Dear Mr. Bestor:

Thank you for your "Decade of Gemtlichkeit" issue and for nearly a decade of interesting reading and worthwhile suggestions which we have enjoyed.

Thank you for Pension Heim and Gasthof Hirsch, for Albergo Gardenia, for Yellow Roads, for suggesting the Engadine and for the many other useful ideas and recommendations which we have enjoyed thanks to your experience and research. We wish to give you personally particular thanks for the humorous way in which you write and for the feeling of real friendship which your style of writing engenders. We look forward to many more years of enjoyment of your fine newsletter.

Caroline and Lee Jordan
San Rafael CA

(Ed. Note: Wow! Thanks. And thanks, too, to all who wrote and phoned their congratulations. It was, and is, our pleasure.)

I just received your December 22 issue of Gemtlichkeit and wish to refer to the information on hotels and restaurants on pages 8-10.

Putting the names of these facilities in an alphabetical order makes no sense whatsoever! The lists should have been done by countries and cities to be useful.

Hopefully, next time such data will be offered in a logical manner, which should not be too difficult in the age of the computer!

Dr. Egon Matijevic, Distinguished University Professor
Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY

Thanks for suggesting that instead of getting a car in Salzburg, and paying the high Austrian car rental rates, we take the train to Freilassing in Germany.

The pickup was smooth and we sure avoided a lot of extra cost by picking up and returning the car in Germany.

Freilassing was a 3 DM ($1.90) and 9-minute train ride from Salzburg. The Avis car rental place is actually in a gas station about a 10-minute walk from the train station. And, the station is located on the main road back to Austria! The whole transaction from Salzburg Bahnhof and back to our hotel in Salzburg took about 60 minutes!

We also stayed at the Struber Hotel. It was everything Gemtlichkeit said it was. My aunt and uncle were with us and they expected the room to cost twice what it did.

Barry Brown
Murray, KY

I just started receiving your newsletter last summer and saved the price of the subscription on two nights lodging in Bamberg. I have made a habit of staying in smaller hotels apart from the locus of conferences and found the Hotel St. Nepomuk to be an outstanding value with lovely owners and an outstanding restaurant. The view from the hotel on river Regnitz is also great and the location is superb.

I can recommend other restaurants in Bamberg: Messerschmidt (yes, related to the aircraft engineer), Brdermhle and Wilde Rose are all outstanding with the prize going to the first, though Brdermhle is close behind. The Klosterbru brewery/restaurant, across the street from the St. Nepomuk, serves great beer and superb regional food.

Another very nice hotel with more spacious rooms than St. Nepomuk is the Hotel Bamberger Hof; it is more expensive but the location is not quite as nice as the St. Nepomuk (the disco on the first floor can be noisy if your room is close to it) yet very near the old town and city hall.

In your just received Dec. 22 edition I notice a reference to the Tiefenau Hotel in Zrich; this is a very nice establishment in which we have stayed several times. We have enjoyed it immensely with such a nice location.

I enjoy your publication and wish I could travel more to make greater use of it!

Patrick J. Perkins, M.D
Orinda CA

• Prices in local currency have not been updated since the date of publication of this newsletter, and...
• The dollar prices shown were obtained by using exchange rates in effect at the time of publication.)