Day 57: Wuerzburg (9/7/2010)

Dad woke me and Davin up at 7am even though we expressly asked him to NOT wake us up. God he’s annoying. I don’t really get mad about it cause I know he means well, but still it’s sooo annoying! We had to leave at 8:30am, but we don’t need more than 40 minutes to get ready. Davin needed less because he just skipped breakfast. But what’s done is done.

I slowly had some breakfast and packed up my computer. I said goodbye to Scott again since it was early enough for him to still be awake on the previous day. Time zones are so weird. Then at 8:30am Baerbel drove us to the train station. She showed us how to buy a Bayern Ticket. With this 28Euro ticket, up to 5 people can take any regional train for the entire day. It’s a really good deal.

We got on the 9:00am train to Wuerzburg. The ride lasted a little over two hours. We were a little uncertain that anyone would be at the Hauptbahnhof to pick us up because we took an earlier train than we had originally planned. This was because we could only get a ride to train station at 8:30am. Anyway, it all worked out. Wilma was there to meet us when we arrived at 11:30am. Her son Bastian, who visited us in San Diego in July, wouldn’t be arriving in town until 3:30pm. So, until then, Wilma graciously gave us a tour of the city.

Our tour was very unique, and unlike anything a normal tourist in Wuerzburg would do. First, we visited the Wuerzburger Festung. This is a fortress atop a mountain overlooking the city. From there we had a great view of the whole city. You could see all the beautiful cathedrals, churches, and the Residenz. There are many buildings in the city with amazing architecture.


Next, we drove to the University of Wuerzburg and visited the building that my dad worked in 30 years ago. My mom also assisted the professors there with their papers in English. We saw an old colleague of theirs, Gerhard Rademacher. He was very happy by our surprise visit and asked for my mom’s email address. Then we toured the university’s greenhouses (my dad worked for the botanical department).


Then we drove to the street that my parents lived on when they were in Wuerzburg. Davin lived there for the first four years of his life as well! Wilma couldn’t remember exactly which house they lived in, so I took pictures of all three possibilities. (When I asked my Dad later, he said this house was the one.)


Next we drove to Neubert’s which is a HUGE furniture store near my parents old apartment. In this store you can buy everything you need to decorate a house. It is one store that is six stories tall and the size of a mall! It’s insane. At Neubert’s we had lunch in the store restaurant. Davin remembered how my mom brought him here to eat and see the water fountains. I chose to have Putenschnitzel mit pommes for lunch, and Davin chose some pork thing in Rahmpfeffer sauce. Then we split the two. Davin’s meal was originally 9 Euros but we had a coupon so it only cost 5 Euros. In the end, we decided it wasn’t even worth the 5 Euros!

Our next stop was the Burgerspital, a wine estate that Wilma works for. She does wine cellar tours and wine tastings. She took us on a personal tour of the wine cellar. We saw old wooden barrels that are still used for fermenting wine, and the neat carvings that adorn some of them. Each one celebrates a different important event in the wine estate’s history. We also saw a room that containe thousands of modern metal casks where most of the Burgerspital wine is fermented. And we saw the oldest bottle of wine in the world bottled 1540 in Wuerzburg. That’s kind of a neat thing to be able to brag about seeing ;p.


Wilma took us next to see the hospital building where Davin was born 29 years ago. I took his picture outside the Frauenklinik building. It was sort of amazing to realize that we had returned to the exact place of Davin’s birth!


Finally, we went to Wilma’s home in Rimpar. We had perfect timing because there was just enough time to settle in before Bastian arrived. Bastian was returning from a week on tour with his band the Instant Voodoo Kit. He is their drummer. He was pretty tired from the six hour drive from Berlin. Unfortunately, he only had a few hours before he had to begin a 12 hour shift as an ambulance paramedic! Poor guy. We went with Bastian to the store to pick out some breakfast food for tomorrow, then picked up his car from the mechanic, and then we drove to pick up his girlfriend Katarina. (We had also met Katarina in San Diego in July.)

While we were gone, Wilma left to go to a meeting for work. The plan for the evening was for Davin, Katarina, and I to meet Wilma’s husband, Norbert, at the restaurant Da Luigi’s at 7pm. So after Bastian left to go to work, the three of us drove to town. We found a parking spot right across the street from the restaurant. Norbert was there waiting for us. His face seemed very familiar to me, but I definitely wouldn’t have realized I knew him if I had seen him in a crowd.

Da Luigi has delicious food. We wanted to eat at this restaurant because we remembered it from past visits. I had a Quattro Formaggi pizza, and Davin had Pizza Napoli. We were joined shortly after ordering by another young woman who turned out to be the longtime girlfriend of Thilo, the younger son of Wilma and Norbert. The five of us had great conversation on all sorts of topics, from politics, to racial discrimination, to jobs and going to school, to my parents and Davin’s four-year-old memories of Wuerzburg. I mostly spoke in German (after apologizing for how horrible my German is of course!) because Norbert’s English is even more limited than my German. It was interesting trying to discuss politics in German! I really don’t have the necessary vocabulary. My sentences tended to peter off when I found myself without any of the right words at my disposal. Luckily, Lisa’s English was very good and working together we managed to have an intelligible conversation.

After dinner we walked to the river Main and looked at the Festung lit up for the night. Then we walked to a café and had milkshakes or espressos and talked some more. Finally we went back to Wilma and Norbert’s house and got to bed around 11pm.