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This year's June trip to Germany was very enjoyable and could be called our environment trip because of all the different environments or surroundings or situations in which we found ourselves in the course of the trip. The variety of people and scenes we experienced made it a meaningful trip.
The two hour delay of our flight from St. Louis to Chicago was something to experience. We were fortunate to have scheduled a longer layover in Chicago but others on the flight were not so fortunate and some travelers were rather upset.
On the flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, we shared the five seats in a middle row of the plane with three Yugoslavians, including a mother who spoke no English and her teenage daughter, who spoke excellent English, who was sitting next to Celia.
From Frankfurt we traveled to Westerkappeln to visit with Günter and Friedhelm Freese for a few days. In a very gemütlich environment, they are two of the most genial, gracious, hospitable persons we’ve met. We did lots of things, including visiting Fritz and Wilma Bente, and also seeing the slides of Friedhelm’s two trips to the USA in the past year. While we were there, we were visited by a physician from Westerkappeln who is making it a hobby of his to search the 1825-1875 civil archives of Westerkappeln to find family information for persons who had a relative in Westerkappeln in the era. Just before leaving for the trip, I had e-mailed him the name and date of birth of my Berlekamp great-grandfather. He had searched the records and found the names and dates of birth and marriage of others in that family and recorded them on appropriate forms and copied them for me. We spent several hours discussing what he had found. He asked that I let people here know of his willingness to do the same exploration for them. (e-mail me at ray@freese.net and I’ll send you his e-mail address).
During our visit in Westerkappeln we had gone to Bad Essen with Günter and Friedhelm and had a new eating experience, eating at a Yugoslavian restaurant. Although I’m usually very timid about trying a new food item, I tried their recommended “Halb und Halb-Bosnian” and found it delicious. Celia enjoyed “Toast Hawaii”. Good food!
On the Inter City Express train from Hanover to Würzburg, we enjoyed watching the train speedometer, located at the end of each rail car, climb to speeds of over 250 kilometers per hour (150 miles per hours) during parts of the trip.
The Pastorius Home in Bad Windsheim is a rooming house where we stayed the next ten days. We used our GermanRail pass to make day t rips to a nearby cities and towns. It had been over booked for it’s normal two-person rooms so far a few days Celia and I had to ourselves one very large room with twelve bund beds, ten closets and three toilets. A very different environment!
We enjoyed finding different places to eat, both at Bad Windsheim and the nearby areas. I still have difficulty translating the items on German restaurant menus, but then I sometimes also have trouble telling what an item on an American menu consists of.
Twice we found trains that were jammed with people; otherwise our days of travel on the trains were leisurely and comfortable.
At the plaza in front of the Fulda train station, during our visit there, we saw a confrontation between a questionable-looking man and a police officer with his police dog. The police dog was lunging at the man but being restrained by the chain leash held by the officer. There was a shouting match between the two men, punctuated by the barks of the police dog. The officer was apparently writing the man a summons. Eventually the officer won, and the man left the area. Celia and I recalled how often we had noticed in previous visits to foreign countries that vagrants tended to cluster around the entrances to train stations; apparently Fulda is attempting to change that atmosphere.
While returning to Bad Windsheim from that trip to Fulda, we had a very pleasant experience with four German teenagers. When we got on the train at Fulda, it was very crowded with lots of people and lots of luggage. Four teenagers who overflowed a six-person compartment with their luggage felt sorry for Celia and me and made some room so we could sit down. The young man of the four spoke English well so Celia was able to join in the conversation. They were part of a group of thirty students who had been visiting Rome, including churches in the area. They left the train as it approached their homes, small towns north of Würzburg. I gave the young man my business card with my e-mail address; when we got back home to Missouri, there was an e-mail message from him waiting for me, to which I was happy to respond.
One of our first days in Bad Windsheim, we decided to go to the plaza in the old part of town where, at 2:30 p.m., a daily tour of the Altstadt would start. We were pleasantly surprised. The daily scheduled tour had been replaced by a special summer production there, including a formal procession, two bands (one the "Spielmans und Fanfarenzug"), demonstrations of folk dancing and various balladeers extolling in rhyme the important virtues of the region, tying together the economical, spiritual, family and intergenerational strengths of the people of the region.
