When Henry came to Heidelberg

My buddy Henry from Berkeley and Sausalito arrives on Saturday, April 12. It has been a lovely sunny day; Henry arrives in the late afternoon and we go to the Binding Fass for a beer and decide on a program. Henry has never been to Ladenburg so we go there for dinner. I drive and the little town looks spectacular in the late afternoon sun. We walk around, taking pictures and looking at menus. This little town has at least four or five very attractive restaurants with interesting menus. We pick Zur Sackfeife (The Bagpipe) Weinstube Restaurant a lovely old half-timbered building with the date 1598 over the door. We have a delightful dinner in a small room looking out onto the market square, where we get into an immediate conversation with the German couple finishing dinner; the only other people in the little room. We ask what they had ordered and they help us through the very extensive menu. I order a regional dish of three different meats with fried potatoes and an egg served in a very hot casserole right out of the oven. Henry has goulash mit spaetzel (free form noodles) and we each start with a wonderful onion soup and order a beer. The waitress tells us there was no beer aus den Fass (on tap) because it’s a Weinstube (wine bar). The restaurant has many dining rooms on several floors.

Next morning we set out for Wiesloch with Henry driving. There is no market today; however we see the First Communion parade leaving the church, with all the kids in white, carrying candles and that makes our visit special. From there we drive to Karlsruh to look around then back to Heidelberg for dinner. We walk along the pedestrian Hauptstrasse (Main Street) to the Marktplatz (Market Square) and sit down for a beer and some serious people-watching. This is the spot where, in 1937 someone spat on Henry’s Mother, which led the family to leave Germany for the US after living in the area for approximately 200 years. Later we decide on dinner at Hackteufel, a lovely old-style German restaurant on Steingasse, between the Church and the old bridge; with a Gemutlisch (friendly, cozy) atmosphere. I try to order asparagus as an appetizer but without success. Henry orders roast pork in a light cream pepper sauce mit spaezel and I order Sauerbraten mit Rotekraut und Kloese (pot-roast with red-cabbage and dumpling) that of course we both scarf up in no time! On the way home Henry tries to find the US Officers Club near the US Army Hospital, where he worked about 40 years ago! Unfortunately we have no success.
On Monday we drive to Buchen, where his Mother was born. It’s about a 2-hour drive partly along the River Necker and partly through the Odenwald (Oden-wood); through farmland and sleepy villages. We arrive at the Rathaus (City Hall) and go to the office of the official for real property. Henry has been in touch with her before and she provides us with maps and drawings to find a small piece of property that Henry owns, after having it transferred from his Father’s estate. We are able to locate its approximated position as part of an orchard out in the country about a mile-and-a-half outside of town, in the middle of nowhere! Henry has set his stomach for Zwiebelrostbraten (a grilled steak covered in onions) at a certain restaurant in the middle of Buchen. Unfortunately, being Monday it’s closed and to Henry’s stomach’s great disappointment we end up at a perfectly nice café/restaurant called Metzgerei Vogt (Butcher-shop Vogt) where we are the only patrons. Henry has Goulash und Spaetzel and I a cup of soup and two hamburger patties with boiled potatoes and steamed carrots. The elderly owner, 74 the former butcher comes over and talks to us; Henry tells him that his Grandfather had a leather-goods store right in the middle of town and shows him an old picture. The butcher tells us that in the early days his father, also a butcher would kill the cattle with a special knife and in a special way for the Jews of the town.

Later we meet Lothar for dinner in Wiesloch in the oldest part of Wiesloch in Weinkeller Freihof, a cellar restaurant where we have a delicious dinner accompanied with an excellent French house wine.

On Tuesday Henry leaves to re-explore Mannheim, where he was stationed 40 years ago and I go to school. Next day we take off for Weinheim; it’s raining on and off and quite cold. It is a spectacular little old town, tucked between the hills and has two old castles. The town square is very pretty, faced with old half-timbered buildings. It reminds me very much of Uzes in Provence, except the houses are half-timbered and red brick rather than stone. There are many cafés and restaurants all with tables outside but it is much too cold and rainy for that. We wait until the restaurant next door opens and started with onion soup, which is good and hot to stave off the cold weather. Henry orders Wurstchen mit Bratkartofflen (little sausages with fried potatoes) and I have Weiner Schnitzel mit Spagel. The waitress tells us she is a student and recently spent 6 months working in a lab in Pleasanton! After lunch Henry takes off for Munich.


