Germany with Scott; 28 Apr 2008

Today was the Fraenkische Schweitz (Franconian Switzerland) day. This is a region not far north and east of Nuernberg characterized by wide river valleys, overlooked by craggy mountains (hills really) with very weathered exposed limestone crests. It has a lot of beautiful small villages, many of which are characterized as Luftkurorte, literally "air healing spa towns" - the air in this area is very free of pollution, and is supposed to have healing properties.

[A little side note on the German heath care system. Most of the system is what we would call a public-private partnership. Everyone is covered by some form of insurance, but only those never employed and not covered by a spouse's or partner's insurance are insured by the government. All others, including pensioners, are covered by private insurance, with the employers negotiating the best deal with an insurance company. The government sets minimum standards, which are quite high, with coverage well beyond what we get in Canada, even with the best of plans. Benefits are a part of labour negotiations, and thus tend to get better with time.]

All of that leads up to an explanation of why a designation as a Luftkurort, or for that matter, as one of several other Kurort designations, is important. Most Germans have heatlh insurance that covers a stay in such a place, for anything for a week to a month, as long as your physician certifies it as necessary. Thus, the physician might think that a couple of weeks relaxing, breathing clean air, while hiking around and eating healthily, will take care of your high blood pressure caused by stress. Off you go, to one of the beautiful little Fraenkische Schweitz villages (or a place where you can take a mineral water treatment, or any place that is reputed to be healing for what ails you), get checked into a pension - small hotel or B & B, and your Kur - cure ie. program of treatment, will be monitored by a local physican or other health care professional. Some of these Kurorte have cultural activities, such as concerts or theatre, which are most often included in the small (a few Euro per day) Kurtaxe (cure tax) that one (or the insurance if that is why you are there) pays when staying at a hotel or guesthouse. Even if you are not there for a Kur, the ID card that goes with having paid the tax gets you reductions at local attractions, etc. And this is on top of holidays; the time taken for this Kur is considered medically necessary and you maintain your holidays. Not bad!

Anyways, we got up on time this day, and after a very nice breakfast at the "Gruener Baum" headed east along the B470, the Bundesstrasse that runs all along the Aisch river valley in which Hoechstadt an der Aisch is located (Hoechstadt on the River Aisch - there are probably a dozen Hoechstadts - all it means is high town - all over a Germany, which can create a GPS navigation problem mentioned earlier in another post).

[Note on Geman highways. Fastest are the Autobahn, usually intercity highways, at least four lanes, most often six, except in city areas, where they can go up to eight and even ten. Notorious for no speed limits, they are in fact very controlled. Yes, in areas where it is considered safe, there are no speed limits. Elsewhere, such as through a built-up area, the speed limit migh be 120 or 140 (all are km/hr). In some areas there are no limits in daytime, and specified limits during night hours, or when the road is wet, or in Winter vs. Summer. Most importantly, the Autobahn has electonic signs every few km, which allow a monitoring centre to change or impose speed limits based on local conditions, even on a lane by lane basis, and warn drivers of conditions ahead. Add to that the very rigid German lane discipline; keep right except to pass, and if you are not in the right-most lane, and another cars comes up on you from the rear at a higher speed than yours, get to the right as soon as you can safely do so, the principle being that if you are not in the right lane, and you look right and there is no one there, then you should be; and these road, despite the extremely high speeds by North American standards, are very safe; the serious accident rate per 100,000 km driven is considerably lower than Canada or the U.S. (On maps and in GPSs, these have an A+number designation. Most Autobahn roads also have and E+number designation - and alas, the A and E numbers are not the same; E being the designation for an Europastrasse, a European highway, generally designating a route through Germany between two other European countries.)

Next are the Bundessstrassen - Federal roads - B+number designations - which are often 4-lane, speed limited to at most 120. Somewhere in there are Schnellstrassen - rapid roads - S+number designation, with the same limits, but limited access.

And then, there are the Landesstrassen, roads designated and controlled by one of the Laender, member states of the German Federation. Generally, they are designated by signed numbers with no prefix, and mostly have 100 km/hr speed limits. They can vary from any number of lanes down to roads where two cars can barely pass, although at that low end, you are probably on a municipal road.

