ManVanNoPlan Sets Off To Tour Europe (Part 2)
ManVanNoPlan Sets Off To Tour Europe (Part 2) and and visits Bad Langensalza, Erfurt, Weimar via the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Hainspitz and Bayreuth
Tuesday 10th of September
Hamelin to Bad Langensalza (51.116585, 10.645006)
The centre of Hamelin was beautiful and the Stellplatz cheap enough, but we felt we had done it justice yesterday so decided to move on this morning to Bad Langensalza, a drive of almost three hours with the first and last forty five minutes on normal two-lane roads and the bit in the middle on an autobahn. The scenery, especially on the first section, was lovely with a mix of agriculture, forests and half timbered villages.
We arrived in Bad Langensalza at lunchtime and after we parked in the Stellplatz, set of to the nearby swimming pool to pay, and all I can say is thank goodness for Google Translate as the receptionist didn’t understand a word English which matched us not understanding German. The pool complex is brand new by the look of it with indoor and outdoor pools and all the trimmings like sauna and jacuzzi but it is most famous for its sulphur springs, brine and the drinking of medicinal water – no other place in Thuringia has this combination of natural remedies.
The town’s sulphur springs were discovered over 200 years ago. Then in 1812 the first sulphur bath was opened. However, it took another 140 years before the town was officially declared a spa (hence Bad as its prefix) at first only as a sulphur spa, because the brine and medicinal water springs were discovered only shortly before the turn of the millennium.
However, at € 13.00 (£ 10.87) entrance fee each we gave it a miss and would put the € 26 saving to buy a lunch when we explore the town tomorrow. It is € 10.00 (£ 8.46) a night for the pitch and € 2 for ten hours of electricity which, considering we are within a short walk of the town centre, is worth it. We relaxed for the rest of the day, looking forward to spending the day in the town centre, although the forecast was not good.
Wednesday 11th of September
Bad Langensalza
“During its more than 1,100-year history, the town was hotly contested and large parts of it were destroyed several times. But then it was always rebuilt, each time more beautiful than before. The large old town with its baroque buildings and colourful half-timbered houses, for example, received its present form after the devastating town fire of 1711, as did the magnificent town hall in the middle of the Neumarkt, which is much younger than the Gothic tower around which it was built.”
It was chucking it down overnight and when we eventually opened the blinds a few of our neighbours had already departed. The first blog for almost a year went live this morning and others will follow soon. The rain abated about eleven o’clock so we headed into town, The Navigator was duly happed up against the elements but I persevered with my shorts although I did make the concession of taking an umbrella!
Ten minutes took us into the centre of the town and found a street market in progress which is always good to see and they seemed to be doing good business, especially the vans selling fish. The town is very typically German with well restored half timbered houses, many from the 1500s in various colours.
Its not a huge town and we saw most of the centre within an hour before being tempted by a guy selling bratwurst sausage brotchen, which is one of the culinary delights in Germany.
In fact they looked so good that The Navigator had one as well but she desecrated hers by covering it in mustard and ketchup. Sacrilege if you ask me, but she did enjoy it which was a surprise as she is not really a sausage person!
We did another lap of the town for good measure before needing a seat in a bakery for two hot drinks and cake. There was a dispute over my cake as I bought it on the assumption it was an iced currant bun but The Navigator insisted they weren’t currants but pureed figs, which I hate as a fruit. Whatever it was, it was delicious.
“Bad Langensalza is is a popular tourist destination, with a well-preserved medieval old town, a number of themed public gardens and a thermal spa bath. In 2011 it won the title “Most blooming town in Europe” as part of the Europe-wide horticultural competition Entente Florale and it contains a Botanical Garden, along with a Rose Garden, a Magnolia Garden and an Arboretum. It is one of the few European towns with an authentic Japanese Garden.”
I’m sure the Japanese gardens are lovely in the summer especially when the sun is shining but that was not going to be today so we passed on by the entrance.
It was time to head back to the van as it was threatening to rain again so we chose a different route and via the course of the old town wall and through some of the aforementioned gardens, which, even for this time of the year, post summer and pre autumn, were worth seeing. We spent the rest of the afternoon hunkered down from the rain that never came on but enjoying another € 2 worth of electricity.
Thursday 12th of September
Bad Langensalza to Erfurt via a Revolution Laundry! (51.116630, 10.644794)
Its hard to believe that a few days ago we were sitting outside enjoying a barbecue and this morning we were facing a dilemma. The dilemma was who was going to get out of a nice warm sleeping bag and put the heating on as it was so cold. Thankfully, The Navigator made the sacrifice which was much appreciated…
Another consequence of this morning’s cold temperature is that my shorts are being sacrificed in favour of long trousers, but I live in hope that they will make another appearance before the end of this trip.
