Wurzburg, Germany

This is Wurzburg, Germany as viewed from the Fortress Marienberg.
Today we took a daytrip to the City of Wurzburg. It is a city along the Romantic Road in Germany. It is the capital of Lower Franconia, with a lot of baroque influenced archetectureand is famous as the center of Franconian wine production. The surrounding hills are covered in vineyards and the Main River flows through town. In WW2, 90% of the city was devastated in a 20 minute long raid on March 16, 1945. Until last year, the US had a military base in this city. Nearly every building has been restored. We had a really good day despite the really cold weather. We were just very glad there was no rain.

We started the day at the UNESCO World Cultural HEritage Site, the Residence Palace. This is a view of the front of the very large Palace.


This is the Fountain of Franconia in front of the Residenz Palace. This fountain celebrated the Bishop getting the boot in 1814 and the city celebrating being a part of Franconia. The fountain celebrates the artistic genius of Franconia with statues of 3 great hometown boys, (a medieval bard, the woodcarver Tilman Riemenschneider, and the Renaissance painter Matthias Grunewald).

Lily and Lia at fountain.

We were able to tour the Palace with an English guide. It was very interesting but we couldn't take pictures. The Palace was built in 1720-1744 as the new residence for the Prince-Bishops. We toured the grand staircase, the white Hall, the Imperial Hall and the Garden hall. All of these rooms were not destroyed during the war. The rest of the palace was pretty much destroyed. In 1944 they removed all of the furniture and decor from the rooms and took tons of pictures. They used these to reconstruct the Imperial chambers like the Hall of Mirrors. Of note was the beautiful ceiling frescoes (paintings) in all of these original rooms, especially the grand staircase. They were very beautiful.
This is the inside of the elaborate Hofkirche (church) at the palace.


We then walked through town and saw several sights and then walked up to the Fortress.
This is the back view of the Dom St. Kilian (Cathedral) of Wurzburg. It dates to 11th century and the interior burned in 1945. It was reconstructed. It is the 4th largest Romanesque cathedral in Germany and is home to artifacts from many centuries.

This is the front of the Dom.

This is the front altar inside the Dom.


This is the Marienkapelle and the Falkenhaus. The Marienkapelle or St. Mary's Chapel built in 1377-1479 and restored after 1945. It is considered the finest Late Gothic building in Wurzburg. The Falkenhaus is the tourist info center which was formerly a guesthouse with stucco facade from 1751.

This is a view of the altar inside the Marienkapelle.

We next found the rathaus that had a small room with pictures of the town right after the 1945 allied bombing which happened just 6 weeks before the end of the war. Then we witnessed a re-enactment of some military thing. We don't know what it was about. They were dressed in uniforms and they paraded down the main street. We didn't follow but the uniforms were neat. Here is a picture.


Statue of St. Kilian on the Alte Mainbrucke, the Old Main Bridge. It is lined with statues of saints as it crosses over the Main River.

The hike up to the Fortress was steep. Lia threw a major tantrum. She did not want to do it. She was cold and sick of walking. But we trudged on and she soon got over it. I am really serious when I say the kids enjoy all of these day trips and all of the old stuff. The Fortress is called the Festung Marienberg. It is huge. It was where the Prince-Bishops lived from the mid 13th century until the construction of the Residenz palace. The inside rooms and museums were all closed so we just walked around the outside. Here are some pictures of the Fortress.







We capped our day by eating at the Alte Mainmuhle restaurant. John and I were excited to get fresh fish. We were quite shocked when it came to the table like this.

Yummy!

Day trip to Steinau an der Strasse

Last weekend we visited the birth place of the Grimm Brothers but there wasn't a museum. My friend, Nilda, found that the Grimm brothers museum was in the town of Steinau an der Strasse. She said the brothers grew up in this town so we decided to visit it. We wanted to see fairy tale stories and books.

Steinau has a really old part of town. The oldest building we saw dated was 1584. The old houses in Germany are half-timbered houses. These buildings have large timbers showing on the outside, usually stained darker or painted for a nice look. I love seeing these old building. Some are painted so nice.

I have included a picture of a half timbered house that some of the plaster has fallen off and you can see the soot filling they used to fill in the spaces of the outer walls.

We walked around a lot. It was cold but the sun was shining. This is the sign to the museum.

This is the outside of the museum. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the inside. It was actually a really boring museum. The first floor was all drawings and paintings of the third brother, Ludwig. Boring. The upstairs was the Jacob and Wilhelm floor for the fairy tales. It was useless. There was hardly anything to look at. It was boring so you didn't miss anything. Lily was able to buy a really nice illustrated fairy tale book in English.

There was a museum across from this one that was kind of interesting. We don't have any pictures and it was in German, but the displays were interesting. It was about transportation along the medieval trade route between Frankfurt and Leipzig.