Photos:
F & U Academy, Heidelberg 1#008
First Communion, Wiesloch 1#035
Henry in Buchen 1#056
Dinner with Lothar 1#061

Introduction and Heidelberg, the first week

I spent 3 months living in Provence in Spring of 2006 and 2007, working on my French; which went quite well, so I thought of trying three months somewhere else. Since my only other foreign language is German and because of the success of the trip to Dresden in October ‘07, I thought of doing two or three months in Germany; not in Dresden, which would be too emotional; but probably in Heidelberg.

I wrote to Lothar, my buddy in Heidelberg, who I met last year through my long-time friend Henry Baer and Lothar arranged for me to rent an apartment at the EMBL Guesthouse in Boxberg about half-an-hour outside Heidelberg.

PLEASE NOTE
The two previous sections (On the Way to Heidelberg: Eisenach, Halle, Bayreuth and Würzburg and On the Way to Heidelberg, Continued: Würzburg to Heidelberg) and the conclusions were written months after my return from Dresden; I found the Conclusions very difficult to write and only completed them with my daughter Suzanne’s help and encouragement!



Heidelberg, the First Week
My return to Germany in 2008 starts on April 13, when Eliane and I arrive at Frankfurt Airport and take a shuttle to the Steigenberger Airport Hotel and after a rest go downstairs to the Unterschweinstiege restaurant for a delicious traditional German dinner. The restaurant is an old building next to the hotel and was probably moved and restored; it is the main reason that I love this hotel. Eliane chooses the buffet and I order Hasen (Hare) goulash with a pastry top served with Spaetzel (small free-form dumplings).

Next day I take Eliane to the airport and see her off on her flight to Tel Aviv then pick up my rental car at Sixt. I have trouble finding the rental car and finally get someone to walk me there, it’s about a one-mile hike in the basement of the huge airport parking garage. Finally we get to my grey VW Golf and he helps me load. After a minor getting lost I find Autobahn 5 to Darmstadt and Heidelberg. I have no trouble finding Boxberg and the Hotel ISG (International Seminars Guesthouse) where I follow the room clerk to the EMBL Guesthouse. I meet Herr Kuehne, the manager, who shows me to # 67 on the third (and top) floor; luckily there is an elevator! It is a modern concrete building and the apartment has a living room with small Pullman kitchen, bathroom and an upstairs sleeping loft plus two balconies. In the afternoon I take a drive in the surrounding countryside then come back to Binding Fass, (Binding is a brand of beer and Fass is a barrel) a real old-time German beer bar and restaurant; all old wood and booths made out of huge old barrels. The front room is full of people and thick with cigarette smoke. I sit in the next room, which is non-smoking and have a draft beer and large plate of Sauerbraten (German pot roast) with noodles and a green salad.

Next day, Saturday, I drive over to ISG for their buffet breakfast. Although the apartment has a small kitchen with a few utensils and no coffee maker; I decide not to bother with groceries, etc., at this time. The bus stop is across the street from the Guesthouse and I catch the #29 bus into Heidelberg, €2.10 each way, and it takes about 35 minutes to Bismarck Platz, the main bus and tram terminal. I walk along Hauptstrasse, the pedestrian-only main street through the old town as far as the Cathedral to pick up maps and a calendar of events at the Tourist Office. After lunch at Café Schafheutle of Maultaschle (a form of small ravioli) soup I pick up some goodies at the bakery counter and take the bus back to Boxberg.

Today’s local newspaper (Rhein – Neckar Zeitung) has a front-page story and picture of the dedication, yesterday, of the cornerstone for a new building for the Hochschule fur Judische Studien (High-school for Jewish Studies) “the only such institution in all of Europe” after almost 30 years in temporary quarters.