After two and a half weeks of being on the road The Navigator decreed it was time to wash our ‘smalls’ so a Revolution Laundry was found en route at a big Esso service station where we ticked off two things on our to do list.
First was the aforementioned washing and drying of our clothes which was a simple task as the machines are easy to use and pay for.
Second was, while the clothes were in the dryer I drove Otto onto the forecourt, not for fuel, but to fill up the AdBlue tank. This is the first van that has the AdBlue system and only the second time I have filled it up. The first was in Harwich where I added 5ltrs but now I was going to fill it up at a pump rather than faff about with plastic containers as its cheaper and far more convenient. This will stop a red flashing warning notice flashing on the dial with a loud warning sound, especially when the last time it did that we still had 1,400 miles to go before it ran out!
With time to kill, we had a tea and a coffee in the cafe and were impressed with the quality of the schnitzel meals two lorry drivers were having, at 11am. With all that accomplished we headed twenty minutes on to Erfurt, our next stopover. I realise I keep saying this, but has anyone ever heard of Erfurt?
“Erfurt is the capital and largest city of the Central German state of Thuringia and its old town is one of the best preserved medieval city centres in Germany. Tourist attractions include the Merchants’ Bridge, the Old Synagogue, the oldest in Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Cathedral Hill with the ensemble of Erfurt Cathedral and St Severus’ Church and Petersberg Citadel, one of the largest and best preserved town fortresses in Central Europe.”
Google Maps took us past the entrance of the Stellplatz, on another mile or so, round a housing estate with a narrow road before taking us back to where we should have been fifteen minutes before! We serviced Otto and encountered a new feature on us, a spray which cleans the drain as you dump the waste water, needless to say it caught us unawares and the cab was sprayed as well as I left the door open. You live and learn!
We then mastered the over complicated ticket machine and found our pitch before having lunch.
By now it was warm and sunny so decided not to waste the afternoon and head into the city. The Stellplatz is part of a park & ride car park but we walked past the bus stop for five minutes to a tram stop.
The ticket machine was not accepting credit card payments for some reason and we didn’t have enough coins for the fare, so as we scratched our heads wondering what to do, two English speaking German couples helped us by asking the driver what to do and he told us all just to get on.
The ride into the city centre only took ten minutes before we all got off in the main square. Immediately you are struck by the magnificent Erfurt Cathedral standing on an elevated location side by side with St Severus Church and they both dominated the square.
We wandered about the city and saw some of the other ‘must-see’ sights and keeping them in mind for a longer visit tomorrow.
Instead of a mid afternoon coffee I persuaded The Navigator to have another bratwurst and lager, or to be precise, a Radler, which turned out to be twice the size of my lager! I was informed that on tomorrow’s visit to the city she is expecting a slap-up lunch. The ticket machine still wasn’t accepting card payments so we took a free tram ride back to the Stellplatz.
Friday 13th of September
Erfurt
It was another cold night but we were snug as bugs in a rug and we started the day with bacon butties, to use up the last of the bacon from home. We were going to spend most of the day in the city so there was no real rush to get there and it was about tenish when we caught the tram into town. Unfortunately the ticket machine was working today!
When we arrived at the main square in front of the cathedral a market was in full swing and pretty busy. Yesterday a massive structure was being hastily constructed for an Octoberfest celebration but only the front part was finished and the local police orchestra was belting out some dance hits from yesteryear before their big ending, the theme from Star Wars.
Goodness knows how many steps there are up to the Dom entrance but it was worth the effort as the Cathedral is magnificent as the following pictures will confirm.
This was also the first time on this trip that The Navigator had a moment of ‘contemplation’.
From the cathedral we walked the short distance to the Petersberg Citadel, the only extensively preserved baroque town fortress in central Europe. Its star shape is a prime example of 17th to 19th century fortification design and it was reguarded as a state of the art construction of its time. The view over to the Dom and the market square was superb with the impressive backdrop of the city and its spires a bonus.
We continued to wander about, searching for sights we had not seen yesterday and found quite a few. One of the sights The Navigator was looking for was a restaurant to have lunch that had schnitzel and mushroom sauce on the menu, and after a few false starts we found one, and it was delicious.
