A Trip to Wurzburg

Last week, Hunter had a small conference in Wurzburg, so Sadie and I went along for the ride. It's about a four hour train trip from Aachen, and Sadie did great! She slept a bit on the longest leg, but even when she was awake she wasn't too much trouble.

Hunter's conference started not long after we arrived, so Sadie and I walked around to explore a little bit. We mostly just wandered and saw a few buildings from the outside. Hunter called to say that there was a dinner scheduled for the attendees that night, so I took Sadie to a Chinese buffet right by our hotel. I haven't seen too many buffets in Germany, and had never seen a Chinese one. It wasn't bad, and they even had a high chair for Sadie. She behaved really well during the dinner. We went back to the hotel and mostly just watched TV/played around until she fell asleep.

The hotel room was pretty big, especially by European standards, and the only outlet Sadie could reach was easily blocked by a heavy chair. This meant she could roam pretty freely throughout the room, moving things from table to table and bag to bag, sorted by a logic I'm sure she understands but I certainly don't.

The next day, Sadie and I went to check out the botanical gardens. They are open in winter, although I think they would be a lot more spectacular in spring. But it is free, and we got a nice walk out of it. I walked probably several hours each day, listening to an audiobook, so that was pretty fun. After that, I headed back and got doner (gyro) for lunch. I had had a headache at that point pretty much since we arrived in Wurzburg, so we spent the rest of the day just kind of laying around. There isn't so much to do there that I felt like we were wasting precious time, and we were saving the big stuff to do with Hunter on Saturday.

So, Thursday night we all went out to dinner together. Unlike most cities in Germany, where beer is like the main drink, wine is really popular and local to Wurzburg. It's served in a distinctively-shaped bottle:

So we had some rather large glasses of wine and a pretty tasty dinner, during which Sadie behaved beautifully, again. She is really growing up and it gave me a lot of hope for our forthcoming trips to Berlin and America. After dinner, we planned to take some pictures, but while I did remember to bring the real camera this time, I forgot to put the memory card in. Don't worry, we bought a new one, we just don't have any pictures from that night.

The next day, I went to check out some art at the Museum im Kulturspeicher. I had seen posters up advertising it and it was a pretty quick walk from the hotel. It had a lot of pretty cool stuff--I am not sure if I'd heard of any of the artists exhibited, but I really liked the art. It was a lot of geometric designs, or at least those were the ones that stuck out to me most. Sadie fell asleep as I was walking through, so she didn't disturb anyone there.

I still wasn't feeling great so once again, Sadie and I just kinda chilled in the room until Hunter got back--his stuff ended at 2:00. We went out to do some sight-seeing; the first thing we went to see was Rontgen's labaratory (Rontgen is the person who discovered X-Rays).

If you plan to go see this, there are some things you should know: it's just in a university building; the house is marked as being important, but the entrance is just a door that isn't marked as being very special. We weren't really sure we were in the right place, but eventually we just went in and saw there were a few exhibits. They have some of the vacuum tubes he used (because apparently you need those for x-rays? I don't know) and a recreation of his laboratory, as well as some other artifacts. 

We saw their cathedral, which is not all original. Wurzburg was almost completely destroyed in the war, but there were some bits and pieces that survived. Most of the stuff in the main part of the cathedral is very modern though, which I liked and made it look rather different from many of the other cathedrals we've visited.

We also went to buy a memory card, so we do have some pictures from that night!

You may notice that in that picture, I'm just holding Sadie; she isn't in her carrier! While I still put her in the carrier 95% of the time, we took her out so she could walk across a bridge with us. I have a babyleash, which I always judged people for but Sadie is a runner so I wouldn't let her down without it. And of course she got admired while she walked because she is THE CUTEST!

And here is the best night-pic of the fortress on the hill. You can't really see the hills, but they are covered in vineyards. We didn't go up there because I read the bus only runs March-October, and I didn't think I could do the walk while carrying Sadie.

For that night's dinner, we basically just wandered around until we found something. It was kinda funny, I looked at the menu of a place and told Hunter it was "typical German." He took this, logically, to mean, I don't know, sausages and potatoes and German food. But what I meant was that it had spaghetti bolognese, various baguettes and pizzas, the typical random mishmash of food German cafes have. Anyway, it was cheap and tasty and the waitstaff was in love with Sadie so it worked out well.

On Saturday, our last day, we did the main event--the Residence. It's a palace that's similar in some ways to Versailles. There are also some gardens that would probably be really amazing during the spring and summer. Hunter did take a few pictures of statues and things:

One Pan a-piping

Frozen Fountain

Eye of Providence

So anyway we did the English tour and it was really cool. There is a huge ceiling fresco that made it through the war, and some other pretty impressive stuff. Sadie isn't crazy about tours because people are paying attention to someone else, plus it was right before lunch, so we had to go pretty quickly through the self-guided portion.

Near the Residence is a new-ish Protestant church, which has pretty cool architecture:

Anyway, we grabbed lunch at the train station before heading back home. Sadie handled that trip really well, too. At home, she didn't go to sleep quite as immediately as usual--I think she had gotten used to being with us--but she is back into her routine now.

The day after our trip, we went to the children's parade so keep your eyes open for a post about that!