Americans don’t visit Erfurt but they should. The city is more than 1250 years old and is jammed with fantastic buildings remaining from the period of building from the late 1400s to the early 1600s, at the height of the German Renaissance. One of those buildings, the 16the century “Breiten Herd” was severely damaged by […]
Author Archives: James Derheim
Visiting Germany's Smallest Brewery
We had a fresh one on September 7 at the Schmitt Brewery in tiny Singen, Thuringia the other day. We visited the village as a daytrip from nearby Erfurt. The Schmitt Brewery was established in 1875 and has been churning out great suds ever since. It makes about 70,000 liters of beer per season. That […]
Goslar Deserves its World Heritage Classification
Goslar in the Harz Mountains is a world-class small city with a wealth of well-preserved half-timbered and stone buildings dating back to the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Once the seat of the emperor, the “Kaiserpfalz” still stands today as strong as it did when it was built in 1050. Emperors from Friedrich Barbarossa to […]
Eppingen, Germany is a Half-timbered Town with "Pfiff!"
We spent a couple of nights in Paula’s ancestral town of Eppingen, not far from Heilbronn and Sinsheim in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Eppingen is well-known in this area for its wealth of beautifully-preserved half-timbered houses. Some are huge, such as the “Baummisches Haus,” dating from 1562 and now a lovely small hotel and cellar restaurant with extensive […]
Making Hay While the Sun Shines in Heidiland
We had the good luck to catch several farmers way, way up high on the mountainside above the Walensee in the St. Galen district of Switzerland the other day. The sun was shining and the farmers were rushing to bring in the hay before a storm arrived later that day. Shown are guests Bob and […]
Just for Fun in Switzerland
James Derheim has created Ammon USA LLC to wholesale these handcrafted wooden figures in the United States. The figures come from Bavaria and the Czech Republic. We’ve been selling them in our retail shop in Sarasota, FL the past year and they are among our top selling items. Starting in September, we’ll be marketing these […]
Lunch in Cheb
We scooted across the border on Sunday for lunch in Cheb, the Czech Republic. I’ve driven by this town many times but never had a reason to stop until this time, when things just worked out for us to have lunch in the colorful square of this delightful old town.
Genealogy is impossible without people like this
Where would genealogists be without people who can read the old German script like Erich Scherer? We met Herr Scherer today in the church office of Arzberg, in the Bavarian Forest near the border with the Czech Republic. His name had been given to guide James Derheim by a contact developed by Paula Leitzell, current […]