When you are somewhere new one of the best ways to find the most scenic attractions or buildings to see is by looking at the postcards on display outside shops and that is how we discovered that the Merchants’ Bridge I had photographed yesterday actually looked better from the other side so we headed there.
We met by chance the two German couples and as we chatted to them they asked where we were heading after Erfurt and we said we were heading in the direction of the Czech Republic and Prague. They immediately said we should definitely not go there as there was an extreme weather warning for high winds and torrential rain which would lead to severe flooding. Apparently it was the headline news on German TV which obviously we weren’t watching.
There are still a few places in Germany we are going to first and will leave it a week or so before heading to Prague. Erfurt was a complete surprise to us and would have no hesitation visiting it again, either as a destination or passing through the area and I recommend it to you.
Saturday 14th of September
Erfurt to Weimar via the Buchenwald Concentration Camp (50.985220, 11.316037)
It was a chilly night but the heating in the van kept us cozy enough. After servicing the van and checking out we headed for a nearby Netto to stock up on a few necessities for the weekend and from there we headed to Buchenwald, about twenty five miles away. To get there we drove mostly on an autobahn and, although it was bright and sunny, there was a ferocious side wind buffeting us.
“Buchenwald Concentration Camp was built in 1937 on the Ettersberg Mountain, near Weimar, and it was to this concentration camp that the SS deported men, teenagers and children – political opponents of the Nazi regime, so-called asocials and criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, Sinti and Roma, all of whom did not feature in the Nazi vision of Europe that they were going to dominate in the future. People were sent here from all over Europe and at the time of the camp’s liberation ninety five percent of its inmates were from countries outside the German Reich. Altogether nearly 280,000 persons from more than fifty nations were held captive here.”
We did not set out to come here but when we arrived in Erfurt and found it was so close to our next destination of Weimar, we had to visit. It was not the utterly harrowing experience that we were exposed to in Auschwitz last year, but was a sobering place to be. Being high up and exposed over the flat countryside around, as we walked around the site, the wind was freezing cold and made us wonder what it must have been like for the inmates in the depth of a freezing winter instead of this mid-September.
Entry had been free to the complex as had been the App I put on my phone to give a commentary on the way round so we decided to have lunch to give a contribution back for the upkeep of this sombre place. Most of the camp had been destroyed when the Americans bombed it in early 1945 ahead of the liberation by the United States Army in April of that year. Allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower later visited one of its subcamps. The Americans confronted the population of Weimar with the crimes committed and opened Buchenwald for international delegations. Films and photographs of the camp spread across the world to show the depravity that had taken place here.
It was then on to the town of Weimar itself, famous for giving its name to the Weimer Republic which was the government of Germany from 1919 to 1933, so called because the assembly that adopted its constitution met at Weimar from February 6 to August 11, 1919.
Unlike some (most) of the other places we’ve been to on this trip, I had actually heard of Weimar and the creation of the German Republic, but little of the town itself. The Stellplatz was almost full when we arrived around two o’clock, giving even more credence to The Navigator’s mantra of arriving before lunchtime.
After lunch we headed into the town and were immediately impressed by the old town which was looking pristine with the buildings immaculately restored. There was a lot going on as you would expect on a Saturday afternoon, the noisiest being a fashion show in one of the squares with the models eminating from one of the department stores.
It was warm and sunny and all the outdoors tables and chairs were occupied by people either having lunch, coffee and cake (us) or ice cream and I should say we have been amazed by the number if ‘eis’ shops in Germany. As I said, we picked a bakery to sit outside with our afternoon tea and coffee and two delicious cakes. The market was more or less over but one stall still going strong was the one selling bratwurst which had a constant queue of customers.
In Germany we have marvelled at all the historic half timbered buildings but there were very few in Weimar and the beautifully restored buildings were very impressive all the same.
“The city centre was partially damaged by US Air Force bombing in 1945 with some 1,800 people killed and many historic buildings destroyed. Nevertheless, most of the destroyed buildings were restored soon after the war because of their importance in German cultural history. The Allied ground advance into Germany reached Weimar in April 1945, and the city surrendered to the US 80th Infantry Division on 12 April 1945. The residents of Weimar were ordered to walk through Buchenwald, to see what had been happening so close to the city, as documented in Billy Wilder’s film Death Mills. The city ended up in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, so US troops were soon replaced by Soviet forces.”
By late afternoon we were both flagging having walked all around Buchenwald and a fair bit of Weimar so we headed back to the van to hunker down for the night and one of The Navigator’s trademark creamy curries.
