James Anderson-Pole
Travel recommendations
Australia
- Cockatoo Island, NSW
- National Pass, NSW
Czech Republic
Germany
- Berlin Nordbahnhof: Train station with exhibition on Berlin's ghost stations.
- Berlin TV Tower
- East Side Gallery Berin
Malaysia
Netherlands
New Caledonia
- Amedee Island: Recommend booking with MaryD.
New Zealand
- Mount Kaukau, Wellington
Samoa
Singapore
- Battlebox: 1942 Malaya Command Headquarters
- Changi Chapel and Museum: World War Two Prisoner of War camp.
- Former Ford Factory: Here the British surrendered to the Japanese in 1942. There is an exhibition on World War 2.
- Rail Corridor: I recommend the Central Section if you are short on time.
- Reflections at Bukit Chandu: Historical World War 2 site.
Thailand
United Kingdom
United States
Newseum: Was an excellent musuem but sadly closed at the end of 2019.
Travel Plans
Germany
Baden-Württemberg — 12 nights
- Heidelberg — 5 nights
- Accommodation ibis Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof
- Day 1 Technik Museum Speyer (day trip)
- Day 2 Technik Museum Sinsheim (day trip)
- Day 3 BASF Visitor Center: company-history exhibition spanning the Nazi-era IG Farben period, with a Stolperschwelle memorial outside (day trip to Ludwigshafen)
- Day 3 Gedenkstätte KZ Osthofen (Osthofen Concentration Camp Memorial): one of the first Nazi concentration camps, established March 1933 (day trip)
- Day 4 Museum für Kommunikation Frankfurt (Museum for Communication Frankfurt) (day trip to Frankfurt)
- Day 4 Historischer Ort Adlerwerke (Historical Site Adlerwerke): memorial to the Katzbach concentration camp, a subcamp of Natzweiler-Struthof (day trip to Frankfurt)
- Website Frankfurt (Main) Hbf | A brief station guide
- Stuttgart — 4 nights
- Accommodation ibis Stuttgart Centrum
- Day 1 Memorial at Hotel Silber
- Day 1 Stauffenberg-Erinnerungsstätte (Stauffenberg Memorial): exhibition on brothers Claus and Berthold von Stauffenberg and the 20 July 1944 plot against Hitler, in the Altes Schloss. Open Thu–Sun only.
- Day 1 Birkenkopf
- Day 2 Straßenbahnmuseum Stuttgart
- Day 2 SWR Fernsehturm Stuttgart
- Day 3 Palais Thermal: historic thermal bath with spa-palace architecture (day trip)
- Website Stuttgart Hbf - a brief station guide
- Baden-Baden — 3 nights
- Accommodation TRIBE Baden-Baden
- Day 1 Caracalla Therme: modern thermal spa day with indoor/outdoor pools and sauna areas.
- Day 2 Friedrichsbad: Roman-Irish bath house and historic thermal spa experience.
Bavaria — 10 nights
- Berchtesgaden — 2 nights
- Munich — 8 nights
- Accommodation ibis München City
- Day 1 Zugspitze (day trip)
- Day 2 Neuschwanstein Castle (day trip)
- Day 3 Reichsparteitagsgelände (Nazi Party Rally Grounds): former Nazi Party rally complex, including the Documentation Center in the Congress Hall's north wing and the Zeppelin Field parade grounds (day trip to Nuremberg).
- Day 3 Memorium Nuremberg Trials (day trip to Nuremberg)
- Day 4 KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau (day trip)
- Day 5 DB Museum Nuremberg (day trip to Nuremberg)
- Day 5 Museum für Kommunikation (Nuremberg) (day trip to Nuremberg)
- Day 6 Therme Erding: world's largest thermal spa complex (day trip)
- Day 7 Deutsches Museum (Munich)
- Day 7 Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism
- Day 7 DenkStätte Weiße Rose (White Rose Memorial): marks the spot at LMU Munich where Sophie and Hans Scholl threw anti-Nazi leaflets on 18 February 1943
- Website Munich to Neuschwanstein by train | How to visit Bavaria's fairytale castle!
- Website Munich Hbf - a brief station guide
- Video Germany's Frankfurt and Nürnberg
Berlin — 12 nights
- Accommodation ibis Berlin Hauptbahnhof for a practical stay near Berlin Hbf.
