Würzburg

Ingrid and I walked around Würzburg today. We met up with Verena and Eve and had lunch at Würzburg's most well known sausage stand. They really only serve one thing, a sausage in a roll (you only get to choose how much mustard they put on), and it was pretty cool to watch the people make them. They would grab a roll, slice it open, slap in a sausage, break it in half, and then cover it in mustard all in this wicked-fast fluid motion that only required the use of a single utensil. It took only a couple of seconds from start to finish. I guess you just get that fast aver serving a million or so a day. The line was huge, and apparently it's just as long everyday, but it didn't take long to get through.

After eating lunch and looking through several churches / cathedrals, we walked our way up to the fortress in Würzburg, the Festung Marienberg. We met up with Martin, Eva, Frieder, Julia, and Emma at the top and wandered around the fortress for a while and went through the Franconian history museum (which utilizes a number of the state-rooms in the fortress).

Festung Marienberg is probably my favorite fortress in Europe. It's absolutely massive and it was completely unconquerable in its most fortified state. The fortress sits on top of a high hill with very steep sides covered in vineyards and bordered on one side by a river. There are several sets of high outer walls, most of them built into the hill in such a way that creates large cliffs, thereby making them entirely unbreachable. The many inner walls are just as domineering, with the only points of entry being through multiple gateways separated by winding tunnels that prevent the effective use of siege and breaching weapons. There are also several sets of portcullises, drawbridges, and hot-oil shoots to slow down an attacking army. Once inside all of the walls, one still needed to breach the dry-moat-surrounded inner bastion, and then coax the Prince-Bishop out of his impenetrable keep-tower in the center of the fortress. All of this has to be done before he is able to escape via underground tunnels to the city bellow, or signal his neighboring allies for help. Yeah, they were pretty well off, those Prince-Bishops.

[Editor's Note: Something that was just brought to my attention is that it might be good to point out that during the course of 20 minutes during the night of March 16th, 1945, Würzburg was 82% destroyed by British incendiary bombs (this includes most of the fortress and the Residenz). What you see in my photos has since been completely rebuilt.]

After touring the fortress, Frieder, Ingrid, Eve, Verena, and I all went to the Saint Kilian's Fest, a festival celebrating the feast day of Würzburg's patron saint. It was a lot like a county fair, with rides and games and whatnot, but it also had a giant beer-hall made from two large tents. Inside, amongst hundreds of seats, there was a stage for a live band that played traditional and contemporary German music (mostly drinking songs, I noticed), as well as a Mai-baum (May Pole) that people could climb and ring a bell at the top. That was pretty fun to watch. The food was great, too. I ate half of a roast chicken, two rolls, and a liter of beer. Well, it was a Raddler, but still, it was a liter. But it was a lot of fun.

Afterwards, Frieder and I went and celebrated with the town's soccer team. Frieder actually owns / manages the team, so that made for an interesting evening. A number of players were still partying in the loft (designed especially for these occasions) when we left at midnight. I got the feeling that they were going to stay until all the beer was gone. The best part was, the person who owned the loft (Willy, for those of you who know him) wasn't even in town, but rather had left it stocked and unlocked so the team could use it. I really enjoyed it when some of the players' parents showed up around 11 to join in as well. I didn't have anything to drink except for a couple of sips of a Cuban rum and coke that apparently is pretty much the national drink of Germany, or so I was told. Either way, I thought it was pretty terrible tasting. It was still fun to just hang out for a while though.

So with that said, "Wow this post ended up being really long.".