Boxberg is a modern suburb of about 5000 inhabitants located on a steep, wooded hillside overlooking the industrial area south of Heidelberg. It was developed about 30 years ago and by its appearance I thought it was built under the DDR (German Democratic Republic) but of course this whole area was part of the West and never part of the DDR. It consists of entire neighborhoods of high-rise apartment buildings, many in the familiar Soviet concrete block style and others quite luxurious, there is also senior housing and some single family homes; all linked with walkways through the woods, the streets are narrow, hardly wide enough for two cars. I was told that this entire area was an experiment in Sozialer Wohnungsbau (socialist living- building) built by the City of Heidelberg and local building societies (similar to our Building and Loan Associations) There are also a large Hotelfach Schule (hotel school) and many new laboratories and research buildings including the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL pronounce ‘embel’); in whose guesthouse I’m staying and five Max Plank Institutes. Max Plank (1858 – 1947) was a German physicist considered to be the founder of the quantum theory; and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. Plank was one of the few who immediately recognized the significance of Albert Einstein special theory of relativity.

In the evening I watched German TV and a rebroadcast of Der Rosenkavalier with the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic lead by Herbert von Karajan from the 1984 Salzburg Festival; all without commercials!

On Sunday afternoon I take a drive to Wiesloch, (pro Wees-lock) a very picturesque small town where a market is in full swing. The market stalls fill the entire town center and the place is mobbed with families. My only purchase is a small paper bag of Gebrannte Mandeln (fresh roasted sugar almonds) It is very cold and after a while it starts raining so I head back home. For dinner I go back to the Binding Fass, which is almost empty and have Bratwurst mit Pommes Frites (sausage and chips) and a beer.

Bright and early on Monday morning I catch the bus to Heidelberg and look for language lessons. First stop is the Volkshochschule (Peoples High School) on Bergheimer Strasse, a long walk from Bismarck Platz. Classes are five days a week from 9 to 11:30 certainly more than I had planned for; plus a required written test, which I could no more pass than fly. I have better luck at the F & U Academy of Languages located on the 3rd floor of a large modern commercial building right on the corner of Hauptstrasse and Bismarck Platz and make an appointment for two trial private lessons starting tomorrow at 12:30 I celebrate with kaffee und kuchen at Schafheutle, my favorite café. I learn afterwards that F & U Academy is a well- respected organization with language schools in many towns in Germany and worldwide, teaching foreign languages as well as German to foreigners.

Later I drive to the Soviet style shopping center, all concrete construction, eight stories of offices and apartments on top and NO PARKING! I had planned on eating dinner at Raffaello, the Italian Restaurant and on finding it closed Mondays did some minor shopping at the little supermarket and for about €15 bought enough for dinner and a couple of day’s breakfasts. I make soup from a mix and a couple of sandwiches and it feels good to eat in my own house. In the evening I watch a TV program about Germans returning to live in parts of Poland, which were formally Prussia and a part of Germany before World War II.

On Tuesday I fix breakfast in my own kitchen, another first. Then take the bus to Heidelberg and get ready for my first class. I pay for the first two trial lessons and the school is mobbed with mostly young people speaking all sorts of languages; I hear a lot of French, some Russian and some English. My class starts at 12:30 and the teacher is Manuela, late thirties, married with three kids under 8. She is originally from around Heidelberg and studied in France, England and Russia, her English is good and her German seems very correct. We spend 45 minutes talking and I feel that this is the way to go. I find the 45 minutes intense and very draining. We talk about many things; about Boxberg and it not being Soviet built in spite of its appearance; since Heidelberg and Frankfurt were always part of West Germany and never in the DDR (German Democratic Republic). We also have a discussion about the US Army presence in Heidelberg. There used to be far more Americans stationed here; however after 9/11 the numbers have declined. Every year there is an announcement or rumor that the US will leave. Evidently the local economy gets very little from the US base and the City would love to get its hands on the barracks and the thousands of dwellings. The soldiers are rarely seen in the town since the base is completely self-sufficient. In the old days the base used to host a German/American Day at Patrick Henry Village (the main base) where there were speeches, music and a BBQ with American ice-cream, very popular with the locals.

