These excursions led the little boys into the Thuringian Forest, the
Hartz Mountains, Saxony and Bohemia, Nuremberg and Wurzburg, and the
older ones by way of Baireuth and Regensburg to Ulm. The large boys in
the first travelling party, which was usually headed by Barop himself,
extended their journey as far as Switzerland.

I visited in after-years nearly all the places to which we went at that
time, and some, with which important events in my life were associated,
I shall mention later. It would not be easy to reproduce from memory the
first impressions received without mingling with them more recent ones.

Thus, I well remember how Nuremberg affected me and how much it pleased
me. I express this in my description of the journey; but in the author
of Gred, who often sought this delightful city, and made himself familiar
with life there in the days of its mediaval prosperity, these childish
impressions became something wholly new. And yet they are inseparable
from the conception and contents of the Nuremberg novel.

My mother kept the old books containing the accounts of these excursions,
which occupied from two to three weeks, and they possessed a certain
interest for me, principally because they proved how skilfully our
teachers understood how to carry out Froebel's principles on these
occasions. Our records of travel also explain in detail what this
educator meant by the words "unity with life"; for our attention was
directed not only to beautiful views or magnificent works of art and
architecture, but to noteworthy public institutions or great
manufactories. Our teachers took the utmost care that we should
understand what we saw.