Bamberg

Every year, a group of ex-pat bloggers living in Germany gather for a weekend of fun, tourism, food, and drink. This gathering is called WEBMU – the Whiny Expatriate Bloggers Meet-Up. The location is different each year- in 2012 the gathering was in Berlin. In 2013, the group gathered in Prague, but I didn’t make it to that one. This year, we met in Nuremberg roughly halfway through the month of September.

The attendees were:

Cliff and Sarah from Regensblog
Meg from Geek Mädel
Snooker from Snookspot
The Honourable Husband from Deutschland Über Elvis
Heather from Heather Goes Deutsch
Ali from Ali’s Adventures
Andy from Grounded Traveler (and Ali and Andy write a few other blogs together.)
Resident Evil, who does not have a presently active blog.

A WEBMU weekend typically runs Friday through Sunday, with the early arrivals taking a day trip to an alternate location in the daytime in Friday. This WEBMU was no exception, and we met up at 10am to visit scenic and moist Bamberg. Most of the pictures I took in Bamberg are similar to the pictures I took the first time I visited Bamberg, so I’m not going to include too many of those here. If you’re curious, you can look at the previous Bamberg post. (Also, it was raining all day, so many of my new photos have rain drops on the lens. I really need to get a lens hood.)

One of the first things we saw in Bamberg was this randomly placed elephant. We’re all pretty sure it’s an advertisement, but it was still random enough to warrant a photograph.

We went to the Altes Rathaus, and to the local cathedral to look again at the Bamberg Rider.

We were in Bamberg on the same day that there was a party for the closing of U.S. Army Garrison Bamberg, so we stumbled across the Burrito Bandito. It was a little strange seeing US Army guys in fatigues while out and about in Germany.

While waiting for the train back to Nuremberg, we were witness to the Hochzeit of two smaller trains. The coupling is almost entirely automatic for this type of train, so it was kind of fascinating to watch. We were all mesmerized, to the great amusement of the conductor from the train on the left.

Fast forward to Saturday, and we started the day with a small city tour… in the rain.

Here’s the tour route, just for fun:

This is one of the two brass rings embedded into the wrought iron-work in Schöner Brunnen, a rather nifty fountain in the city’s main market square near the town hall. It is said that spinning the brass ring will bring you luck. The fountain itself is a reproduction; the original lives in the city’s historical museum.

It’s rather amazing to me that I’ve been in Germany for this long and I didn’t manage to get a picture with a section of the original Berlin Wall until this trip. Here it is.

Albrecht Dürer is kind of a big deal in Nuremberg. His house is near this statue.

One of Dürer’s most celebrated creations is this creepy-ass rabbit. The dude with the pink umbrella just makes it so much more surreal, don’t you think?

This store’s sign caught my eye because it’s a rather nifty play on words. Bohne & Kleid in German is “Bean and Dress,” but it sounds quite a bit like “Bonnie and Clyde.” It made me giggle.

One of the nifty things about Nuremberg is that a large portion of the old city wall is still intact like this section on the right.

A bunch of these old cities have St. George and the Dragon themed stuff floating around. It’s all very Trogdor-oriented.

Nuremberg also has a reasonably well preserved castle, part of which is pictured here.

Big castles have big doors.

Here’s the requisite view of the city from the castle’s ramparts.

Later in the day, Cliff and I ventured in to the Deutsche Bahn Museum, a place I had wanted to visit for quite a while. It had some fantastic vintage carriages.

An old rail-running bicycle looking thing was on display. This reminds me a little bit of the scene from Blazing Saddles with the quick-sand.

What would a train museum be without incredibly detailed models?

The DB Museum had a ton of great photographs up showing the construction of the railways and bridges. Most of those pictures didn’t come out well enough to post, but this will give you an idea of how amazing and fascinating the historical photographs were.

Any good train museum would also cover that uncomfortable part of Germany’s history where the railways were part of the World War II experience. Here’s a train conductor’s uniform from that era.

The best part of the exhibit was the various trains set up along the outer edges of the museum. Here’s a mostly-plastic model of an ICE train. You couldn’t even sit down inside. The real thing is much nicer.

Apparently, 6th class train rides involved standing up in a giant rectangular train carriage with no roof. Still beats walking, I guess.

Compare that last one to first class, which has velvet seats and a nice terrace from which you can have champagne toasts.

Speaking of first class, the Prince’s carriages were present in the museum. They’re very fancy.

The Prince’s carriage had a green room that Cliff thought was amazing.

I was more partial to the blue room in the Prince’s carriage. What can I say? I like blue!

There were also some massive old steamers in the museum.

When I say massive, I mean massive. These wheels were nearly as tall as I am.

…and you can step up into some of them for hammy moments. Here’s Cliff, waving hello from the conductor’s window.

Have you ever been to the DB Museum? Have you visited Bamberg or Nuremberg?

It’s difficult to travel in January, unless you’re going to somewhere much warmer out of the country. The days are short and grey and frequently a little bit on the chilled side, so sleeping in is usually much more desirable.

I’ve learned over the last two years that if I spend too long in Regensburg without taking any trips out of town, I start to get a little cranky. To combat this, I’ve compiled a small list of day-trips- places I can go in a single day on a Bayern Ticket (€23 for one person covers all RE,RB and local trains as well as bus rides, U-Bahn, and S-Bahn anywhere in Bavaria for the entire day.) With that short list in mind, I just try to go on a Saturday morning.

For the first three Saturday mornings of January, I reached the all important moment of getting out of bed and going to the train station, and I chose to keep sleeping instead. This weekend, however, I finally beat the evil snooze alarm, and I hopped the first train after 9am to scenic Bamberg!