Today was the first sunny day; it was quite Spring like and the temperature even climbed to 11 and tonight it will be 3! That is, of course, Centigrade and corresponds to about 50 and 37F. I go to ‘Raffaello’ for dinner. I guess the owner really is Italian and when I ask, “Was gibts gute fur abendessen? (What’s good for dinner)” He says, “fresh fish” and promptly brings out the whole raw fish and tells me it will be “a filet cooked in a white wine sauce.” The fish is delicious and is accompanied with boiled potatoes and a plate of steamed vegetables; carrots, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts finished with olive oil. Dinner is very tasty and I start a conversation with the young man at the next table. Denis as a molecular biologist, just finishing his studies at the EMBL and lives in the same guesthouse. Denis is Russian and studied at the Louis Pasteur Institute in Paris and in London. He is looking forward to working in Paris and living with his Mexican girlfriend, who is from Zacatacas and studying “international communications marketing.” Oh, one of the best parts of dinner was at the end, when the waiter/owner placed a bottle and small shot glass on the table saying “Grappa!”

On Wednesday it is back to Winter, after yesterday’s Spring; by the weekend it is expected to warm up. In the evening I go to a concert that is part of the ‘Heidelberger Fruhling’ (Heidelberg’s Spring) an international music festival of classical and jazz concerts including the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Murray Perahia and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and two concerts by Thomas Hampson including a master class. The concert is a delight; a violin recital by Arabella Steinbacher playing four sonatas, by mostly French composers. Arabella is 27, her mother is Japanese and father German; she started playing at age 3 and studied with Anne-Sophie Mutter and has appeared with the London Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic and the City of Birmingham Symphony. She played beautifully and with great intensity. The concert was held in the EMBL lecture hall at the laboratory, located in the middle of nowhere about a mile-and-a-half from my guesthouse. I arrive early and was surprised that in spite of the location and that it had been raining all day the concert was about 90% full. By the way, Arabella played the first half on an Antonio Stradivari, Cremona of 1716 provided by the Nippon Music Foundation and the second half on her own Guarneri!

Thursday I again caught the bus to Heidelberg and had a very good lesson; Manuela told me that she had already had her first child and was very pregnant with the second when they got married; it was a combined wedding and christening! I told her that would probably not be done in the US and we agreed that the US is much more conservative. Her husband, who is also local, does elder care and works nights, one week on and one week off and generally looks after the three kids. He comes from a family of six, 5 boys and one girl and likes to cook and she has only one sister. We also agree to continue to meet twice a week on Tuesday and Thursdays at 12:30


Friday and it looks as if it will be another rainy, foggy day; no wonder Germans love to retire to Spain and the South of France. At Manuelas’s suggestion I spend the morning exploring Ladenburg, just off Autobahn 5. I park in the lot next to the old Roman wall and followed the signs. The town center is delightful with many old half-timbered houses from the mid-1600s and a lovely market square. It has stopped raining so I walk around looking in the shops and taking pictures. I drive down to the river and find an old ferry that takes traffic across to the road to Mannheim. The old town has many interesting old restaurants, hotels and cafés. I drive back to Boxberg and stop at the Aral gas station to fill up; are you ready for this? It takes €62 or $93 to fill the tank of my little VW Golf with diesel!


Photos:
Boxberg 2A#034
EMBL Guesthaus 1#026
My apartment 1#001
The shopping center 1#024

Conclusions

The return to Dresden was certainly a surprising and emotional experience. I was pleased to learn parts of my history that filled gaps in my memory, for instance Regensburger Strasse, where I lived before we moved to Hensestrasse; and the fact that I attended the Jewish school at the old synagogue. I am still interested in knowing if in 1939 I left from the airport in Dresden or Berlin. I would still like to find an insignia from the "Wach- und Schliessgesellschaft."

I was most surprised by the openness of the people. The number of "Germans of good will" that I met, who openly acknowledge what happened and what their Grand-parents and Great-grandparents did, without apologizing, which would of course be impossible, and who spend time and effort that people remember and that it "never happen again". The people in Dresden, both City staff and volunteers went out of their way to be helpful. The mayor of Niederaula, his secretary and the two historians couldn't have been nicer. I was also surprised by the friendliness of the people. On several occasions both in Dresden and my previous visit to Tubingen and Heidelberg, ordinary Germans shared my café or restaurant table and we had a meaningful conversation. I was surprised at how honest and straightforward the two shopkeepers in Heidelberg shared their thoughts on Germany today.