- Day 1 Berlin Wall theme — outdoor-heavy, with transit
- ✅ Berlin Wall Memorial (Bernauer Straße): preserved death strip, original Wall segment, and watchtower (documentation centre not yet visited)
- Checkpoint Charlie
- ✅ East Side Gallery: 1.3 km open-air stretch of the Wall painted by artists in Friedrichshain (free, always open)
- The Wall Museum: indoor multimedia exhibition on Cold War and Berlin Wall history, on site at the East Side Gallery
- Day 2 Soviet theme — mixed outdoor/indoor, with transit
- Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park): monumental Soviet WWII memorial and war cemetery (~7,000 Red Army dead)
- Museum Berlin-Karlshorst: site of the German unconditional surrender (8 May 1945), now the German-Russian Museum
- Soviet War Memorial (Schönholzer Heide): the largest Soviet war cemetery in Berlin (13,200 Red Army dead), with a 34 m obelisk and Mother Russia statue, in Pankow (north Berlin)
- Day 3 gay theme — walkable, mostly outdoors
- Regenbogenkiez: Schöneberg's rainbow district — the historic gay village around Nollendorfplatz (Motzstraße, Fuggerstraße), with rainbow crossings, historic bars, and memorial plaques
- Nollendorfplatz / Motzstraße: historic heart of Berlin’s gay district
- Eldorado memorial plaque: marks the former queer nightclub and Nazi persecution site
- Schwules Museum
- ✅ Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism: concrete stele in the Tiergarten, opposite the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
- Site of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft: Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science (1919–1933), the world's first sexology institute, looted and its library burned by the Nazis in 1933; memorial on the Spree bank
- Magnus-Hirschfeld-Ufer: queer cultural promenade along the Spree
- Day 4 Teufelsberg: former US Cold War listening station on a Grunewald hilltop, now open-air dome ruins covered in street art
- Day 5–7 Berlin Wall Trail (Mauerweg) — 3-day cycle of the full ~160 km loop
- inner-city leg (~43 km): ride the former East–West divide through the city centre along the old border patrol road.
- southern outer ring (~55 km): ride West Berlin's former border with Brandenburg, from Wannsee round through the southern suburbs to Rudow/Schönefeld.
- northern & western outer ring (~60 km): ride the forested northern and western border (now the "Green Belt"), through Spandau and along the Havel back to the start.
- Day 8 train trip to Potsdam — mostly indoors
- Lindenstrasse Memorial: former prison and courthouse memorial documenting political persecution under Nazi, Soviet, and GDR rule
- Cecilienhof Country House: site of the 1945 Potsdam Conference
- Leistikowstrasse Potsdam Memorial: former Soviet/KGB remand prison in the early Cold War period
- Glienicke Bridge: Cold War prisoner-exchange bridge between Berlin and Potsdam
- Day 9 DDR theme — walkable, all indoors
- Day 10 Nazi theme — walkable, mixed indoor/outdoor
- German Resistance Memorial Centre (Bendlerblock): former Army High Command where Stauffenberg and other 20 July 1944 plotters were executed; exhibition on resistance to National Socialism (Tiergarten)
- Berlin Story Bunker — Hitler: How could it happen?
- Topography of Terror
- Führerbunker site: car park with an information board marking Hitler's underground bunker, where he died on 30 April 1945; a couple of minutes from the Brandenburg Gate
- Bebelplatz — "Empty Library": Micha Ullman's sunken memorial of empty white shelves at the site of the 10 May 1933 Nazi book burning, on Unter den Linden
- Day 11 Holocaust theme — mixed indoor/outdoor, with transit
- House of the Wannsee Conference: villa where the January 1942 Wannsee Conference coordinated the "Final Solution"; permanent exhibition, out at Wannsee (SW Berlin)
- Gleis 17 Memorial: 186 cast-steel plates along the platform at Grunewald station recording every deportation train of Berlin's Jews (1941–1945) — date, number of people, and destination
- ✅ Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Holocaust Memorial): Peter Eisenman's field of 2,711 concrete stelae, by the Brandenburg Gate (underground Information Centre not fully explored)
- World War Two
- Cold War / GDR
- Technology / science
- Computerspielemuseum
- Futurium
- Deutsches Technikmuseum: includes the Deutsche Telekom Science Center Spectrum interactive exhibit; also check out the Bahnpark railway museum section
- General / urban experience
- Reichstag
- Vabali Spa
- Timeride
- Deutscher Dom: free Bundestag exhibition on German parliamentary history.
