7/19/11

Wurzburg

Pretend in your heads that there's an umlaut (the two little dots) over the first u in Wurzburg. And pronounce it like it's a v not a w. Ok we're good.

Since Becky had class more or less all day today I took the train to Wurzburg which is only an hour away to see the Residenz there. This was a long day, but a good day.

Adventure #1 was finding the palace. I knew sort of that there was more than one castle/schloss thing, but I wasn't totally sure where either was. Luckily the town of Wurzburg is happy to send you on a walking tour (using the free map, and you know how I love a free map) to show you everything that is mildly worth seeing. Much of it was not worth seeing, but both castles were included so I wandered all over looking at random things of little to no interest. But the first castle was awesome. It's definitely more of a fortress-castle than a palace-castle. Basically the Prince-Bishop of Wurzburg (once it's own country) used to live in town, until his wealthy citizens started threatening to kick him out, and then he built a fortress on top of the hill to protect himself. It's also sort of a trek up said hill. Unfortunately I took the long way up, which I found out on the way down. Oops. It was...scenic. The views from the top were worth it though. Definitely worth it.
The may pole

The Marienburg fortress

Inside the trench

The Residenz

The back of the Residenz with some of the gardens

Upon re-entering the town below, I got myself some ice cream and walked over to the Residenz, which the Prince Bishop built after Versailles. Because that's what you do. When someone builds a super awesome palace to show how super awesome they are, you must emulate them to show how super awesome you are too. I liked the Residenz a lot...it combined a lot of my favorite things about the various versailles-wanna-be palaces. And it was a nice size, and had very nice gardens. I wouldn't mind living there at all. Definitely on the approved list.

Dinner was in a nice little cafe by the Dom. I had this awesome "home made Franconian potato soup with bacon". Delicious. I love cafes. The US needs more of them. The people watching is fantastic.

Bumming in Bamberg with Becky

I've been waiting to use that title for like 3 months. It just makes me giggle :)

So Friday was my last day in Paderborn...which was really weird. It's hard to say good-bye to people who you've been friends with for a mere two months, compounded by the fact that you're probably never going to see them again. I'll miss everybody in Paderborn, but the whole time I had a strong urge to say, well have a nice life. Maybe I'm just desensitized to goodbyes, I don't know.

The upside to this was getting to see Becky again. Becky and I were roommates sophomore year, and then she decided she was going to spend spring semester in Germany so we weren't roommates last year. Next year we'll be roommates again though. Anyway, I spending a few days with her in Bamberg where she's been studying. Saturday she showed me around town a bit. We went to the Altenburg (the old castle) and the Dom, and the Rose garden. Bamberg is apparently a UNESCO World Heritage site, which means that they have really crappy roads. I like cobblestones but walking around on them all day makes your feet hurt. We also met up with some of her friends here (fellow exchange students) at a beer garden. Which is where I found the one beer-drink I can have without making a face: the Radler, half-beer half-lemonade. The girly drink of Germany.
The Altenburg, as we walked up the hill

The Dom

The door for important people

Sunday it was rainy/cloudy/not terribly nice, so after church (which I did not get much out of but which was very interesting) we hung around her room. That night though I met up with some of Becky's friends from the night before to watch the USA/Japan game (women's soccer world cup). We lost. But it was an interesting experience. Becky had to work on a paper so she did not join us. Monday I did some wandering around. Schloss Seehof (which was not much better than Schloss Neuhaus in Paderborn), a church I had not yet seen, and the park. I got rather turned around in the park, so I was really tired when I got home.
Schloss Seehof

The river. I don't know what it's name is.

The botanical garden

7/11/11

Schloss Augustusburg and Falkenlust

Saturday I went over to Schloss Augustusburg near Koln. It's one of the dozens of palaces that popped up all over Europe after the building of Versailles. As much as the German rulers may have disliked Louis XIV, they had to admit he had style. As soon as Versailles went up, the lovely turreted castles that are featured in so many fairy tales became passé and terribly old-fashioned. If you want to be one of the "in" rulers (be you duke, prince-bishop, elector, or imperial knight) you had to ditch the gargoyles and princess towers in favor of the rectangular mansion with a fab staircase. Which as it so happens is what Schloss Augustusburg is.

