insistent that the occultism of the Nazi Party should not under any circumstances be revealed to the general public.” He explains further: “The failure of the Nuremberg trials to…
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Buchenwald, Sunday, October 16, 2011
The massive monument on Ettersburg hillside, completed under the German Democratic Republic (former East Germany) in 1958 and more a socialistic propaganda shrine than a memorial to the victims of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is visible from the city of Weimar, the so-called cultural capital of Germany, several miles to the south, proving that, during…
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Berlin, Monday, October 17, through Wednesday, October 19, 2011
On Monday evening I came up from the subway and stood in the Postdammer Platz. I paused to absorb my first look at the heart of Berlin. To my right, in the darkening city, gleamed a festival of commercial skyscrapers, the gaudy epitome of western capitalism; to my left, only stocky gray buildings staring lifelessly,…
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Berlin Holocaust Memorial, October 19, 2011
I conclude this account, as I closed the trip itself (click on link towards the end of this entry to join me for that moment at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial ), on a very personal note. Yes, I came to this part of the world as a writer following the footsteps of an historical individual—a…