That is not to say that all is heavenly in today’s Germany. Suzanne was disturbed by the way Dresden has been rebuilt to eradicate all signs of the February 1945 firebombing; and, of course the war. The brand-spanking new Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) the gold couldn’t be shinier, the pastels couldn’t be brighter, and it’s not often that you see an enormous church of brand-new stone. There are no pictures or notices of what the buildings looked like in, say, October 1990, the reunification of the two Germanys (known as Die Wende – the Turning or Change) The last time we were in Dresden in June 1992 the Frauenkirche had been left in ruins as a symbol of the terror of the war, with a plaque prominently explaining such. Reminding people not to forget.

Both Lilli and Frau Burgermeister Kogge are disturbed by the National Democratic Party, considered far-right and anti-Semitic, which holds seats in the City of Dresden and Saxony (State) governments. The Museum of the City of Dresden, which I did not see, has I’m told, almost nothing about the period 1933 to 1945!
(This is not true; see later entries from Dresden)

I am also troubled by the integration of the old East and West Germanys; or rather the lack thereof. After almost eight years there are still great differences. Wages and pensions in the former East are lower than in the former West. There are fewer cell-phones in the East than the West because they are too expensive for many people. And there are still 40,000 vacant dwellings in Dresden.

The German Countryside delighted me. On this trip I drove about 850 miles after leaving Dresden and marveled at beautiful vistas of vineyards, fields and forests ablaze with autumn colors. On the Autobahn I passed small red-roofed towns and villages that looked straight out of a storybook.It must also be said that all of my recent experiences in Germany have been in Southern and Southeastern Germany. None of this may apply to Berlin or Northern Germany! I feel sufficiently intrigued that I'm planning on spending two or three months in Germany next year! Not in Dresden, which I think would be too emotional; probably in Heidelberg. I'll also take the opportunity to look at Berlin and other parts of Germany. Is it a possibility that today's Germany is the safest place for a Jew to live? And can this Jew live comfortably in the Germany of today? At least for a couple of months!

On the Way to Heidelber No.2 Continued

Würzburg, Heidelberg and Frankfurt
I slept well in Würzburg and after breakfast (Thursday) checked out of the hotel and walked to an Internet Café where a very pleasant young man helped connect my computer and corrected my German email to Suzanne. I found my car in the huge underground garage under the main market square; found the Autobahn easily and was off to Heidelberg. I don’t think there are toll roads in Germany; I wonder if they have toll bridges.

Driving on the Autobahn is also an experience; there really is no speed limit and while I was doing about 70 miles per hour others were passing me as if I was standing still! However that will eventually change, the daily paper carried stories indicating that, for the sake of the environment, speed limits would eventually be imposed and automobile advertisements would carry warning statements, like cigarette ads, about speed leading to death and the damage caused to the environment by auto emissions.

I stopped for a bite on the road and arrived at the Heidelberg Main Railway Station and Tourist Office around 4 o’clock. Once again Google Maps estimated Würzburg to Heidelberg at about 165kms and 3½ hours and it actually took more than twice as long. The lady in the Tourist Office was very nice and told me that there were several conferences in town and hotel rooms were in very short supply. Nevertheless she found me a hotel room for 3 nights, right in the Alt Stadt (old town) The Hotel Zum Pfalzgrafen (The Hotel of the Duchess of Pfalz) is something else; it’s a bit rundown with small pokey rooms but there is an elevator. I was greeted by Frau Schneider, the owner, a very spry little old lady, who helped me unload my luggage then jumped in the car to direct me to the hotel garage a couple of blocks away. Room #5 on the second floor is definitely small with two twin beds that I can hardly walk around. I strolled down to the Hauptstrass (Main Street) and had dinner at ‘Das Gasthaus zum Weissen Schwanen’ (The White Swans) a lovely old, old restaurant and had Jaeger-Schnitzel (breaded pork cutlet with a mushroom sauce) that was ‘lecker’ the German word for tasty or maybe yummy! I remember this was one of Marita’s favorite words.


