Travelore News: King Charles Visits Germany In First Overseas Trip As Monarch

King Charles was greeted with military honours at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Wednesday as he began his first state visit abroad since becoming the British monarch, part of efforts to re-set relations with Europe post-Brexit.

Charles, who succeeded his mother Queen Elizabeth as monarch in September, had been due to travel first to France, but cancelled that part of the tour due to violent social unrest over President Emmanuel Macron's new pension law.

The fact that Charles had picked France and Germany for his first state visit, even before his coronation in May, was an important "European gesture", said German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who greeted Charles and his wife Queen Consort Camilla in Berlin.

"Today, exactly six years after Britain started its exit from the European Union, we are opening a new chapter in our relations," Steinmeier said.

Over a three-day visit to Berlin, Brandenburg in the east and the northern port city of Hamburg, Charles will attend engagements reflecting issues facing both countries, such as sustainability and the Ukraine crisis, and will also commemorate the past, according to Buckingham Palace.

As a mark of respect, fighter jets escorted Charles' plane into Berlin, where he became the first visiting head of state to be given a ceremonial welcome at the capital's most famous landmark, the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol of the country's division during the Cold War and subsequent reunification.

Underscoring Charles' interest in environmental causes, one of his first engagements in Berlin was a forum on sustainability, addressing matters from hydrogen and renewables to industrial decarbonisation, according to Buckingham Palace.

There, he met Germany's foreign and economy ministers who are both from the Greens party, junior partner in the country's three-way coalition, as well as business leaders, academics and civil society representatives.

"Today, we friends and partners, we are looking forwards - and that's why we are starting this state visit very consciously with a topic that is decisive for our future on this planet," said Steinmeier.

He noted he was "grateful" Charles had gotten involved in these issues early on.

"We also benefit from your conviction today, your Majesty", said Steinmeier, who will hold a state banquet at the presidential palace Schloss Bellevue for the royal couple later in the day.

Charles will address the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, on Thursday in Berlin, and meet some of the one million Ukrainians who have taken refuge from war in Germany.

Later in the day, he will meet representatives from a joint German-British military unit for a demonstration of their bridge-building amphibious vehicles in Brandenburg.

Steinmeier said he had invited Charles to visit Germany at Elizabeth's funeral last September. The British government makes the ultimate decisions on such state visits, which form part of its use of the monarchy's 'soft power'.

As such, the trip was a clear sign of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's push to reset relations with Europe, said Anand Menon, director of academic think tank UK in a Changing Europe.

However, any warmer relations with Europe brought about by the visit could cool if other post-Brexit issues flare up.

Britain has slumped from Germany's fifth most important trading partner to 11th in 2022, behind the Czech Republic.

Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Phil Noble; Additional reporting by William James, Phil Noble and Michael Holden; Editing by Bernadette Baum

Westminster Abbey To Offer Barefoot Tours

People who visit London’s Westminster Abbey after the coronation of King Charles III will be allowed to stand on the exact spot where he was crowned, but they will need to make sure they don’t have holes in their socks for the shoeless tour, designed to protect the abbey’s medieval mosaic floor.

Abbey officials said Friday that the section of the church’s floor known as the Cosmati pavement, where the chair in which Britain’s monarchs are crowned has been placed for some 700 years, will be on display during Charles’ May 6 coronation after being hidden away under carpets for decades because of disrepair.

The pavement area, normally roped off to the public, will be open to small guided “barefoot tours” after the crowning ceremony. Visitors will be asked to remove their shoes to avoid wear and tear to the floor, which was restored to its former glory after a two-year conservation project was completed in 2010.

“Standing on the pavement and feeling that sense of awe of being in the central part of the abbey is a really amazing experience,” Scott Craddock, the head of visitor experience at the famous church. “It will give people the opportunity to feel what it’s like being at that center stage of the coronation.”

King Henry III commissioned the intricate mosaic of marble, stone, glass and metal, located in front of the abbey’s high altar, in the 1200s. Italian craftsmen and English masons made it.

It is where English — and, later, British — coronations have taken place ever since, but the area was covered by carpet at many previous coronations, including those of Elizabeth II in 1953 and her father, George VI, in 1937.

The mosaic is said to be the best surviving example outside Italy of a rare type of stonework known as “Cosmati,” after the Italian family which created it.

“It’s a unique piece of art to Westminster Abbey but also to Britain itself — there are no other mosaic pavements like this in the U.K.,” Vanessa Simeoni, the abbey’s head conservator, said.

Experts from the abbey will guide the tours, which will run on some days from May 15 to July 29.

By SYLVIA HUI