It’s nicknamed the 'Golden Gate of the Lower Rhine'.
And it does bear a resemblance to the original in San Francisco,
even though it’s in Germany.
Writer Christoph Karrasch decided the COVID pandemic
would be a great time for a ‘world tour’.
Within Germany, Iceland and Japan can be found about a hundred kilometers apart.
And the South Seas aren’t much farther away either.
A strong wanderlust, or travel bug, was my principal motive.
I wanted to be on the road again,
but of course, I couldn’t leave the country,
not to mention go to another continent.
And then I discovered
that places exist that are named after other places:
California, Brazil and America, Russia and Rome — all these places really exist HERE.
Andernach on the Rhine is one of Germany’s oldest towns:
originally a Roman settlement.
Christoph found a bit of Iceland right here in Rhineland-Palatinate.
For three weeks, he collected material for his book.
The title means ’San Francisco lies on the Rhine’.
Christoph Karrasch discovered the world, right inside Germany.
Just a short boat trip up the river took him
to the world’s highest cold-water geyser.
The word ‘geyser‘, our only loanword from Icelandic, means ‘gusher’.
It’s about to start up!
The rust-brown rockpile!
It’ll be the first eruption of the day.
It starts hissing, because first it has to... there!
it has to blow off what it’s built up over night.
Watch out! Here it goes!
I don’t know if it’s fifty meters high yet...
I’ve been to Iceland myself, and it just rained for the entire two weeks.
So, for me, at least in terms of the weather, this is absolute paradise.
And yes, it’s a kind of Iceland-quickie.
It’s a way of stepping into a really fascinating nature that you find in Iceland.
And here, you can get a taste of it.
The next stop on his local world tour is Japan!
This quarter in the center of the Rhine metropolis Düsseldorf is nicknamed ‘Little Tokyo'.
Düsseldorf is home to Europe’s third-largest ethnic Japanese community after London and Paris.
Nearly everything a Japanese person might need to feel at home can be found here:
such as bookstores with selections in Japanese.
But Christoph is more interested in the Japanese bakery around the corner.
It offers some far-Eastern classics.
The good green stuff is matcha pan.
The pastry specialties aren’t generally crispy like German ones.
They’re baked soft and packed in plastic wrap.
Along with the flavor, that too, is authentically Japanese.
Mmh, it’s got a filling.
Compared to many other places I’ve visited on this world tour of Germany,
this one is a genuine piece of the big wide world, right in the middle of Germany.
That fascinates me.
Many other places just play around more with the clichés and well-known names,
but here, it’s authentic.
Here, you can really immerse yourself in something like a little Japan for a few hours.
And that’s why the name is so fitting: Little Tokyo.
From Japan, it’s just a short jaunt down the Rhine -- with a stopover in the ‘South Seas’,
an artificial swimming lake near Xanten – back to San Francisco!
The two ACTUAL locations are separated by over 15-thousand kilometers.
In Germany, it’s barely a hundred.
The Golden Gate Bridge of the Lower Rhine.
The destination is Germany's longest suspension bridge with 803 meters.
It connects Cleves and Emmerich near the Dutch border.
The real Golden Gate is over three times as long.
Even so, the smaller German version is quite a discovery for the traveler.
Often, people think there aren’t any secret tips left
for things to see in Germany.
But if you change your perspective a bit
and embark on a world tour in your own country,
you might discover places you never heard of before!
I didn’t even know a bridge like this existed here!
Germany – a country with more variety than many people might think!