BEST OF EUROPE - Blu-ray review

Questar Entertainment recently released three "Best of Europe" titles in High Definition: "Beautiful Italy," "Beautiful Greece" (see my review), and this title, "Beautiful Germany."

Though "Beautiful Germany" isn't quite as spectacular as the Greece volume, there are still plenty of postcard moments and traveler's tips and information--all provided by the inimitable PBS host Rudy Maxa, who broke into electronic media some 15 years ago as "The Savvy Traveler" on Minnesota Public Radio and hosted "Smart Travels: Europe [and the Pacific Rim] with Rudy Maxa" for the PBS station in Boston. Shows from that 65-episode TV series, filmed in High Definition, make up these "Best of Europe" offerings from Questar. Each of the Blu-rays features four shows, for a total of 100 minutes of armchair traveling.

The episodes in this volume are "Berlin," "Munich and Bavaria," "Germany's Romantic Road," and "Germany's Rhine and Mosel Rivers." Some tough choices had to be made here, because missing is a show about Germany's famous Fairytale Road (with stops at the Sleeping Beauty Castle, Rapunzel tower, Hansel and Gretel woods, etc.). It's also a little surprising that Maxa didn't linger very long at Neuschwanstein Castle, which is perhaps one of Germany's most famous and most visited landmarks. Mostly, it's surprising that Maxa just doesn't seem as enthusiastic about some of the places as he was with the Greek cities and tourist stops. Or maybe he's just a little more PBS austere and restrained this trip. Either way, he just doesn't seem to gush as much. The superlatives are right there in the narrative he wrote (and reads), but the level of expression doesn't seem to match at times.

Berlin is the first stop, and following black-and-white footage of the Third Reich to remind us of the city's tortured past, we see a contemporary European capital built upon the ruins of World War II--a progressive city which now has the largest population of gays and lesbians in all of Europe. Some of the stops include the classic luxury Hotel Adlon, the Reichstag government building, KaDeWe department store (the biggest in Europe--which dwarfs the better-known Harrod's in London), and the huge Pergamon Museum with its impressive reconstructed altar of Pergamon and the market gate of Miletus, which were moved from their original locations in Turkey. It's the most visited art museum in Germany, with an enormous amount of Egyptian antiquities.

Maxa seems most at home talking about the romantic history of castles, monasteries, towers, and ruins. Though he talks up Berlin and its hip culture, you can tell he's more comfortable in the smaller burgs and villages. And there are plenty of them in these picturesque journeys.

In Munich and Bavaria he seems more at ease in the capital city of what was once the Kingdom of Bavaria. Maxa tells us that residents consider themselves Bavarians first and Germans second, and shots of men in lederhosen abound. There's WWII history here too, as the crazed young corporal who would rise to lead the Nazi party came out of Munich, and delivered his famous Beer Hall Putsch after making an important talk in the beer hall at Hof-Brau Haus (where Maxa tells us the waiters serve up 17,500 liters of beer daily). Stops include obvious ones, like Nymphenburg Palace and the old town hall and glockenspiel on the Marienplatz (main square), but also lesser-known ones, like a trip to see the devil's footprint at a old church and to watch locals engaged in the Munich custom of rubbing the lion's paws on another architectural feature for good luck--and this, in passing as they go about their daily business. It's in reporting the smaller details of a place that Maxa excels, and when his travel narratives come to life. I'm a little surprised, though, that there was no mention of the world-class Munich Zoo or the Englischer Garten, which is bigger than New York's Central Park and has the distinction of including a section for nudists to frolic. Adult daughter Sarah joined him for this show.

Germany's Romantic Road takes you to Wurzburg, with its Baroque Bishop's Palace--a lively college town that was clearly one of Maxa's favorites. "Romantic Road" was actually a term used by travel agents in the '50s to describe the tour of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg that wove through romantic towns and cities and led, ultimately, to young King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein Castle--a castle built for show, rather than medieval functionality, and one which inspired Disney's famous theme park castle. Among the stops is Dinkelsbühl, a quaint town anchored by the 15th century St. George's Minster church in the Gothic style. Maxa's tour ends at Rothenburg, site of the best-preserved medieval walled city in Germany . . . and the highlight of the show, if you ask me.

Germany's Rhine and Mosel Rivers is the final leg of Maxa's journeys in Germany on this Blu-ray, and you get a nice sense of what it would be like to take a Viking River Cruise down these famous waterways past towns so picturesque that each one looks more charming than the next. You see castles perched high on mountaintops and below them vineyards on steep slopes and towns below, with their colorful half-timbered designs. There are history lessons here too, as elsewhere, with Maxa telling us how Julius Caesar defeated the Germanic tribes at a location where the rivers come together, and we get a little WWII history about the Remagen Bridge (which was referenced in "It's a Wonderful Life"). Several of the towns on this river cruise were founded by the Romans, with Cologne founded in 33 B.C. and sporting the largest Gothic church in Germany--spared destruction in WWII because navigators used it to locate the town and didn't release their bombs until after they passed the structure. In Cologne we visit a museum which houses the largest Picasso collection outside of Spain and learn about Kolsch beer drunk, which locals say is better than any other.

All together, these episodes form a nice composite of the sites and treasures to be found in Germany.

Video:
The AVC/MPEG-4 transfer to a 25-gig disc isn't quite as impressive as the Greece volume I reviewed earlier. Then again, it may well be the source materials. A number of sequences look a little soft, which could have been caused by atmospheric conditions, as there's a slight graininess to these sections as well. There just isn't the same consistent color saturation as there was in the Greece Blu-ray, though the level of 3-dimensionality is the same and the level of detail is good. Episodes are presented in 16x9 aspect ratio (which measures out to 1.78:1) and each episode runs about 25 minutes.

Audio:
The audio is a clear and precise Dolby Digital 2.0 that's more than enough, since mostly it's Maxa's voiceover narration that drives the soundtrack. But as I remarked with the Greece volume, it would have been nice to have more ambient sound coming from the rear speakers, given the locations.

Extras:
The bonus features are a DVD version and a Digital Copy, so you can watch this show when you're not near a Blu-ray player.

Bottom Line:
Though "Beautiful Germany" isn't as consistently lively and picturesque as "Beautiful Greece," Maxa's tours and history lessons are still engaging.