In spite of the pokey room I slept like a log and spent the morning in Heidelberg looking for an Internet connection. I walked all over town; tried two different Internet Cafés, where their cable would not fit my laptop. Eventually I found a café with Wifi and managed to pick up and send a few emails. I also did some major shopping. I bought a very cute Crocodile backpack for my Granddaughter, Araceli, socks for Suzanne and Lysa and a few other odds and ends. I had dinner at ‘Schafheutle Conditorei und Café’, served by a lovely grandmotherly type. I had potato soup and ‘Rinderroulade’ (a rolled beef filled with mustard and pickles) I remember my Mother making these as a great treat. She used to tie them with string, which had to be carefully removed before serving. Here they were kept closed with a large toothpick, also carefully removed before serving. This time I ordered dessert from the bakery, an apple cake, not strudel, that was delicious. I was told that the original Herr Schafheutle was pastry chef to Queen Victoria in London and sometimes Buckingham Palace still orders special cakes from here!


Next day, Saturday I tried to take it easy. I walked around Alt Stadt and found a gift for Eliane. I had a very nice conversation with the shop owner; I asked her if people in Germany, the former Western part, are basically happy, She said, “Yes but underneath there is unhappiness. Unemployment is manageable, there is very little crime and there will not be another war in Europe, however prices keep going up and retirement benefits are going down” I asked her how many times her shop had been broken into and she said “twice in the last fifteen years”. I also went back to the watch-seller, where I had seen a very nice gold dress watch last Spring. He said that he no longer carried that model and showed me a few others that I did not particularly like. I did have him replace the strap on my old ‘Timex’. I also asked him the same question that I had asked the woman in the jewelry store and he said very much the same thing.

Later in the afternoon, Lothar and his girlfriend Nelly picked me up at the hotel. We piled into his little Fiat and drove up to the castle ruins that overlook the town and walked round a bit. The place was crowded being a Saturday afternoon. The weather was chilly and there was no sun. We drove round some more and Lothar showed me the location of the old Jewish cemetery and the new Heidelberg synagogue after which we went out for dinner. Lothar picked a nice quiet Italian restaurant where we each had a pizza, which was delicious. Lothar speaks very good English, however we spoke mostly in German for Nelly’s benefit. Afterwards they dropped me back at the hotel. In the evening I walked down to the Hauptstrasse for an after-dinner drink and so to bed. Tonight the clocks go back in most of Europe and we get an extra hour’s sleep.


Next morning, Sunday I packed and said ‘aufwedersehen’ to Frau Schneider after she walked me to the garage and hopped into the car to drive back for my luggage. The drive to Frankfurt was a snap; I dropped the luggage at the Steigenberger Airport Hotel and returned the car. I had driven 1,372kms (about 850 miles) and there was no problem with the slight scrape to the front bumper where I had a minor argument with a concrete post in the Eisenach hotel garage. From the airport I took a train to the Hauptbahnhof and walked around downtown Frankfurt for a while. The weather was quite cold, so after a bit I took train and shuttle back to the hotel. Dinner that night in the “Unterschweinstiege Restaurant” was great. The restaurant is named for a nearby forest where the locals allowed their pigs to forage for acorns and such. I had roast leg of veal covered with about half-a-pound of wild mushrooms plus more potato dumplings. Since it was my last night I also had dessert ‘palachinken’ (butter crepes) with sugar, cinnamon and applesauce. I talked to the two couples at the next table, retired schoolteachers from Colorado Springs. They said that their parents were German born and they had been back to see their roots.

Next day, Monday I took the shuttle to the airport and caught Lufthansa flight 454 back home to San Francisco.

Lothar Aunmueller is self-employed as a consultant having to do with management practices, team training and registration of trademarks. He is probably in his middle forties and is a volunteer in the Jewish community and works with the City program for inviting former residents; Nelly is very pretty, middle to late thirties and from the Crimea region of the former Soviet Union. She is in hotel-management, speaks very little German or English and has visa problems. She has to return to the Crimea to apply for a new visa and that may take 3 to 6 months.
I met Lothar through Henry Baer; Lothar was his guide when Henry and his sister recently came here at the invitation of the Burgermeister.


Photos
Heidelberg #039
Nelly and Lothar #062
Heidelberg #044
New Heidelberg Synagogue #047

On the Way to Heidelberg No.1.

