The First Getaway

Act 1: The Plan


So, it was our 3rd weekend in Germany, and it seemed time to take a road trip. We had previously committed to ourselves to spend no more than one weekend per month in Berlin. After all, I had made a list of towns worth visiting on this continent, and it came to 52. We're only here 44 weeks. Gotta get moving. As the only English channels we get are BBC and various CSPAN-like news channels, we've spent 3 weeks with the "Global Economic Crisis" and "Total Economic Meltdown". Maybe I'm feeling a little less bullish about spending money I don't have flying for the weekend to this really cool part of France where the kids can ride with the only remaining cowboys in Europe. Maybe that seems a little imprudent. Just maybe. So we looked at where we could drive in the company car that was interesting and about 2-3 hours away. I had a few options in the 250-300 kilometers away zone and chose Bamberg, in northern Bavaria.

Act 2: Oops!

After an hour or so on the road, I started to wonder why we hadn't yet passed Leipzig. Surely we should be that far by now? I decided to double check the driving distances chart in the back of my Germany guide book. Berlin to Bamberg is 395 km. Oops, but on the Autobahn we should be doing 150 km/hour, so that should be still under 3 hours, right? Turns out there are speed limits on the Autobahn when there's construction...which there was...a lot of. We averaged 86 km/hour and it took well over 4 hours to get there.

Think that's the end of the oops? Oh no. I didn't book a hotel. Plan A, it's after Oktoberfest & nobody travels right after the major holidays. I'll call the hotels from the road or stop by the tourist office. Plan B, it's a 2 hour drive, so if we find nothing, we drive home. Both hotels I called were booked up. Got to the tourist office and there were roughly 120 people milling around outside. Oh no. Did I miss a major holiday? The bock beers aren't supposed to be released until November...

Act 3: Bier


Did I mention that Bamberg is famous for its beer? There are 10 breweries in town--more than Munich, more than anywhere else in Bavaria. Apparently the tourists come at all times of the year, but the high, high season is May, September & Oktober. The tourist office found us a room with 6 beds (!) all the same just a bit of a walk from the main downtown. After attempting to navigate Dan through the historic pedestrian zone (guess this should still be in Act 2), we arrived at the hotel and got our skates on for some touring. It's a gorgeous old town--it wasn't bombed so the old town is solid 16-18th century buildings. Looking up at the hills we couldn't figure out why there were so many enormous churches. Turns out they had an archbishopric or something like that--lot of money for the Catholics. We went in the main Dom (cathedral), but skipped the other 23 churches. So beer and churches. Found 3 of the breweries and had our fill. Tried the Rausch (smoked) beer and didn't really like it. Sort of tasted like drinking smoked trout. Not great. Walked the kids around until Greta asked to go home and go to sleep.



Act 4: Who knew?

There was a town between Bamberg & Berlin that I had read about, but it didn't make my short list for the weekend. In light of the long drive, we decided to make it a stop on the way home. Programmed the nav for Erfurt and started off. There's something called the Thuringen Forest that we drove through. It was hilly, but we hardly noticed on account of the absurd number of bridges and tunnels. Really long tunnels. It was a bit too hypnotic. Got into Erfurt and went for lunch. Decided to follow the 3 km walking tour for the part that was near our lunch spot. It was really cool! Fairly well intact old town with a bridge that still has houses on it!

Oh, and anyone know how to put titles on pictures or arrange their order???