- TODO: check the Berlin Welcome Card for free public transport and 170+ discounts on attractions.
- Website Berlin Hauptbahnhof | A station guide
Brandenburg — 3 days
- Brandenburg an der Havel — 1 day trip from Berlin
- Brandenburg-Görden Prison Memorial: former prison memorial covering Nazi and post-war political repression
- Memorial to the Victims of Euthanasia Murders: documentation site on the Nazi "euthanasia" killings at Brandenburg an der Havel
- Eisenhuettenstadt — 1 day trip from Berlin
- Oranienburg — 1 day trip from Berlin
- Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen: major former concentration camp memorial site
Bremen — 4 nights
- Bremen — 4 nights
- Accommodation Apartment-hotel Adagio Bremen
- Day 1 Denkort Bunker Valentin (Bunker Valentin Memorial Site)
- Day 2 Universum Bremen
- Day 3 U-Boot Wilhelm Bauer (Submarine Wilhelm Bauer) (day trip to Bremerhaven)
Hamburg — 6 nights
- Accommodation ibis Hamburg Alster Centrum
- Day 1 Hannoverscher Bahnhof Memorial: marks the former deportation station platform from which 20 trains carried over 8,000 Jews, Sinti and Roma to ghettos and Auschwitz-Birkenau (1940–1945), Lohsepark
- Day 1 St Nikolai Memorial
- Day 1 Bunker St. Pauli (Flakturm IV): WWII flak tower built by forced labourers and POWs in 1942, sheltering up to 25,000 people; now has a memorial and information centre alongside a public rooftop garden
- Day 2 Ohlsdorf Cemetery: mass grave and memorial to c. 38,000 victims of the 1943 firestorm bombing (Operation Gomorrah), whose bodies Neuengamme prisoners were forced to recover and bury (day trip)
- Day 2 Gedenkstätte Fuhlsbüttel ("Kola-Fu"): early Nazi concentration camp and Gestapo prison, opened September 1933, later a Neuengamme branch site; permanent exhibition on resistance and individual prisoner biographies since 2003, 15-20 min walk from Ohlsdorf
- Day 3 Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (day trip)
- Day 3 Bullenhuser Damm Memorial: former Neuengamme satellite camp where 20 Jewish children used in medical experiments, and their four caretakers, were murdered on the night of 20 April 1945; on the same S21 line as Neuengamme (early start recommended to combine both)
- Day 4 St. Mary's Church, Lübeck: bells left shattered on the floor of the south tower exactly as they fell in the RAF's Palm Sunday raid of 28/29 March 1942, the first major British bombing raid on a German city (stopover en route to/from Neustadt in Holstein)
- Day 4 Museum Cap Arcona: former Neuengamme and Stutthof prisoners died when the RAF sank the prisoner ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Athen in Lübeck Bay on 3 May 1945, hours before likely liberation (day trip to Neustadt in Holstein, via Lübeck)
- Day 5 Miniatur Wunderland
- Day 5 U-434 Submarine Museum: preserved Soviet Tango-class submarine that ran espionage missions off the US East Coast during the Cold War (decommissioned 2002)
- Website Hamburg Hauptbahnhof | A station guide
Hesse — 2 nights
Frankfurt is covered as a day trip from Heidelberg (Baden-Württemberg); Hadamar is covered as a day trip from Koblenz (Rhineland-Palatinate).
- Fulda — 2 nights
- Accommodation B&B Hotel Fulda-Hbf
- Day 1 Point Alpha: Cold War US observation post overlooking the Fulda Gap, with museums covering both the western (Haus auf der Grenze) and eastern sides of the former inner-German border (day trip via Hünfeld)
Lower Saxony — 2 nights
- Hannover — 2 nights
- Accommodation Novotel Suites Hannover City
- Day 1 Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen (Bergen-Belsen Memorial): day trip via train to Celle, then taxi or bus (limited service, none Sundays) for the last 25km.