Generally, speed limits in Germany are well-posted. One local rule you need to know; as soon as you pass a town entrance sign on the right of the road (oblong, yellow, with the town name, and possibly a district description, the speed limit is 50, unless otherwise posted. Leaving a town, you will see a sign on the left side of the road (the back of the entrance sign at that end) with a red line through the town name. That cancels the restriction, and the speed limit goes back up to whatever class road you are on, and is not necessarily posted.

That impositon of a limit, of any kind, and then its cancellation, is used elsewhere. Thus, on a road you may see a "No Passing" sign, which is a red circle, within which are two cars side by side, with the leftmost red; the cancellation sign is similar, but only black and white, with a diagonal line across it; similarly with speed limits; the imposition sign is red circle, white background, numbers in black; the cancellation is black and white, with the number having a diagonal line across it. All very logical, but you have to get used to it.]

Back to our day, we drove through the town of Ebermannstadt, another town familiar from my childhood. There was a cheese plant there, making Emmenthaler and Tilsit cheeses, which I occasionally visited with my father, as it was a part of his district. From there, down the Wiesenttal, the river Wiesent valley, the main way into the Fraenkische Schweitz. It's a broad river valley, and green with Spring, the trees just beginning to leaf out (this area is a little colder than the surrounding flat land) and flowers everywhere. The first stop is the town of Streitberg (literally means quarrel or battle mountain), with its castle ruin high above the village in the valley, and another castle ruin perhaps a kilometre across the valley, also on a high crag of rock. In the Middle Ages, these castles, and many more like them up and down the valleys of this area, were the seats of so-called Raubritter (literally robber knights, we might call the robber barons, except they were at the very bottom of the nobility scale) who made their living by taxing their tenant farmers, charging tolls from the merchants transporting goods through these valleys which were a major trading route, robbing the merchants if the toll was not paid, and sometimes even when it was, and fighting with each other for possession of land and toll rights. Apparently the families of the two castles visible from this town were particularly quarrelsome, over many generations, and hence the name of the town.

The major attraction at Streitberg is the Binghoehle (Bing cave), a limestone cave that goes right through the hill from one side to the other. It is full of fascinating stalagmite and stalagtite (and I can never remember which goes up and which goes down) formations all carefully lit with halogen lamps to bring out their colours. These living rocks are still growing, as water still slowly drips from the ceiling, and as a drop falls off the tip of a stala-whatever, it leaves a few molecules of solids behind, and the tip extends at the rate of perhaps 1 mm per century - small, but measurable. June and I visited here six years ago, and since then the cave has undergone a complete facelift, lowering the path in places to increase clearances, improving the lighting, and making previously unaccessible areas easier to get into. During that renovation a small underground pool was found, and in it lived a colony of very small prehistoric water creatures, almost totally transparent because they lived in total darkness and hence colour had no function in their world. These creatures had been found in the fossil record, but were thought to have become extinct milllions of years ago; here is a continuing colony of perhaps 50,000 individuals, living on minute algea that also grow underground.

The way to the Binghoehle is a steep climb, with a possible detour to a gazebo high up on a limestone crag, which gives a view of the Wiesent valley for several kilometes in both directions, well worth the climb. We actually went directly to the cave, and the woman guide there told us we were a bit early for the first viewing, suggested we climb up to the gazebo, enjoy the view, and then come back. We were glad we followed her advice. When we returned, we were still the only ones wanting to see the cave, so we had a private tour. As we were the only ones, we were able to take as many pictures as we wanted, something they ordinarily discourage. A very small sampling of the pictures can be seen at our photo web site, URL already given in previous posts.

[A historical note. The Bing cave was originally discovered by a Herr Ignaz Bing, supposedly while out walking with his dachshund, in 1905, when the dachshund disappeared down a hole. Subsequently, the first few meters of the cave were found and excavated by Herr Bing, supposedly looking for pre-historic treasure. Some of this history is at
http://www.showcaves.com/english/de/showcaves/Bing.html.
Apparently the cave was originally a dead end,it could be toured, but one had to return by the same path back to the entrance, a nuisance as it limited the number of people that could enter. In 1936 it was decided to dig through to an artificial exit on the other side of the hill from the entrance. A fairly unsophisticated but effective orientation device was improvised to orient the diggers in the right direction; the local Hitlerjugend - Hitler Youth troop was mobilized to stand at the spot where the exit was to be, and to sing patriotic songs at the top of their lungs and stomp on the ground as hard as they could. The diggers dug towards the sound, and the exit was established right where it was planned - given subsequent events, probably the most useful thing those Hitler Youth did.

