Monday, June 2
I had a pretty good, if at times restless sleep before leaving Prague. I knew I had an early morning, and I was so afraid to fall out for too long and miss the not overwhelmingly loud alarm on my watch. As it turned out, I was able to appreciate most every hour of my sleep, checking the clock, and then falling back away to dim consciousness. By the time 6:20 rolled around, I decided to preempt my alarm and make for the shower, getting out of everybody else's way before they were up.
When I got out, the others started stirring, and we each picked up the apartment a bit more. Frankie, Jon, Sofia, and Samantha had a 7:30 cab reserved, but I wanted to get out the door by 7:15, especially given my fiasco with Czech transit the day before. It was supposed to be a 30 minute walk to the train, across cobblestone, with my duffel, guitar, and briefcase/messenger bag. With that in mind, I considered a cab, but I thought I'd at least start by walking, and if I got tired, I'd be walking a route that was easy to hail down a car. I was much clearer on my directions this time though, and at my quick clip, I made it to the station in a barely more than 20 minutes.
Drawing on my reconnaissance voyage, I made straight for the ticket booth and found it no problem buying a bus ticket to Nüremburg. I'd originally planned to train across, but in doing some internet research the previous afternoon, I found that both methods had transfers, and the bus would save me over two hours. From there, I would be able to catch a short train to Würzburg, which ran fairly regularly from the same Nüremburg station. The trick was figuring out where to catch the bus in Prague. There were pictograms for busses all over the place, but there were also local, domestic, and tour busses which met at various parts of the station. I was again thoroughly confused, but this is why I left myself plenty of time. I walked all over the station, asking several people along the way, including the ticket agent, who were variously helpful. It was a rather brusk Czech tour bus driver who eventually pointed me in the right direction, seemingly irritated that I'd bother asking. My bus stopped at a glorified driveway in front of the station that didn't have many clear markings–at least to me–but I found a schedule there for a bus to Nürenburg which corresponded with my ticketed journey. It was now 8:10, and I ate a sandwich I bought with the majority of my remaining Czech Krowns, waiting for the bus to arrive.
The Prague Train (bus) Station.
The German bus arrived right on schedule, and while it wasn't all too dissimilar to the Bolt and Megabus I ride regularly up and down the northeast corridor, I did not pick up on the fact that my seat was numbered until two passengers who'd booked a spot where I sat down came to kick me out. It's not like there weren't plenty of seats for everybody, and as it turned out, there wasn't even a number written down that corresponded to my reserved seat. I ended up in the back row of the bus' upper level, which all appeared to be unlabeled.
As I found with my brief cab ride into Prague, the landscape was rather familiar looking, with similar types of flora and fauna to my mid-Atlantic home, but the cottages and occasional houses that dotted the hillsides were distinctly German/Czech. It wasn't particularly clear when we crossed over the border, but at a certain point I noticed there were more trees interrupting the cleared fields for farming, and windmills rose about the forrest. Shortly thereafter I decided to log onto my computer and found Google marked as German rather than Czech. I figured that was a fair sign.
While the bus arrived in Nüremburg twenty minutes late due to traffic getting out of Prague, I had just enough time to make it onto my planned 12:35 train to Würzburg, hopping aboard just as the doors were about to close. Once we got moving, I was nervous I might have misread the directions in my haste because the computer screen on board said "next station München." That was in the opposite direction, so I waited impatiently until the train attendant came around twenty-five minutes into the trip to verify my ticket. With his "dank schön" confirmation, I knew I was good and could relax.
German countryside.
Cruising at up to 200 km/hr on the smoothest of track, we arrived some fifty minutes later, and I easily made it to the hotel, where my mom had arrived fifteen minutes before. In our original plans, I wasn't supposed to arrive until 4:30PM, but we now had a whole afternoon to spend in Würzburg to knock out some of our must-see destinations. First up was the Residenz, the 18th century palace the Prince Bishop of Würzburg built on the east side of town to save on transportation-related expenses getting workers and supplies up to the old Marienberg Fortress, a half-hour's walk up a steep hill across the river from the town proper. They decided to move the seat closer to the people in the form of a fabulous new palace, filled with ornate rococo stucco work and majestic frescoes by leading Italian artists Antonio Bossi and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo–a great way to save money. We were there in plenty of time for the 3PM English tour, although we cut it close by trying to find a bank–and failing to get an ATM that would work–in advance.
I particularly loved the famous Tiepolo fresco in the main stairwell depicting the four known continents of the period, classed from most to least distinguished in order of what you can see most easily, starting with Europe (seat of all culture and brilliance), Asia (home to first written language), Africa (land of wild animals), and America (completely savage land). The rest of it reminded me of a smaller/lesser version of Versailles, both with the ornately designed excess of rooms–here more focused on wall decorations than color-coordinated furniture–and the shapely, if relatively small gardens. (Alas, no pictures were aloud inside.) It was indeed quite beautiful, and we loved the yew trees, which are common at our neighborhood outside Philadelphia, carved into Christmas tree-esque topiaries that would fit into an Alice In Wonderland scene.
Gates outside the Residenz.
After the Residenz, we wandered back into town to partake in the wine festival at the Market Square. As our tour guide noted, Würzburg is, despite its current political association, not in Bavaria. It is in Frankonia. "In Bavaria they drink beer, and in Frankonia we drink wine, which separates the boys from the men." If you look on a map of major German wine regions, you'll find Würzburg at the center of one of the most eastern zones: Franken. They use many of the same grapes as the rest of Germany (Silvaner, Müller-Thurgau, Scheurebe, and Riesling) along with some local red varietals, all of which are famous for coming in squat round bottles like you might find with rum rather than the tall skinny bottles most of Germany uses. The wines didn't strike me as particularly unique, but that may also be a product of what was represented at the large outdoor festival. I imagine it might have been like going to an American beer festival, getting Budweiser, Coors, and Miller and then deeming American beers okay but not distinguished. It would have been nice to have a little more knowledge of what we were getting, so we could find the good stuff, but that's what our days on the Rhine will be for.
We went for a bit of a walk around town, getting disoriented on the winding streets, which all bend around five-story buildings, giving little indication of which direction you're walking. We had intended to head west towards the river and ended up north of the train station in a nice quasi-suburban neighborhood. Eventually we got sorted out though and made our way down the river from the north end of the city to the main bridge where we surveyed our food options. It seemed a bit touristy, so we headed back to a place we'd found on a small alley, five minutes back into town. The menu was nearly indecipherable to us in German, but our waitress was extremely gracious, translating much of it for us and helping us find some quintessential Frankonian food. I got bratwurst over sauerkraut and my mom got a breaded and fried piece of camembert cheese with a cranberry sauce on the side.
After dinner we tried to find a waffle place that our waitress recommended around the block, but they had just closed. The server there seemed to say the kitchen closes at 10PM; however, it was not quite 9:30 yet. Whatever the matter, waffles weren't in the cards, and we finally found a restaurant open that would serve us dessert, getting a mixed Italian plate of tiramisu, panna cotta, and an apple tart that while tasty, didn't stack up with anything I'd get in Italy.
All in all, it was a successful day, and I think we both exceeded our expectations for what we'd accomplish on what was originally considered to be one of our travel days.
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