Bamberg is about sixty kilometers north of Nuremberg, and is easily reachable by trains. Local trains (RE and S-Bahn) go between Nuremberg and Bamberg on an almost hourly basis. I arrived in town about fifteen or twenty minutes before noon, and started to wander. I had a list of about five things I wanted to see in the city, and I took the time honored tradition of “winging it” for the rest.

Item the first on my Bamberg list: Altenburg Castle

Altenburg Castle sits on a hill overlooking the old city of Bamberg. I wasn’t interested in going inside the castle, and I could see it clearly from where I was, so I didn’t bother going much closer than you can see from this picture.

Item the second on my Bamberg list: Bamberger Dom (the Bamberg Cathedral)

The main cathedral in Bamberg was built originally in 1012, but it was partially destroyed and rebuilt a few times. Its present form is kind of like this:

Inside the cathedral are a lot of interesting statues, including the famous Bamberg Horseman (Der Bamberger Reiter.) Nobody knows who this statue represents, but it’s probably been there since about the year 1237. The crown suggests royalty, but there’s no other items to suggest identity. Saint Henry II is buried in this cathedral, and some believe that it represents him, but there’s no Imperial Regalia to confirm that. Pope Clement II is also buried in this cathedral.

There’s a lot of fascinating sculpture in the Bamberger Dom, so it’s worth having a look around. I thought the headless clergyman here was interesting:

Just three more pictures from the cathedral, and then we’ll move on.

Item the third on my Bamberg list: The Franconian Brewery Museum

Alas, the Fränkisches Brauereimuseum is closed until April. I do have some bad luck with things being closed when I visit. I had the same problem with the film museum in Paris and the suspended trains in Wuppertal.

Item the fourth on my Bamberg list: The Bamberg Historical Museum

Right next to the Dom, this was also closed, for “Winter Pause.” That’s ok, though. In this case, I didn’t want to go inside so much as I wanted to see the building.

Item the fifth on my Bamberg list: Try Rauchbier

Bamberg is famous for Rauchbier, or smoked beer. The distinctive smokey smell and flavor is achieved by drying barley over an open flame. Schlenkerla and Spezial have been brewing smoked beer in Bamberg for nearly two hundred years, and Schlenkerla is one of the best known brands of smoked beer in the world. This is what I tried.

I thought it would be disgusting, but it wasn’t. It’s difficult to describe the flavor- my friend Alice likens it to “drinking a campfire,” and that’s probably the most accurate description I’ve yet heard. I didn’t really care for Rauchbier, but I can see the appeal. Additionally, I only tried one variety from one brewer- there’s also a smoked Weizen (wheat beer) available, and I’d like to try that some time.

Item the sixth on my Bamberg list: The Bamberg Altes Rathaus

This building was my favorite thing about Bamberg. It’s situated on the Regnitz river. More accurately, it’s perched somewhat precariously over the Regnitz river. Reachable from either side only by a pedestrian bridge, this is a very impressive and fascinatingly beautiful structure. It helps that this is the one point all day where the sun came out and pretended to not be part of January.

This is one of the sides visible from the pedestrian bridge, a street fittingly named Obere Brücke, or Upper Bridge.

There are bridges on either side of the Altes Rathaus. The first photograph of the Rathaus in this post was taken from this bridge, a much more modern affair, but with a fantastic view of the building.

Item the seventh on my Bamberg list: Winging It

The rest of these are just things that I found wandering around the city that I thought were interesting. For example, in the Grüner Markt, there’s a fountain containing a sculpture called “Gabelmann.” Gabelmann translates to “Fork Man,” which is apropos since the statue represents Neptune, god of the seas, holding up his traditional trident. In hind-sight, I wish I’d taken a better photograph than this one.

Mohren Haus means Moor’s house. Every time I encounter something named after the Moors in Germany, I’m utterly fascinated. The tiny statue of little Moor dude on the building totally makes it, don’t you think?

Interesting sculpture!

More interesting scultpture! This one represents Kaiserin Kunigund, but I don’t have any real idea who that is.

Next up is a statue of Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria. Spend any amount of time in the south of Germany and you’ll encounter at least one Luitpoldstraße in every city. There’s one in Regensburg, a block away from my apartment.

Luitpold became the Regent of Bavaria after the (frankly rather suspicious) death of his nephew, King Ludwig II. He remained the Prince Regent until his death in 1912, at the age of 91.

Last, but not least, I stopped in at the Stadtgalerie (City Gallery) Bamberg, because there was a poster for an ongoing exhibit (there until the first of June) called Jüdisches in Bamberg. I wanted to see what Jewish stuff was in the exhibit, so I took a look. For a €5 entry fee, this was well worth a stop.

One of the displays had three or four of these rather amazing three dimensional images. From above, it looks a little bit like a honey-comb. It’s a cube rather than a rectangle, but when viewed from the front, the depth is rather ingenious. This picture doesn’t quite capture how amazing it is.

Among the artifacts on display in the Jewish exhibit was a Torah scroll, along with the Mantel (the velvet cloak that goes over it), the Kesser (the two silver doo-dads that go atop the wooden shafts), and the Yad (the silver pointer used to read from the Torah.)

This particular one is apparently on loan from the Bamberg Historical Museum, and I was not able to find any details about its origin prior to that. Every Torah is hand-written by a special scribe, though, so they’re not terribly easy to come by.

Have you ever been to Bamberg? Did you try the Rauchbier? What did you think of it?

Whimsy. Tacos. The DMV.

Tag: Bamberg

WEBMU 2014: Nürnberg