One of the days we decided to visit the highly recommended Franconian Open Air Museum on the south end of Bad Windsheim. It includes several clusters of buildings on 100 acres, totaling over 70 buildings, dealing with the cultural heritage of Franconia and shows the architecture, housing and working life of the rural population in former times. This includes buildings from five different centuries, including some renovated farmhouses from the fourteenth century. It included buildings with displays showing the development of trade and industry in the area. We spent several hours there.
In our visit to Würzburg we used the city map to visit famous landmarks within walking distance of the train station. Walking ten minutes from the train station brought us to a famous church (Augustinerkirche), and to the Pizza Hut nearby where we had lunch. A few minutes more on Schönborn Straße brought us to the Marienplatz with the Haus zum Falken, a splendid Baroque mansion, formerly an inn. Next to it was the Marienkappelle, a late gothic chapel begun in 1377 and completed about 1481. It was interesting to us how these "famous" structures all had a string of shops standing backed up against them, taking advantage of all possible space for selling food and other wares.
We found lots of pigs in Würzburg (actually hogs and not live ones, at that). Every few blocks there would be one made of stone or plastic or whatever, all decorated uniquely, as if in a competition. We never did learn their significance for the city.
We found the cathedral of St. Kilian and, nearby, the Neumünster (the romanesque basilica of the eleventh century). A short walk took us to the old bridge over the Main River, built 1473-1543, from which we had an excellent view of the Fortress Marienberg which was originally a fortified retreat about 1000 B.C., but the fortress construction was begun around 1200 A.D.
We retraced some of our steps and then walked eastwards to the Residenz, one of Europe's most outstanding palaces, given recognition by UNESCO-World Heritage. We took a fifty minute guided tour and saw unique staircases, saw the world's largest ceiling fresco as well as other frescos and stucco work.
On another day we visited Nürnberg, Despite getting caught in a shower of rain, we were able to visit the Frauenkirche, Schöner Brunnen (beautiful well), and a number of churches. The market square formed near the Schöner Brunnen is the location of the annual "Christkindlmarkt" where 150 stand-owners sell toys and Christmas decorations as that season approaches, a custom going back to the seventeenth century. We found a few stores that specialize in these wares at all times of the year. The numerous stands were now selling mostly fruits and vegetables. The Schöner Brunnen, constructed in 1396, rises up like the steeple of a gothic church 62 feet above its octagonal base. Forty stone figures decorate the columns, including the four evangelists, the four church fathers, seven electors, three heroes from classical antiquity, Moses, and seven Old Testament prophets.
It is interesting to see how World War II has affected the atmosphere of the different cities. Much of Fulda was destroyed and thus much of it is new construction designed for commerce and industry. Others, like Bamberg or Rothenburg have either had little damage from the war or reconstructed the old buildings in the old part of town to be as true in construction and appearance to the original as possible.
One day, on the last leg of our trip back to Bad Windsheim, we experienced the severest case of rowdiness on the trains thus far. Three teen-age girls found a sex magazine and were accosting a young man in their end of the car. They became rambunctious, eventually, among other things, throwing the magazine at him, causing him to move to another car. Celia and I and another man were the only other occupants of their train car. Things quieted down only somewhat by the time we got to Bad Windsheim. Celia thought they were high on something.
Celia described the Altstadt in Rothenburg as "user friendly". The map was easy to follow as well and we browsed through several stores while on our way through the area. One very kind lady, in a shop where I was buying an illustrated book about Rothenburg and was exchanging pleasantries while completing the transaction suggested I was getting the wrong version of the guide - getting the English version instead of the German version. I thanked her profusely for her kind thoughts, for her thinking that my German was that good, but told her we were from the USA and that it was indeed the English version that I wanted to purchase.
Just as we approached the central market plaza, we heard band music and had a chance to watch a large marching band, apparently from Sweden it turned out, perform several numbers, both while marching and while standing in place.
We located the address given in Rothenburg for the Käthe Wohlfahrt Christkindl Markt. It and its sister store across the street were decorated in the spirit of St. Nicholas or Christmas, including a two story high decorated Christmas tree. All the rooms in the store were filled with crafts and other items related to the Christmas season.
"Maybe it was meant to be" was Celia's comment as we were returning from our day's visit to Weißburg and had just had a stimulating conversation with a woman in her eighties on a train platform at Weißburg.
