Weird little moments are what make life worth living. Keep your eyes open. Sometimes you have to look for them.

I was in the Imperial War Museum in London, looking at a Jagdpanzer, a heavy tank-hunting tank used by the Nazis in World War Two. As someone who studies military history, this was pretty cool. Not a reproduction of a tank used in combat. A tank that was used in combat. That is when I noticed the holes…

I read the little biography of this vehicle. It gave the year it was built, the names of the crew, and even the date the tank was knocked out by an English Cromwell tank. Real men had lived and died with this vehicle. It is sadly ironic that the death of some of the crew are what made the history come alive for me all those years later.

I think it was somewhere near Piccadilly Circus that I spotted this curious statue…

I am not even going to attempt to explain this piece of art, but, good people of London, if this statue is still there, get rid of it. Please.

Sometimes it is just a matter of perspective, of walking a little farther along a path to get a view, an angle on something that most people do not bother to find…

In Paris, while the kids were finishing up with dinner, I took a stroll around the block. I found this little doorway that led to a covered alley between two of the bigger boulevards. This narrow little alley marked the outskirts of a Moroccan enclave, and was filled with the exotic aromas of cooking lamb, mysterious spices, and incense. Little stalls sold  herbs and vegetables from far off lands. Little shops held brass hookahs and large beaten-copper serving trays. If I hadn’t taken a walk, I never would have known the alley was there…

Everyone takes a photo of Montmartre’s famous Sacre Coeur… I took one too… but take a shot of the street. Life isn’t lived in Cathedrals…

I told you about my habit of taking early morning walks. And I mean early, while it is still dark. You can enjoy where you are before anyone else is there to get in the way, and you get to see the sunrise. Why should sunsets get all the glory?

Switzerland looks lovely in the first blush of dawn.

And take the time to learn a few things. We went up to the top of a mountain near Innsbruck during one day trip. There we saw the huge ski jump used in the 1964 and 1976 Olympic winter games. We were told that this very ski jump was the scene of the horrible ski accident by some skier that came to be forever known, to those of us who remember the Wide World of Sports show, as ‘The Agony Of Defeat’ guy. Now this alone is an interesting fact, but I learned an even more interesting fact… at least to me… by walking a little farther than most of the other people on the tour did. When all the thousands of skiers who have used this ski jump for practice or competition over the years are sailing high into the sky, they have a beautiful view of Innsbruck spread out below them. And right in the center foreground of that view is one of the largest cemeteries I have ever seen. Hundreds of headstones can hardly be an inspiring sight in such circumstances…

And please, take the time to walk off into the woods when you are anyplace new. Get off the paths and trails. Just stand quietly for a moment and feel what is around you. This is what the country you are visiting is really like. What it was like before all the people and the buildings…

That is the heart of Austria, right there.

Sometimes you have to walk a long way. In Venice, I had to cover a lot of ground before I got away from all the other tourists…

But I bet I saw stuff that even the locals don’t pay that much attention to. And to me, that is awesome.

Weird moments can sometimes be sad moments. Or perhaps haunting is a better word…

Those are the gates of Dachau concentration camp. The words, if I am not mistaken, translate to; ‘Work Makes You Free’. They wanted people entering the gates to think that they were  just going to be put to use for the Third Reich. And many of them were… for a time… until they became too weak and starved to be of further use…

What was it like to lay in these bunks as your strength slipped away, and you had been there long enough to know that there was no hope?

After seeing the barracks and the crematoria, I had to be alone for a few moments. I did what I do. I walked. And that led me to this sad little back gate and the barbed wire. With the peaceful woods lying just beyond. How must those woods have looked to those trapped inside the wire?

I don’t want to end this post on that note, so I won’t.

My last early morning walk of the trip was through the ancient town of Rothenburg…

I was all alone on the streets. And I fell in love with this magical town. So I think I am going to do a post of pictures just of this special place. Because many of you will see the big cities of Europe sometime in your life. But you might not even know that this place is there.