Been home for two weeks now.. wishing I had a frisch vom Fass Hefeweizen, but I doubt be going back to Europe for a couple of months. Summer plane fares are ridiculous...

Anyway, this week sees:

WWII Feldpost and propaganda, with camp mail.

German Empire and Colonies

Zeppelin-related ephemera, cards, and flown covers.

And what else? Quite a bit of Austria, especially Rohrpost. Ephemera lots. WWI planes. I managed to pick up quite a bit on my last trip, and I'm waiting on one of the best Zeppelin collections I've purchased in the last few years...next sale, I hope.

Just got back from the latest European adventure, which involved far more unscheduled waiting in airports than anyone would wish. United Airlines has serious issues getting their planes to run on time. Checking the immediate history of one of the German routes I flew, the last three flights (all that it showed) were 3-5 hours late due to mechanical issues, with one plane being replaced because it couldn't get in service in time. Really builds confidence. Lufthansa and its subsidiaries were great -- except for the nasty lady at the counter in Munich -- an uncharacteristic exchange.

My daughter came to help, and so we visited some interesting sites in the spaces between auctions -- the Sennsheim Technical Museum where she got to drive a real-live Panzer IV (on a test stand, of course), Hofbraeuhaus, Berlin Zoo (awesome), the Dokumentationszentrum in Munich (also much better than expected).

Our Berlin apartment was right across from the field of the erased Fuehrerbunker where the corporal and his newlywed bride suicided (never knew where that was before), which itself is across from the somber Jewish Holocaust Memorial in the heart of the city by the Brandenburger Tor. A beautiful and I'm sure thoroughly intended irony. Strolling through nearby Brandenburg Gate was cool, as always. As a Cold War kid, walking through areas I never thought I would be able to visit is kind of cool. Staying just off Unter den Linden was surprisingly affordable and extraordinarily convenient for good restaurants, Museum Insel, etc. Sadly, the Pergamon Altar at the Pergamon Museum is closed for renovations, so basically all we saw there was the Roman marketplace and the Ishtar Gate, which admittedly are really quite something.

Anyway, enough travelogue. This week sees:

Zeppelin covers, again especially Swiss (and other) treaties.

A lot more German Empire and States, with Eagle mixed-franks, Baden, Bavaria, a skiff full of German Marineschiffspost + Seepost mail as well as Colonies.

WWII Patriotics, ephemera, and Feldpost + a few Danzig revenues..

And what else? The last of the big collection of 1700's-1800's Pestbriefe / Disinfected Plague covers, postwar SBZ, WWI mail and RPPCs including Richthofen, etc. Plus I got to bid on some really cool new collections, so stay tuned...