After exiting the cave, we took the well marked path to the ruin of Burg Streitberg (castle Streitberg), and were rewarded with yet another fine view of the valley. Then down by a steep path into the village itself, and being by this time (just after 11) somewhat thirsty but not yet ready for lunch, found an open (this was a Monday, definitely not in tourist season yet) souvenir shop with the owner present and bored, who sold us two bottles of very cold, very tasty local beer, which we drank while chatting with him and fending off his best efforts to sell us local "kitch".

Then on, for a drive down the valley, and a steep climb up to Goessweinstein, a little town with a very large pilgrimage church, and a relatively intact castle. The church is again in the Franconian baroque style, very ornate, but since they ask that one not take interior pictures, we didn't. Then a walk up to the castle, stopping on the way for some mineral water and icecream at a sidewalk cafe. The castle is still one of the residences of Freiherren von Sohlern family (Lords/Ladies of the Manor of Sohlern, roughly), and is the family burial place. There is a chapel that is open, and some exhibits of very old liturgical books and articles, and a view well worth the steep climb.

After returning to our car, we drove down to the Wiesent valley again and follwed the river through several beautiful little villages, with lots of photo ops, to Pottenstein, where we had a very fine lunch (by now it was about 2:30) at a restaurant with an outdoor patio with a great view. June and I had eaten here six years ago, and enjoyed the food; why go into the unkown? For all I know, I might have had the same meal; sauerbraten with potato dumpling and red cabbage sauerkraut.

After lunch we drove a few kilometres further up the valley, to where there is a summer bobsled run. Basically, you get into a sled on rails, equipped with a pull handle that applies a brake. The sled gets pulled up the fairly steep hill, and then comes down a very curvy back and forth track by gravity. There is some control over speed by using the brake, but it is more of a full off-full on kind of brake, hard to modulate. (There are actually two tracks up, and two tracks down, with different coloured sleds, and I think, different speeds and gradients. We picked the one on which you get your picture taken, which is also the faster.) We increased the difficulty by trying to not only control speed, but take pictures at the same time - not always successfully; I deleted an awful lot of views of blue sky, or brown dirt, but that's one of the bonuses of digital photography, there is no cost to wasted shots. Scott, who was in the lead sled, complained afterwards that I hadn't told him that the little signs at the side of the track with "Bremsen!" on them meant "Brake!" - I'd forgotten about that! Lots of fun was had by all, and we did buy the pictures.

From Pottenstein we then went out of the Wiessent valley and followed a route cross country through lots of pretty little villages, and because we were following the GPS, which thinks a road is a road and you did say shortest distance, down what were essentially very narrow but paved paths through fields. Only once did I choose to ignore directions, when it wanted me to take a road which had the red circle with plain white background at its entrance, the European "No Entry" sign, and a small note "Except Forestry Vehicles" - however, we eventually came to our intended next stop, the city of Bamberg.

Most of the old part of Bamberg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Amongst other things, a river runs through it, and on a small island in the middle of the river, connected to the mainland on each side by bridges, is the very picturesque city hall. Some of the old district has become very chi-chi shopping areas and trendy restaurants and bars, but with that German genius that does not destroy the old ambiance in favour of the new. We arrived quite late in the day, so we only had quick walk-around the old city, then up to the cathedral on a hill (Bamberg has been compared to Rome, as both are built on seven hills, and in Bamberg the important buildings are on top of hills). We did not go to the Schlenkerla, a local brewery pub famous (some would say notorious) for its Rauchbeer (smoke beer - beer brewed from barley roasted over hickory wood, with a very distinct smoky - think something like consomme but not quiete, taste.) Traditionally, one drinks this beer, and eats Leberkaese (a very dense cooked hot liver terrine) picked up from the butcher's next door, on buns picked up from the baker on the other side. It's an acquired taste; I've accquired it, Scott hasn't - I guess the Franconian heritage does dilute - so instead we found a very nice restaurant with food both of us would eat, and beer both of us would drink.