- Day 1 Aegidienkirche: ruined church preserved since 1952 as a war memorial, destroyed in the October 1943 bombing raid that killed 1,245 people; free, central Hannover
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania — 4 nights
- Greifswald — 4 nights
- Accommodation Mercure Hotel Greifswald Am Gorzberg
- Day 1 Dokumentationszentrum Prora: unfinished Nazi-era "Kraft durch Freude" (Strength Through Joy) resort complex, documenting its construction and political background (day trip)
- Day 2 Historisch-Technisches Museum Peenemünde: V2 rocket development and testing site of the Peenemünde Army Research Centre (day trip, 2 changes each way)
- Day 2 U-461: preserved Soviet Juliett-class cruise-missile submarine, moored opposite the museum
- Day 2 Hans Beimler: preserved Soviet-design (Tarantul-class) NVA Volksmarine missile fast-attack craft
- Day 3 Pommersches Landesmuseum: permanent exhibition on 20th-century Pomeranian history, covering both world wars, flight and expulsion, and the GDR era
North Rhine-Westphalia — 11 nights
- Duisburg — 3 nights
- Accommodation Mercure Hotel Duisburg City
- Day 1 Wunderland Kalkar (day trip to Kalkar)
- Day 2 Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Steinwache: former Gestapo police prison, now a memorial on resistance and persecution in Dortmund, 1933–1945 (day trip to Dortmund). Closed for renovation, planned reopening mid-2028.
- Köln (Cologne) — 4 nights
- Accommodation ibis Köln am Dom
- Day 1 Schwebodrom: exhibition on the history of the Wuppertal Suspension Railway (day trip to Wuppertal)
- Day 1 Wuppertal Suspension Railway (day trip to Wuppertal)
- Day 2 Deutsches Museum (day trip to Bonn)
- Day 2 Haus der Geschichte (day trip to Bonn)
- Day 3 NS-Documentation Centre
- Website Cologne Hauptbahnhof | a station guide
- Paderborn — 4 nights
- Accommodation ibis Paderborn City
- Day 1 Gedenkstätte Möhnetalsperre (Möhne Dam Memorial): memorial to the victims of the 1943 "Dambusters" raid, including the forced labourers who died during reconstruction (day trip to Möhnesee)
- Day 2 Gedenkstätte Stalag 326 (VI K) Senne: memorial and documentation centre at the largest Soviet POW transit camp in the Third Reich, near Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock (day trip to Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock)
- Day 3 Kreismuseum Wewelsburg: exhibition on the ideology and terror of the SS, at the former SS ideological centre and concentration camp site (day trip to Wewelsburg)
Rhineland-Palatinate — 5 nights
- Koblenz — 5 nights
- Accommodation Mercure Hotel Koblenz
- Day 1 Deutsches Eck (German Corner): Rhine/Moselle confluence with Kaiser Wilhelm monument and Berlin Wall fragments
- Day 1 DB Museum Koblenz
- Day 2 Rhine Valley Scenic rail journey: train from Koblenz to Bingen.
- Day 2 Rhine Valley Scenic boat journey: KD boat from Bingen to St Goar.
- Day 3 Government Bunker Documentation Site: Cold War continuity-of-government bunker museum (day trip to Ahr Valley)
- Day 3 Ahr-Thermen: historic thermal spa (day trip to Ahr Valley)
- Day 4 Gedenkstätte Hadamar (Hadamar Memorial): former Aktion T4 euthanasia killing centre, with preserved gas chamber and crematorium (day trip to Hadamar)
- Website Rails down the Rhine - the scenic route by train
- Video Rails Down The Rhine: Cologne to Basel by EuroCity train EC9
- Remagen — stopover en route to/from Cologne
- Peace Museum Bridge at Remagen: museum on the 1945 Ludendorff Bridge battle and its aftermath
- Trier — stopover en route to/from Saarbrücken
Saarland — 2 nights
- Saarbrücken — 2 nights
- Accommodation Mercure Hotel Saarbrücken City
- Day 1 Historisches Museum Saar: permanent exhibition on the Saar region's history 1870–1959, including the Nazi era and the 1935 and 1955 referenda on unification with Germany
- Day 1 Neue Bremm Gestapo camp memorial: former SS-run "extended police prison camp" (1943–44) where hundreds of prisoners of 14 nationalities were killed, most in transit to concentration camps further east; free, open-air, bilingual German/French panels
Saxony — 8 nights
- Leipzig — 5 nights
- Accommodation ibis Leipzig City for a practical stay near Leipzig Hbf.
