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Posts from the ‘Europe’ category

Deutschland Ticket, for Canadian visitors (2024)

How-to buy guide, effective May to August 2024.

( Updote: On 18 September 2025, Bavarian state broadcaster BR24 reported the monthly price for the Deutschland-Ticket will go up by 5€ to 63€ , starting 1 January 2026. The price had already gone from 49€ to 58€ for the 2025 calendar year. My summer 2025 purchase went the same way as in 2024, whose details are described below. )

89 days within Europe includes by necessity substantial travel by train within Germany. I’ve already booked in advance a number of intercity express segments, but what about local transport and regional trains?

The “Deutschland Ticket” (D-Ticket) is a rail ticket for one person and costs 49€ per month on a rolling subscription. The ticket is generally valid for local transport (bus, tram, U-Bahn, S-Bahn, intracity ferry) and regional rail (RB, most RE, IRE), but not for long-distance IC and ICE routes. Intended primarily for commuters, visitors to Germany can also purchase these tickets.

It’s early-April 2024, and I’m about to buy the D-Ticket for 49€ for the entire month of May. The ticket’s “rolling subscription” means if I do nothing else before 10 May, I’ll also automatically purchase a D-Ticket for the month of June for 49€. I’ll need the D-Ticket for May, June, July, and August; but I can only buy one month at a time.

I choose Munich’s MVV-App, based on successes reported by other travellers. I’m only using the Munich app for ticket purchase, and I’m not planning to use public transport within Munich. To buy a D-Ticket, customers are neither limited by their choice of app/method, nor by the base/location where the app is based. My question is whether a Canadian-based credit card is an acceptable form of payment by the processing company in Germany for a German-based app.

Vienna: Ludwig Boltzmann was here

The name is a large presence, particularly to many in science.

To others, the name might have little significance as any other name, like Helmut Grossuhrmacher. OK, I made that name up.

A name I didn’t make up is Ludwig Boltzmann, whose contributions to science are fundamental in an understanding of heat- or thermal-physics, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics. After several years of undergraduate- and graduate-level physics, Boltzmann is one of many names imprinted into memory, firmly established in the left-side of my brain.

Boltzmann highlights

• b/✵ 20 February 1844 – d/✟ 5 September 1906.
• Born and raised in Vienna, Boltzmann enroled at age 19 in the University of Vienna to study mathematics and physics.
• Supervised by Josef Stefan, Boltzmann completed his doctoral dissertation “Über die mechanische Bedeutung des zweiten Hauptsatzes der mechanischen Wärmetheorie” (On the mechanical significance of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) in 1866 at the age of 22.
• 1869–1873: University of Graz, with visits to Heidelberg and Berlin.
• 1873–1876: University of Vienna.
• 1876–1890: University of Graz.
• 1890–1894: (Ludwig Maximilian) University of Munich.
• 1894–1900: after Josef Stefan’s retirement, Boltzmann returns as professor of mathematics and physics at University of Vienna.
• 1900–1902: Leipzig University.
• 1902–1906: University of Vienna; he also teaches physics, mathematics, and philosophy.
• Doctoral students Boltzmann supervised and advised included: Paul Ehrenfest, Lise Meitner, Stefan Meyer, Walther Nernst.
• Speaking tour of the United States in 1905, including his stay that summer in Berkeley at the University of California. Evident from his trip report, Reise eines deutschen Professors ins Eldorado, is his sense of humour.

Time has been kind to Vienna, a city filled with notable personalities in arts, architecture, music, and science. Throughout its cemeteries, the city has assigned “graves of honour” (Ehrengrab) for many, including Boltzmann. Finding his final spot was one of many favourite moments in 2018. However, Boltzmann’s significance to the University of Vienna, to the physics world, and to time I spent in physics persuaded me to create a short (walking-)tour of Vienna to highlight some of his traces and memorialization in the city.

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My Berlin: Minkowski space in Heerstrasse cemetery

Waldfriedhof Heerstrasse (Heerstrasse forest cemetery)

Is this a small park with plenty of trees, hilly terrain, and a small lake? Or is this simply a forest cemetery, a final resting spot for many prominent Berliners?

As part of an ongoing search for gravesites for physicists and mathematicians in Germany, I visited Berlin’s Friedhof Heerstrasse, near the city’s Olympic Stadium. Within the cemetery is Sausuhlensee lake, which settled into a former glacial gully, around which much of the cemetery came into being in 1924. Named after the early 20th-century Heerstrasse estate district whose residents were to be buried here, the cemetery stretches out over an area of almost 15 hectares (37 acres).

I found the grave for physicist Hermann Minkowski, but among the buried there are other “Promis” (prominent).

Friedhof Heerstrasse, Westend, Berlin, Germany, Deutschland, fotoeins.com

Forested park, forest cemetery.

The calm waters of Sausuhlensee lake on an autumn afternoon.

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Nussberg, 19. Bezirk, Döbling, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Österreich, fotoeins.com

23 for 23: Foto(ein)s in 2023

Above/featured: Vienna’s green vineyards on Nussberg, with Kahlenberg at centre in the background. Photo, 14 Jun 2023.

A year in review typically provides coverage spanning a period of six months or more; the period doesn’t even have to be a continuous stretch. But in this case, my highlights come solely from a period of six weeks in May and June. All else pales by comparison.

All of the images presented below have been corrected for geometric distortion and rotation, with further adjustments to image-crop, brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, clarity, sharpness, vibrance, saturation, and colour levels. These images are as always best viewed on screens larger than a miniscule mobile.

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Vienna: Heinrich Ferstel’s architectural legacy

Above/featured: Entrance into the Ferstel Passage (Ferstelpalais, Herrengasse 14). Photo, 2 Jun 2023 (X70).

The following structures in the city of Vienna share something (and someone) in common:

• Café Central,
• the University of Vienna,
• Votive Church, and
• the Museum for Applied Arts.

These buildings were all designed by Viennese architect Heinrich Ferstel. His architectural works left a deep and lasting impression on the city and her residents. What follows is a brief life summary and highlights from a number of his projects.

• born/✵ 7 Jul 1828 – died/✟ 14 Jul 1883.
• One of many architects contributing to the development of Vienna’s “Ringstrasse.”
• 1843–1847: student at Imperial & Royal Polytechnic Institute.
• 1850: completed studies at Architekturschule der Akademie der bildenden Künste (Architectural School, Academy of Fine Arts) under Carl Rösner, Eduard van der Nüll, August Sicard von Sicardsburg.
• 1866: appointed Professor of Architecture at Polytechnic Institute; subsequently, dean 1866–1870; rector 1880–1881 after institute became the Technical University in 1872.
• 1872: founded the Cottageverein (Cottage Association) for the construction of English-style family homes in the Währing district.

… Prolific Austrian architect. He (Ferstel) designed the twin-towered Gothic Revival Votivkirche (1856–1882) and various other Historicist buildings, including the vast Italian Renaissance Revival University (1873–1884) in Vienna. Much of his important work (where the influence of Semper is often clear) was done for the area adjoining the Ringstrasse, but he also designed many buildings throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire. An advocate of housing reform, he admired English low-density developments, which influenced the Cottageverein (Cottage Association), Vienna (1872–1874), responsible for building small single-family houses. Ferstel also promoted the laying out of the Türkenschanzpark, a public park on English lines (from 1883) …

— from “A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture”

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