It was about an hour to the northwest by train, which was the highlight of the whole trip for Collin. This is Ben's wife Sherry talking with Malisa.
When we first got there, we saw these men playing music to collect money for kids with cancer. Collin donated some coins and checked out the monkey...they gave him (the kinder) a little button to wear.
There was a large area in the middle of the city where there were just tents/booths set up to sell food, beer and wine. We tried a special kind of wine called an Edbeerenbohl (Edbeeren means strawberry in German and Bohl is, well...bowl). It's dry white wine with sliced strawberries soaking in them. And had an onion cake with it...delicious! The square was surrounded with some new buildings containing shops, some old churches and led off toward the river.
Here's the Wurzberg Maipole (Maypole) that they had up in the square. Interesting thing about the Maypoles...sometimes they have more than one. If they do, that means that people from their city or town ventured into a neighboring one and stole theirs! It's a big deal because they have a fest and go out and choose a nice straight pine tree, cut off all the branches, erect it and decorate it. So to have somebody come and steal yours and drag it back to their town would be pretty embarrassing.
Some of the streets in Wurzberg. Streetcars are pretty common in Germany and the ticket that you buy for the trainride is also good all day for buses and streetcars.
Just an interestingly painted farrhad (bike!).
I spent a bit of time manipulating this photo to accent the green bike by making everything else black and white.
When we came to the river, we crossed an old bridge called the Alte Mainbrucke (Old Main Bridge) that is adorned with statues of various Saints...one of them was an Irish Saint..Killian! God bless red beer.
Overlooking the Alte Mainbrucke is a large castle called the Fortress Marienberg, seen here.
We would come back here on another trip later and eat at this restaurant on the patio with Malisa's parents.
After checking out the bridge and the admiring the view (Germany is known for beergardens, but they're really a huge wine country, with grapevines covering the countryside), we headed back toward one of the main churches, the Death Church.
Here's Ben and Sherry, our sponsors and friends.
Some views from inside the church. The name comes from the fact that people were taken here after they died, to await entombment or something. There's a large catacomb below the church that we walked through and there were some tombs down there since the 1400's.
There was this cool little skull statue that we found on the wall, so I asked Collin to show me his "skeleton face". Here it is, in all it's glory.
Some views from the catacombs.
Outside detail from the "Death Church"
We walked to a place simply called "The Residence". It was where the Princebishop lived in the 1700's. The building is so huge, you have to take more than one picture and paste them together to see the whole thing...
Next to The Residence was a Beer Garden that had a little playground for kids too...how perfect! Adults can drink beer and watch their kids play at the same time....they thought of everything here!
Collin met a couple little Madchens (girls) at the beer garden playground and as usual, couldn't stay away from them or stop from heavily laying on his charms!
I think the funniest thing came a couple days later though...today he was walking around the hotel making a lot of baby-talk. (Anybody who knows Collin knows that he usually speaks like a little adult). We asked him why he was talking like a baby and he said "I'm not, I'm speaking Germany!".
The beer garden was on the side of the Residence and as you walked around the back, there was this beautiful garden.
Ben and Sheri were very gracious hosts and sponsors. We learned a lot from them and it made the transition to living in a foreign country very easy and a true pleasure.
The back side of the Residence....there were even more beautiful gardens back here, but my camera battery died.
After we left the Residence we went to this little cafe for coffee and ice cream. They had the COOLEST ice cream...it's called Spaghetti Ice. They take hard frozen vanilla ice cream and push it through a spaghetti press making it look exactly like pasta. They put that on top of some whip cream, then cover the "spaghetti" with strawberry sauce and then grate white chocolate over it to make it look like parmesan cheese. It's AMAZING!! I wish I had a picture of it, but you'll have to take my word...Collin was in heaven.
Well...it's not mine...but I googled it....spaghetti ice!
That's it for now!