- Day 1 Josep Renau mosaic murals: "Unity of the Working Class and Founding of the GDR" and "The Forces of Nature and Technology Controlled by Man", a restored 1974 Cold War-era mosaic (36m x 7.25m, 11,136 tiles), Am Stadion 5 (day trip to Halle-Neustadt)
- Day 2 Karl Marx Monument (day trip to Chemnitz)
- Day 2 Museum of Industrial Culture: industrial history and socialist-era context (day trip to Chemnitz)
- Day 3 Memorial Site Torgau: former prison and memorial site (day trip)
- Day 4 Runde Ecke: Memorial Museum
- Day 4 Zeitgeschichtliches Forum: contemporary history museum covering German history since 1945
- Dresden — 3 nights
- Accommodation ibis Dresden Zentrum
- Day 1 Kulturpalast
- Day 1 Soviet War Memorial: memorial to Soviet soldiers of the 5th Guards Army who died during the 1945 liberation of Dresden
- Day 1 Tränenmeer: "Trauerndes Mädchen am Tränenmeer" (Mourning Girl at Tear Lake) sculpture at Heidefriedhof Cemetery, overlooking the mass grave of 6,865 people cremated after the February 1945 bombing raids
- Day 2 Bautzen Memorial: former prison memorial and museum-style site (day trip)
Saxony-Anhalt — 4 nights
- Wernigerode — 4 nights
- Accommodation Altora Eisenbahn Themenhotel
- Day 1 "Richard" — Buchenwald subcamp memorial: former forced-labour camp on Veckenstedter Weg, converted to a Buchenwald concentration camp subcamp in 1943; memorial established 1974/75 in the former barracks.
- Day 1 Langenstein-Zwieberge Memorial: Buchenwald concentration camp subcamp where 7,000+ prisoners from 23 countries dug a 10km tunnel complex for secret weapons production; includes mass graves, an exhibition building and a guided tunnel tour (day trip to Halberstadt)
- Day 2 Grenzmuseum Sorge: free open-air inner-German border museum, preserving an original section of border fence, patrol road and a watchtower (day trip)
- Day 3 Gedenkstätte Moritzplatz: former courthouse and prison (1876) used for political detention by the Nazis, then Soviet and East German authorities including the Stasi (1958–1989); commemorates 10,000+ victims. Closed Saturdays and most Sundays (day trip to Magdeburg)
- Brocken — stopover en route to/from Nordhausen
- Brockenbahn (Brocken Railway): narrow-gauge crossing of the Harz mountains between Nordhausen and Wernigerode
- Nationalpark-Besucherzentrum Brockenhaus (National Park Visitor Centre Brockenhaus)
- Website How to visit the Harz Railway | Times, prices, tickets
- Video Harz Railway Part 1: Nordhausen to Brocken
- Video Harz Railway Part 2: Brocken to Wernigerode
Schleswig-Holstein — 2 nights
- Kiel — 2 nights
- Accommodation ibis Styles Kiel
- Day 1 Flandernbunker (Flanders Bunker)
- Day 1 U-Boot-Museum U 995 (U-Boat Museum U 995)
Thuringia — 5 nights
- Erfurt — 3 nights
- Accommodation ibis Erfurt Altstadt
- Day 1 Gedenkstätte Andreasstraße: former Stasi remand prison where over 5,500 GDR citizens were held for political reasons; site of the first occupation of a Stasi district office during the 1989 Peaceful Revolution.
- Day 2 Buchenwald Memorial: main Nazi concentration camp (1937–1945), later a Soviet special camp until 1950; permanent exhibitions include "Buchenwald. Ostracism and Violence 1937 to 1945" (day trip to Weimar)
- Day 2 Museum Forced Labor Under National Socialism: 2,000m² permanent exhibition in the former Gauforum, central Weimar, run by the same foundation as Buchenwald (day trip to Weimar)
- Nordhausen — 2 nights
- Accommodation Nordhäuser Fürstenhof
- Day 1 Mittelbau-Dora Memorial: Buchenwald subcamp where prisoners were forced to build V-2 rockets and V-1 flying bombs in tunnels dug into the Kohnstein; guided access to part of the tunnel system, plus a renovated museum
General Information
- Check city cards and museum prices for savings.
- Website European Rail Timetable
- Website German InterCity trains
- Website German ICE trains | InterCity Express
Contact details
- Email: james@pole.net.nz