Clemens Augustus was one of those people who through a certain amount of luck and a well-connected family ended up living a life of luxury. He was the fourth son of a Bavarian Elector (the Wittelsbach family we have come to know so well), which meant that he grew up in a cushy sort of life, but his career options were limited to the church. Luckily for him, he wasn't terribly stupid, and after having finished studying in Rome got elected Bishop of Munster and Paderborn. Then he ended up Archbishop of Cologne after his uncle died, which made him one of the Electors of the empire, and Grand master of the Teutonic Order. He also got to personally crown his brother Emperor. All this meant that he got to live an even cushier lifestyle. With several homes and hunting lodges and all the rest of it.
Schloss Augustusburg

Augustusburg was mainly a summer home, although he occasionally visited it out of season. It's quite obvious when you come in that he was a great patron of the arts because there are paintings everywhere. And frescos. So many frescos. All with way too much symbolism involving his brother and the Greek gods on mount olympus. And various women representing a variety of virtues kicking the vices off their cloud. It's always the same old thing in these ceiling frescos. Anyway, he did happen to have one decorative choice that was a bit of a novelty to me: gilded leather walls. Fabricate covered walls are fairly common, but leather was a new choice. And not any old west leather walls either. Silvered leather accented with gold leaf. Definitely a new one. Much of the palace was more or less like many others I've seen, but the grand staircase is special. I managed to sneak this picture:
The Grand Staircase
You can't really tell in this picture, but it's actually really colorful. They used a marble-look-alike stucco and the walls are all really saturated turquoise and pink and red and blue and green. They really stand out against the white sculptural work and black wrought iron balustrade. This castle largely survived the world wars (mostly because Bruhl is just not worth bombing) so even in the 20th century the German President would use this palace for state dinners and such. The German tour members were very impressed to see the spot where the president would stand on the half-landing and greet his guests. I perhaps was less impressed, but I can appreciate a bunch of people in black tie going up a beautiful staircase to a state dinner.

One funny thing in the castle: most of the frescos are meant to be sort of viewed from the center of the room so that you get the full force of the "it looks so real" effect. And generally speaking it does work. If you stand in the center of the room and look straight up, the flat ceilings do come alive and look round and covered in architectural craziness. Except this one room. One of the rooms on the upper floor has this fresco and no matter where you stand it just doesn't work. It's kind of funny in a way because it's such a disaster. It's a nice painting as far as that goes but the visual special effects just don't line up right. It still looks flat. Oops.

The palace also has some nice Baroque French gardens that are sort of nice to wander around, except they're not very big.

Swirly Baroque French gardens

Love the colors
 A short (ok fifteen minute) walk away is Falkenlust, Clemens' hunting lodge. And by lodge he means mini-palace. It's small, but beautiful. My problem was that they make you put on these grey felt slippers over your shoes (so you don't hurt the floors), which meant I went slipping and sliding all over the place. I almost fell almost a dozen times. I think the curator breathed a sigh of relief when I left. If they're worried about my flip flops touching the floor, I can't imagine how'd they feel about me falling on it. They also offer you the opportunity to peer through dirty windows to see the rococo/grotto chapel. You're not allowed in there, even with slippers.
Falkenlust
It was a very nice day and I did lots of walking through the "English" sections of the garden. Apparently, a garden is "English" if you leave most of the trees and just have some paths and green lawn space. How the English lay any claim to inventing this is beyond me. The train ride home was mostly pleasant except for the short period where it was so crowded I had to stand and the woman next to me was feeding her baby the most disgusting looking food. That baby had some seriously chubby cheeks too.

The funny part of the train ride was after the train emptied out a bit (allowing everybody to grab a seat), the train conductor came through and forced this Italian family out of first class. The mother was outraged. From what I could gather, she felt that she was entitled to sit wherever on the train she pleased since she had paid for the tickets and there wasn't any room in second class. The conductor took a slightly different (but also outraged) point of view, that if you pay for second class seats, you aren't allowed to sit in first class, regardless of the number of empty seats available in second class. The mother argued back about there aren't any seats, and the conductor dragged her (ok not literally) down the aisle pointing out each and every empty seat in the car. The mother was still outraged in that there was still no way for her and the 7 other members of her family to sit together. Ok I'm sorry but there are so many things wrong with this woman's thinking. First, no matter what, if you don't have a first class ticket, you don't sit in first class. Second, what on earth would make you think that 8 people would be able to sit together on a busy train at 6 pm on a Saturday? Third, you don't argue with a train conductor. Fourth, your children are at least 10. They're not going to be traumatized by not sitting next to you. In fact, they might prefer to not sit next to you. Oh man. It was pretty funny. They ended up going to the next car over in search of more seats but I doubt she found many.

* Note: I know in the American world of transportation it makes zero sense for there to not be enough seats on the train, but they work more like buses here. A lot of people buy a ticket for just that train, but there are also a lot of people who have passes (like my day pass) who can just hop on any train that day provided they stay in the area. So for a lot of local/regional trains you're not really guaranteed a seat; you're just guaranteed they won't kick you off the train. The bigger trains for longer distances have seat reservations, but you could still end up standing part of the way.