Sunday 15th September
Weimar to Hainspitz (50.960251, 11.836571)
What was going to be a day of rest turned on its head as reluctantly we have abandoned any hope of visiting the Czech Republic and Prague in particular, but Boris has put paid to those plans. Not the ex Prime Minister, but the named storm devastating Central and Eastern Europe with Poland, Romania, Austria and the Czech Republic bearing the brunt of it.
As I write this we are relaxing beside a lake on a sunny Sunday afternoon after moving on from Weimar, although there is a slight breeze, and yet only a three hour drive away in Prague it is a very different story.
According to news reports… In the Czech Republic, flooding has led to evacuations and 51,000 households in the country’s northern areas have been hit by power outages and flood barriers have gone up in the capital Prague. Fire crews are building up defences around rivers, in preparation for further flooding in several cities.
“We have to be ready for the worst case scenarios” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala announced after meeting with emergency services earlier this week. Czech authorities have repeatedly appealed to people not to approach rivers.
Plan B has just been formulated and it might just be just as good, if not better than Plan A. You will, however, have to wait for the next few blogs to find out if that’s the case…
Monday 16th of September
Hainspitz to Bayreuth (49.944585, 11.593166)
Last night I took the following picture just after sunset. It had been a lovely warm day and this seemed to be the perfect end to it. However, it started to rain about an hour later and lashed down all night. There had been about half a dozen vans with us last night but all but one had left by the time we were ready to leave.
Today’s destination is Bayreuth, about ninety minutes down the A9 Autobahn. It was chucking it down which made the drive all the more challenging as it is difficult to judge the speed of the cars overtaking us if we need to pull out to overtake the long line of trucks. The speed limit is 120kph and Otto happily cruises at that with no effort but most of the cars in the outside lane are doing in excess of 150kph which is scary at the best of times, but in today’s horrendous condition, is madness.
We make it safely to Bayreuth just before lunchtime and managed to find a garage with diesel at € 1.49 (£1.26) so the tank was duly filled. The free (yes free) Stellplatz was found easily enough and we parked up and had lunch with the plan to hunker down today before venturing into Beyruth tomorrow, rain or shine!
“Bayreuth is world-famous for the Richard Wagner Festival, which takes place every year in the Festival Hall on the Green Hill . The Margravial Opera House has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2012. The city lies on the Castle Road and the Bavarian Porcelain Road holiday routes.”
Tuesday 17th of September
Bayreuth
It was obvious that our gas had run out sometime during the night so today’s first mission was to find a garage to top up again as we needed it to keep our fridge and cooker working as well as giving us heating and hot water. In this modern era there is an App for everything and after a quick consultation on the myLPG.eu App, we were heading about three miles to a garage where we successfully topped up the tanks. Back at the Stellplatz we had breakfast then headed into the city centre which took about twenty minutes to walk.
Bayreuth suffered heavy bombing during WWII as there was an ammunition factory and railway hub here but fair play to the Germans the whole place has been rebuilt to a very high standard and you can tell that this has been a wealthy city for many centuries. The buildings were not half-timbered but were impressive none the less and many signs in the street documented their history as to when they were built etc.
We walked down the wide main street taking in our surroundings before heading into one of the many impressive bakeries for our first cuppa of the day. There was a small collection of market stalls at the widest part of the street selling mostly foodstuffs and snacks but eventually we chose a cafe and sat outside under a huge umbrella.
When the sun was out it was very warm but when it went behind a cloud it was chilly all of a sudden. I enjoyed that German staple snack of currywurst while The Navigator had croquets, although sitting outside may not have been our best decision as wasps took an avid interest in our lunch!
After lunch we continued taking in all the sights in the city centre before finding a bench to sit in the warm sunshine taking in all the sights and sounds around us. We went back to the bakery we were at this morning and enjoyed and enjoyed our afternoon refreshments before heading back to the van where I duly fell asleep for an extended nap.
It was a horrible day when we arrived yesterday but today we were fortunate to see Bayreuth in all its pristine glory in warm sunshine which makes a considerable difference. If you are ever travelling down the A9 towards Bavaria, Austria or Switzerland nip in and see Bayreuth, you won’t be disappointed.
The journey taken on this Blog Post.
Plan A was to drive from Hainspitz towards Dresden and from there south into the Czech Republic, and Prague in particular, but that trip will have to wait for another day…
COMING SOON ON THE NEXT BLOG…
The next blog will see us driving further south into Germany to visit three iconic German locations, and which should be fascinating.
PS. Spoiler alert. It is…
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See the first blog in this series HERE