[Just an aside note; Bamberg has 10 breweries, and there are maps and guides available to guide you in walking from one to the next, with samplings at each one - and if that is not enough, there are at least 90 more breweries in the surrounding area - however, for these you would need to drive. Thus a word of caution - the German police are very vigilant about drunk driving, the limits are lower than in Canada and if you get caught, kiss your licence and perhaps your freedom goodbye. About 1/2 litre per hour, with food is probably safe (most German beer is somewhat lower in alcohol than ours, about 4.5% - but there are some special beers like Maerzen or Bock brewed in the Spring or for festivals that can be at 7.5% or more - buyer beware, and be aware). Also note, that German police are not restricted by our Canadian notions of human rights and due process; you can be stopped at any time, for no reason whatsoever, and checked for intoxication. Incidentally, a police officer can ask you to identify yourself anytime, anywhere, so it is best to carry some id at all times, at least a copy of your passport details page, if not the original. Police can also close down an area, by setting up control posts at all exits, and asking everyone on the street to identify themselves.]

We stopped for dinner at the Hofbrau. We started out outside, under umbrellas, started with the Hofbrau beer, but before our meal came, dark clouds rolled in, and the heavens opened. We were moved inside very competently without even a drop on us, and the evening continued. The food was very good, and we could look out an open door onto the street and across a bridge to the Rathaus (city hall) and watch the streets literally flooding to knee deep in minutes. A cyclist went by, with the water up to the hubs of the wheels. And then the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the water ran off, probably right into the river, and by the time we had finished our meal we were able to walk back to our car dry, and drive back to Pommersfelden (only impeded by the GPS wanting to take us down roads closed by contruction, and having to find alternates).

And then, to bed; tomorrow, Nuernberg (or Nuremburg, as the English insist on calling it!).

[A final note, on "Hofbrau." Above, I noted that we ate at the Hofbrau in Bamberg. Most Canadians associate that term with Munich (as the English inist on calling a city that its inhabitants call Muenchen, but then the English call Aachen Aix-la-Chapelle, Koeln Cologne, and so forth - why not call a town what the people who live there call it - but enough of that rant!) Most in Canada, when they hear Hofbrau or Hofbrauhaus think of Muenchen: In Muenchen steht ein Hofbrauhaus, einz, zwei, gsuffa ... goes the song that, at least in Kitchener-Waterloo is sung at the local Oktoberfest (and more on that!) - Translation "In Munich stands a Hofbrauhaus, one two, chug it down ..."

Hofbrau or Hofbrauhaus translates as "court brewery" or "court brewery house/building" although in German the "haus" addition is of much less importance than in English - the two terms are effectively identical, and which one gets used depends on local usage.

brau is easy; it means brewery! Hof is more slippery; it can mean anything from a farmyard, a farm itself, a schoolyard, a jurisdictional district, a domain, a royal court, the court of anyone of degree or nobility, etc. and much more! In a beer context, to label a brewery as Hofbrau is almost equivalent with the English label on goods, "By appointment to ..... " Basically, it designates a brewery that was either set up by the local high muckety-muck, or supplied beer to them in the past, since officially since 1918 there are no high muckety-mucks in Germany - except they still exist (but that is another rant!). So, most places in Germany have a Hofbrau/haus, all it means is that some local important person either set them up originally, or they supplied beer to them.

Muenchen/Munich might be an exception - the Hofbrauhaus was started by King Ludwig I of Bavaria, with the commisison that they must always supply beer to the workingmen of Muenchen at a price lower than the other Munich breweries, of which there are many. That was to ensure that Muenchen workers would always be able to afford this nutricious beverage at a reasonable price - an early experiment in social welfare.

And that leads me to note that in German culture and practice, beer, and wine, are not considered alcoholic, intoxicating drinks are not considered something evil and to be suppressed (no Puritan Presbyterians here!), no, beer and wine are Naehrungsmittel, literally means of nutrition!

We did eat and drink at the Munich Hofbrauhaus (later description); we did not check out to see if their beer price was less than elsewhere.]