This is a section of road from the original medieval trade route that was found between Steinau and another town named Bad Soden-Salmunster. They moved it here to be near this museum.

Here are some pictures we took while walking around the town.

Sign

View of street in the old town.




There was a stream running directly through and under the town.


This is a picture of the Rathaus, or town hall.

This is my friend Nilda and her family. We ran into them at the castle. We all went to the Marionette theater. We watched, in German, the puppet show of the fairy tale, The Musicians of Bremen. The kids enjoyed it. I was a bit lost since I didn't know the story. Nilda filled me in on all of the details. We looked in Lily's book later that night and realized the story is in her book too!

Right in the middle of the town was a huge castle. The castle museum was closed and so was the tower. I read online that the castle dates back to before 1200, and most of the still standing fortification was constructed from 1528-1555. It used to be the home for various local rulers, it was once the residence of the Counts of Hanau and was spared the fate of many local castles, being destroyed by French invaders, because it was occupied by French troops in the early 19th century. The state of Hessen assumed responsibility for the castle’s upkeep in 1945 and it now serves as home to renters. We have never seen a castle subdivided into apartments like this one. It was unique. This castle was very large and spread out and had a huge wall all around it.

Overall, the town was nice and quaint. We enjoyed walking around, eating a little german food and seeing some sights.

My First Blog

We moved to Germany 6 months ago and I am finally starting my blog. This has been one thing on my "to-do" list that I kept putting off. Well Here It Is!!!

I hope you all enjoy what I write and the pictures that I post.

Happy New Year to everyone! Let's hope 2009 turns out better than how it is starting. For all we know, we won't be here the entire 3 years of John's contract so we will be traveling in earnest so we can see everything that we want to.

Here is a picture of Lily and some of our family ringing in the new year with "poppers".

Day trip to Hanau and Bad Homburg 1-18-09

We set off for Hanau Germany today. This is the town where the Grimm brothers were born. They wrote most of the fairy tales that we know today like Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel and more. I didn't do much research but I fugured the town was small and we would come upon a museum. (You can go to this site to view the original versions of the fairy tales, not the Disney versions as we know today. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/grimm/

Hanau was much bigger than I first thought and we found no museum. There was a large downtown with a lot of shopping but nothing was open because it was Sunday.

We did find the caslte named Schloss Phillipsruhe. Schloss is the name for castle in German.

It has a public museum inside the main building but it was closed due to a huge bridal show. So we walked around a bit in the freezing cold rain and wind. The Main River (pronounced "Mine") runs along this town. This river also runs through the city of Frankfurt. That is also why we say we are from the "Main-Taunus area". Main is the river, and Taunus is the mountains in this area.

Behind the castle is a huge garden which is probably very nice in the summer. Today it was very wet and sloshy from melting snow. And very cold!! The back view of the castle was very nice.

More castle pictures:

This large iron gate was brought from Paris.

Front view of castle.

We saw some nice buildings and restaurants and a pretty church. The kids played a bit on a playground, but it was just t0o wet to have a whole lot of fun. Lia wants to come back when it's warmer.

John has decided he wants to take pictures of all of the beer signs he sees hanging from restaurants. Here is one.

Next, we drove to a town named Bad Homburg. This town is very near to us. Bad Homburg is one of the wealthiest towns in Germany. It is close to Frankfurt so that also makes it a popular place to live. It is a spa town hence the name "Bad" which means bath in German. Kings and queens from all over used to travel to this town for a dip in the healing baths.

We visited the town in the summer to go to the Roman Fort. I just recently read that it also has a lovely castle and a nice Kur-park with a Russian chapel with a small onion top dome and a Siamese temple so we decided to come back. It also has a very cute pedestrian only old town with lots of shops. It was Sunday (no shopping) but I hope to come back with a friend this spring to enjoy some shopping and lunch at one of the restaurants.

Anyway, we made it to the castle. It is quite large and from where we walked up to it we didn't get a good overall picture. Here is one I got off of the internet.

This castle is very large and can be toured via a guided tour only. There are 2 tours. One of the Emperors section and one of the English princess's wing. We chose the English princess tour. The tour was to be in German but we were very fortunate that we were with one other couple only and they didn't mind for the guide to speak in English. We totally lucked out. The kids were able to enjoy it much better also. This was the first castle I have been in that we had to put slippers on over our shoes. It was comical. We scooted around on these huge slippers. The castle was freezing also so we weren't able to warm up much. We have no inside pictures because we weren't allowed to take any. Here is a couple pictures that John took outside. One is of the Weisser Turm (white tower) and one is of the outside entrance gate. It was really raining and cold so we came home after the tour. We did not go to the park to see the chapel and the temple. I guess we will have to come back again!