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CULTURE

Meet the German Rolling Stones super fan delighted at end to US travel ban

Elisabeth Zours saw her first Rolling Stones show in East Berlin in 1990, just after the fall of the Wall, and nothing was ever quite the same again.

Published: 7 November 2021 12:32 CET
Die-hard Rolling Stones fan Elisabeth Zours
Die-hard Rolling Stones fan Elisabeth Zours poses with an autographed LP album of the legendary British rock band, in Berlin on November 2, 2021. John MACDOUGALL / AFP

Since then, barely a year has passed without the German office manager catching the still spry rockers on stage somewhere in the world – that is, until the pandemic and the US travel ban.

Now with the United States reopening its borders on Monday to fully-vaccinated foreign visitors after a more than 18-month block on travel
from much of the globe, the 51-year-old Zours will be among the first in line.

Like so much else, her life-long Stones marathon came to a screeching halt with the virus outbreak.

“The tickets I still had from the (cancelled) 2020 US tour were still good but the travel ban was in place and I didn’t know if I would be able to use them,” she said.

“And then (drummer) Charlie Watts died (in August) — it was all an emotional rollercoaster.”

‘This could be it’

Zours, who’s seen the band in action dozens of times – “in the high double digits”, – said superfans like herself worried the tour might never resume given the Stones’ advanced age.

She had a ticket for the St. Louis show, the first since Watts’s death, on September 26 and held out hope that Joe Biden would loosen the rules in time.

“I even thought about travelling via a third country to try to get into the States, then decided it was too risky,” she said.

“I ended up watching it (the Watts tribute) in the middle of the night in bed on a livestream.”

Zours was “frustrated” that even months after the EU opened up to US travellers, the door to America was still shut to Europeans.

“It made no sense – especially for those of us who are vaccinated” and while US infection rates were generally far higher than in most EU member states.

So when the White House finally heralded the good news on October 15, Zours knew she’d be on the first plane.

“Now I’ve got tickets for four concerts, starting in Atlanta then Detroit, Austin and Hollywood, Florida,” said Zours, who plans a three-week odyssey to catch up with the band.

SEE ALSO: US to lift travel ban for vaccinated Europeans on November 8th

For the last several years, being a massive Stones’ fan has been a bit like living on borrowed time, Zours admitted — you never know when your luck will run out.

“You’re always aware it could be the last tour,” she said.

“But now that Charlie Watts is dead, this really could be it.”

‘Broken hearts, sad goodbyes’

Zours’s love for the Stones reaches back to her early adolescence.

“I fell for a classmate and the Stones were a way to get to know him better,” she said.

“It was the 80s and I’d force him to record the albums on cassettes for me. Nothing happened with the guy but the Stones are still with me.”

She’s conscious of the fact that all the travelling to indulge her life’s passion comes at a price.

“The climate summit (in Glasgow) is happening right now and it’s an issue that’s really important to me,” Zours said, noting she tried to offset
transatlantic trips with things like eating less meat.

Then there are some of the Stones’ songs themselves whose macho swagger hasn’t held up well over time.

“‘Brown Sugar’, ‘Under My Thumb’ – it’s true, some of the lyrics are problematic. But I never saw the band as misogynistic or felt put down by them – they empower me.”

Just as many families are looking forward to the end of the US travel ban for emotional reunions, Zours said seeing the Stones again in their element will feel like coming home.

Their music is like a good friend – it’s helped me through crises since I was 12: broken hearts, sad goodbyes, times when I was down,” she said.

“Whenever I hear their music I feel good again.”

SEE ALSO: ‘Better than I could have imagined’ – How foreigners feel about being able to travel to Germany

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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