Eisenach, Halle, Bayreuth and Würzburg
Tuesday at about noon I left Eisenach and decided to drive to Halle, where my Mother and her sister Hilde were born. Both of their birth certificates indicate that their parents (my Grandparents) lived in Halle. It was an easy 3 hours including a stop for lunch. Halle-an-der-Saale (now called Halle-Salle) Salle is the name of the river on which the town stands. Halle is a very old town tracing its history back to 806AD and the salt (called Halle) was extracted from underground brine springs starting around the year 1000. The Market Church is a huge cathedral with four spires; the two eastern spires are conical in shape and the two western ones, called the Blue Spires are connected with a bridge giving the cathedral a most distinctive appearance. The composer George Frederick Handel was born in the town in 1685 and is the favorite son. The city was obviously a part of East Germany with many huge, ugly block-buildings in the center. The rebuilt Rath Haus (City Hall) is also a memento of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) Halle Neu Stadt (New Town) consists of 33,000 prefabricated concrete block apartment dwellings situated across the river. The town “was supposed to be a classic example of socialist house building” and home to 120,000 people. Later with help from the Tourist Bureau I found a nice little Pension close to the Rath Haus and Main Square (51 Euro including breakfast)

My Mother was born here in 1901 and her sister Hilde in 1904. I guess my Grandfather the eldest of the four sons wanted nothing to do with the butcher shop in Hersfeld and moved to Halle, about three or four hours to the east, towards Dresden. I’m sure that if I went back I would find records of where they lived and what kind of business they had.

I had dinner at a nearby restaurant; a marvelous wild-mushroom soup and a ‘wild’ Goulash (stew) made from venison with red-cabbage and potato dumplings. For dessert I ordered “warm Apfelstrudel mit vanilla sauce” big mistake. Everything else had been so delicious and the Apfelstrudel tasted like a Trader Joe’s reject! So much for desserts.


Next day, Wednesday, I decided to drive to Bayreuth and then on towards Heidelberg. I left Halle before 9AM and was in Bayreuth in time for lunch. I found the ‘Zentrum’ and the tourist office and was told what to see. First stop was the “Markgraefliches Opera House” a gorgeous Baroque building where I watched a very nice light and sound presentation about its history. Bayreuth is a lovely old town best known for its association with Richard Wagner, who lived here from 1872 until he died in 1883. The premiers of the final two works of the Ring Cycle, the Cycle as a whole and Parsifal took place here. Every summer Wagner’s operas are performed at the month-long Bayreuth Festival; currently waiting lists for tickets can stretch for up to 10 years!

I had lunch at a “Konditori” (pastry shop) then back on the Autobahn towards Heidelberg. It was getting late so I decided to stop for the night in Würzburg. Once again I found the Zentrum and Tourist Office and finding a hotel for the night was a bit of a disaster. The Tourist Office sent me to lovely old hotel, quite plush and round the corner from the Market Square; however they were full. The clerk was most apologetic and phoned another hotel, the Hotel Strauss, a few blocks further away. They had a room available so I walked over and checked in. Dinner that night was at an Italian restaurant called “Trattoria Lugana” it had 16 tables and the first restaurant I’ve found in Germany that was completely full by 7PM! I had Pumpkin soup; at home I dislike the taste of pumpkin and can’t stand pumpkin pie; however here I’ve had pumpkin soup a couple of times and found it very tasty; it’s probably squash and not pumpkin. Main course was house-made tagliatelle with meat sauce that was delicious and a glass of Italian good red wine. I decided not to push my luck and did not order dessert! The staff was very friendly and efficient and obviously doing something right; total cost of dinner including an aperitif and bottle of water was about $25.


Distances
Frankfurt to Niederaula about 140kms and 1½ hours; took about 3 hours
Niederaula to Eisenach about 75kms and 1 hour; took 2
Eisenach to Halle about 200kms and 2 plus hours; took 3
Halle to Bayreuth about 200kms and 2½ hours; took 3½

These distances and times come from Google Maps and are based on German drivers going 140kms per hour or more (85mph) in their supercharged Mercedes. They do not apply to an American Senior driving a Nissan Jeep rental car!

Photos
Eisenach #015
Halle #017
Bayreuth #026, 029
Würzburg #033