We had visited the Altstadt part of Weißburg. Weißburg is a relatively small municipality; even the train station office closes on Saturday at noon. Part of the town is maintained in the old style with some original buildings still intact. We saw the old city hall, the new city hall, the Kaiser Ludwig Fountain, a museum with Roman artifacts from the area and the central market square. We saw the church built around the middle of the fifteenth century. On the Martin Luther Square we saw the building that served as the Weißburg Latin School from 1581-1806.
We had completed our visit to Weißburg and were sitting on the appropriate platform at the appropriate track, waiting for the ten minutes to pass for the train to arrive to start us on our way back to Bad Windsheim. We were sitting in two seats of a shelter consisting of 8 metal individual seats, under a roof on the track, with a transparent shield separating the chairs into two sets of four chairs each. A young lady and then a man and an elderly lady came to the shelter and each sat on one of the "other four" chairs. After a few minutes an announcement came over the public address system that the train we were expecting would be delayed thirty minutes (unheard of!). All of the three jumped up, with the man leaving immediately, apparently hoping to catch another train, with the young lady leaving about the same time. The older lady, standing, made a comment to me about how ridiculous it was. I responded that indeed it was, but that we had found German trains to be quite punctual as a rule. That gave her a chance to ask where we were from. That started a long, intensive, enjoyable (but for me strenuous, trying to speak meaningful German) conversation that lasted until our train arrived. She was from Weißburg and had come to the track to meet her daughter; she had prepared coffee and strawberry cakes. Her granddaughter's husband had just completed graduate work in German and History, writing a 500 page thesis. The granddaughter had told her grandmother that the last four months she hadn't even dared to dust the house for fear she would disturb her husband. When she asked us if we had ever visited the Rhine River valley, we said, yes, that the stretch from Bingen to Koblenz was one of our favorite spots in Germany. She said that was her favorite also; she had grown up in a town near Koblenz and even though she had lived in Weißburg for 55 years, the area south of Koblenz was still "home".
During our wide-ranging conversation this mild-mannered, gracious, alert and active woman who claimed to be in her eighties enjoyed sharing her philosophy of life:
About the world: "Die Welt ist schön, man muß sie nur benutzen" (The world is great; one has to get involved to enjoy it)
About terrible things that some people do: "Es gibt Idioten in jedem Land" (There are idiots everywhere)
About life: "Man weiß nicht, wie lange man lebt." (You don't know how long you're going to live.")
As the train arrived, we wished her a good visit with her daughter and she wished us a safe return to Bad Windsheim and eventually to the U.S.A.
We enjoyed running across a large rummage sale during our visit to Fürth on Sunday, a day when virtually all stores are closed. Instead of selling fruits and vegetables as would normally be offered in the central market place of the city, this one offered everything from expensive flatware to cheap clothes, books and knick-knacks. Celia persisted for a long time and found a book (for one mark, i.e., 50 cents) with lots of color photos that described a recent fifteen-year period of the Neustadt/Bad Windsheim area, including the economic, environmental, educational and cultural changes that had taken place in the Kreis (County). It included a photo of the Pastorius Haus as an example of the work taking place toward the preservation of historic buildings.
In our compartment on the train from Bad Windsheim to the Frankfurt we met - no, wrong words, we saw a man very unlike most Germans we have met. He was a caricature of a rude middle-aged German business man that I recall reading and hearing about in American magazines. He was sitting in one of two seats by the window that we had reserved the day before, and were marked as such by the GermanRail. He had his food spread out on the other seat we had reserved and his briefcase on a third seat in the five-seat compartment. Celia and I decided not to make an issue of it and ate our brown-bag lunch we had brought along and chatted quietly with each other -- much more quietly than his conversations with whomever he called on his cell phone periodically. Oh, well! I'm glad he was not our first encounter with a German. Our first such encounter with a German was with a young lady on the train in 1989 from Frankfurt to Freiburg who was most gracious, helpful, considerate and kind, and made us feel welcome in Germany.
We enjoyed the atmosphere and relative luxury of our room at our hotel at the Frankfurt Airport, such as watching CNN and having space to move around in. We had them give us a wake-up call at 4:30 a.m., took the hotel shuttle to the airport and arrived in Chicago on time. Then the delays started, with our arrival in St. Louis at 4:30 p.m., about two hours behind schedule, glad to be home but also glad to have had the experiences on our trip.
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