The traveling part of my break was a bit of a last-minute thing, but I ended up having a really great time. Having bought a rail-pass, I started out taking an overnight train to Cöln. I got in around 6. The lovely thing about traveling alone is that I can change plans at a moment’s notice, and this is just what happened. Though originally I hadn’t been planning to spend time in Cöln, I glimpsed the famous cathedral and a bridge covered in lovers’ locks on the way in so decided to stay and explore. I walked around in the cathedral, crossed the river, bought an Easter roll for breakfast, crossed the river back via the main bridge with all the locks, explored more of the town center, and around 11 caught a train to my next destination: Bingen. Kindof. I had been intending to go somewhere else—at this point I don’t even remember where—with the goal of taking a train down the Rhine to get there and then exploring some castles and vineyards. I got off in Bingen instead after listening to an old woman on the train explaining (in German!) to the children next to her that it had been her beloved home for years.
(Also overheard on the train: a small child exclaiming “Windmills!” He was too cute.)
Bingen turned out to be a great idea. I walked around and soon found myself climbing an old tower. I surveyed the beautiful area from the top and made a mental map that got me through the first part of my day. I saw the beautiful Basilica of Saint Martin and a mural of St. Hildegard von Bingen. I climbed a wooded mountain path and discovered a pilgrimage trail and a vineyard. Then I climbed back down to the riverbank and walked along the Rhine for a bit. First I walked along a road but then through a funny little park with mini gardens in it. There I found two four-leaf clovers. I had to laugh: having just recently ended a long term relationship, I found myself wondering how I could be expected to believe that finding a mutated weed or two could possibly bring me luck. Really? Superstitions are so strange. Oh well. My whole day of exploring and admiring ended with a nap in the grass which allowed me to wake up to the river, the sight of a castle on the opposite bank, and a wish that I had spent the break biking the Rhine. Next time.
That was early evening. My plan for the next day (Easter) was to begin it in Regensburg and end it in Nuremberg. The overnight train to Regensburg left from Mainz, so around 6 I decided to head to Mainz early and explore there until nightfall.
The area around the Mainz train station seemed a little bit shady at first, but it turns out that the old town center is a very quaint and cute place. There were some lovely older buildings and a big park along the river (yup, still on the river!), and I even had a chance to practice my German chatting with some friendly people. There was one kindof eerie sculpture outside a police station…but overall I found myself wishing I had more time to explore. Not days more, but an hour or two would have been nice. The sun ignored my wish and started to set, so I headed back to the station and caught my next train.
Which is how Easter morning found me wandering the medieval streets of Regensburg. I’m a bit of a freak sometimes: I love old urban architecture. Shapes and shadows fascinate me; my photographs reveal something of an obsession with color, light, pattern—man-made or natural—with geometry and with contrasts. This is probably the reason I can be content to wander (map-less and destination-less) through the streets of a place like Regensburg. I asked about the times of the Easter services at the main cathedral, and I learned that the 10 am service would feature the local boys’ choir. That meant I had time to explore a bit, and when the time came I followed a crowd of locals and visitors (and choir boys) to mass. Aside from the fact that everything about the building, decoration, music, and service was breathtakingly beautiful, the service was also special for me because I met an older woman who then sat with me for the service and conversed a bit with me when everything was over. She was the first person I had really conversed with since leaving Berlin a few days prior, and I was so grateful for both her friendliness and her patience with my broken Berliner German (Southern states have their own accents and dialects, so I probably sounded especially funny to her).
After the mass I admired the old winding and narrow streets, unlike any found in Berlin. I gazed at boats and made wishes off bridges and eventually walked through an old park back to the train station.
One hour north with the next train and I ended in Nuremburg. After checking in at a hostel just inside the old city walls, I set out in search of a baroque garden I had noticed mentioned on a map. It was pretty, and also pretty small, but the walk was really interesting. Of course, I had thought Nuremburg and I thought of the trials. I hadn’t had a clue that Nuremburg had been one of the oldest trade centers in Germany. The garden I was looking for was just outside the walls to the west, but on the way back to the hostel I walked through churches, towers, and the market square, admiring the mix of old architecture and contemporary shop windows.
I wanted to explore the area outside the center as well, so I headed south of the train tracks and walked until I thought I had totally flattened the arches of my feet. En route, I found a place where a “Tristan Straße” and “Isolde Straße” both intersected the same road but they did so just a half block away from each other. So close and yet so far. I’ve loved that story ever since translating it in my French class senior year of high school. I saw the opera in Berlin (did I write about that?). It was a strange experience because I went, newly and reluctantly single, totally alone to see a “modernized” version of a beloved love story. For 5 hours, I enjoyed the music while wondering why the opera company had decided that Isolde and the mob-boss Tristan should shoot-up their “love potion” while surrounded by other addicts and bizarre background “performance-pieces” of art. And I spent all three intermissions observing the few other people who had decided to go alone to the opera that night, and hoping they would show me what to do with my time.
Enough of a tangent? Sorry!
To be completely honest, I then went back to the hostel to nap for a few hours. I was meeting up with a friend, and when he arrived around 10 we went out to a bar to catch up on our adventures so far. The next morning, we discovered that rhubarb season had begun, and celebrated with a strawberry-rhubarb pastry (and another Easter-bread loaf). Since Adam hadn’t arrived until after dark, we walked around the old town for part of the morning so that he could see it. He didn’t have class the next day and would be able to explore more then (while I would be heading back to Berlin), so we only spent part of the morning exploring there. We then took the subway to the Zeppelinfeld, the old Nazi rally grounds, and walked around there for a bit. The stage area has been left open; the side stands now surround soccer fields, and I suspect that their lamps—which once gave the place the nickname “Cathedral of Light”—disappeared back when the stage’s huge swastika was demolished. Now the place is a park. We watched someone practice bicycle tricks, and we listened to a father explaining to his son the history of the platform they stood on (the one from which Hitler looked out over the crowd when his supporters packed the place full). I took pictures of flowers and baby ferns growing through cracks in the concrete. It was surreal and very sobering.
After a short walk past two other Nazi-era buildings, we arrived at the fair grounds. Adam had wanted to go to Nuremburg for their Spring Festival and invited me to meet him, so this was the whole reason for our trip. Talk about juxtaposition: all of my pictures of the Ferris wheel have Speer’s Congress Hall in the background. A little weird. We did have a good time though. Spring Festivals take place all over Germany, and generally they are just big carnivals with beer tents. At the larger ones, like this one, there are multiple beer tents in which people dress in traditional clothing (in the South at least) and play music. We had some excellent local sausages and spring beers…and I also tried a local specialty that involved mixing cherry wine with cola and beer.
Overall I had a great time. The next morning, I left around 5 to catch a train back to Berlin. I had a class to attend at 2, at the archeological society in Dahlem. When I got back home, all of the flowers seemed to have bloomed overnight. I’ve never seen so many lilac bushes in one place, and I had to smile. Finally, spring.
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