Erbach & Wiesbaden, Germany

08.25.2008

Erbach, Germany

Marianne picked me up from the airport with no glitches, and I got through customs just fine…no lines, no luggage inspections, and no problem with my passport. Both of my flights (Boston to Zurich and Zurich to Frankfurt) were fine…I slept pretty much the whole way, except when they were serving food (both dinner and breakfast). Leaving Zurich I even slept through takeoff, and I thought I’d be awake the whole time since it was such a short flight…but since we took off around 5am east coast time, I guess I deserved the sleep I got!

After Marianne met me at the airport, we took 2 trains back to her home town of Erbach, which is a little less than an hour away from Frankfurt. Once she had given me the tour of her home, I took a shower, got dressed, and we made some dinner (it was only 4:30, but I hadn’t had anything since breakfast and was on such a time warp); pasta with a simple tomato sauce we made ourselves. We threw in some herbs from her own garden that we couldn’t quite identify but tasted great. It was so nice to have a warm, home-cooked meal. Afterwards, we went exploring around her town, which is quite small (about 3,000 people, she thinks). Since it was a Sunday evening, there wasn’t much activity, plus she said that this isn’t the kind of town where you can go out to a bar at night, so we just walked around. All of the streets are very small. Technically they’re two lanes, but with the amount of cars parked, they become one lane, two way traffic. The homes are all relatively small with tiny yards, but people here make the most of them. The yards are full of gardens with herbs, shrubs, and lots of rose bushes. Rosemary and lavender seemed to be popular choices. Her home is on the edge of town, so once we got more towards the center of things, she showed me the Catholic Church where she grew up…baptism, convocation, the whole bit. It was open, so we walked inside. It felt awkward to take pictures inside, so I didn’t, but there were beautiful stained glass windows all over, and beautiful groin vaulting (even spider vaulting in places) that was painted and heavily decorated. The altar was ornate, and there were little statues and cherubs all around. It was relatively narrow (narrow apse and two aisles), but very high. The outside was very different from any church I’ve ever seen as well; tiny little dormers (both pointed and arched) lined both roof levels. There were probably 15 or 20 in each row, and there were about 3-4 rows in total. Some looked like they may have only been for ventilation and not even let in much light.

We continued walking around, and she showed me the castle in town. Now a gorgeous five-star hotel, it was once the palace of a Prussian princess (also named Marianne). Apparently this woman was very forward-thinking for her time. She was the first woman of her time to get a divorce (at least in this area), and she was a Protestant. When her son died at a young age, she didn’t want him buried at the Catholic Church and to have a Catholic service, so she had a protestant church built. We walked by it later, and it is tall and spindly with tons of tiny little turrets that look like they would break off in a high wind. The church was a pale-ish yellow all trimmed in white.

Marianne explained that this whole region is very well-known for wine making, and there were vineyards all through town. Some of them came right up to the sidewalks; I could have sampled a grape had I wanted to. We even stumbled upon one stand that looked like a café, but was actually a wine-tasting booth!

Once we got back to her home (she’s alone this week, as her parents have driven to Poland for a family wedding), we began to look through some maps of Amsterdam that I’d printed before I left along with a list of places I wanted to go (per a friend’s suggestion who visited last fall). Her family also has a guide book of the city, which is good for its maps, but will only help her, as it’s in German.

Today after I woke up (I slept a LOT), I came down and she had laid out breakfast, explaining that they usually just eat bread with cheese. She had two different types of wheat/oat breads sliced, four different kinds of cheeses (one was cream cheese, two were “stinky”, and the other was just…another kind of cheese), jam, honey, butter, and nutella. I sampled one stinky cheese (not very stinky and quite tasty), the regular cheese (a bit like havarti, also tasty), and the jam. She wasn’t sure what to call it in English, so she pulled out a German-English dictionary. She ended up with a final answer of gooseberry jam, but wasn’t even sure if that was right, because she wasn’t 100% sure of what it was in German! All the same, quite good.

We then walked through town to the train station (which isn’t much of a station, just some tracks that cut through town and a small platform) and took the train to Wiesbaden, which is the biggest city in this immediate area. The ride was about 20 minutes for 3,60 €. We got out in town and just walked around, me being amazed by all the delicate old architecture. We walked around for a while and finally stopped for lunch at a little outdoor café in what was part of the American equivalent of an outdoor mall. She got meat lasagna, but as they were out of the veggie, I got a small tomato mozzarella pizza and fresh squeezed orange juice. The pizza was great, thin crispy dough, a thin layer of sauce, a little grated mozzarella, and lots and lots of herbs. We were sat next to two women (very thin, European looking, with beaky noses poking out from behind large aviator sunglasses) and their two babies.

We continued walking around, me snapping pictures of interesting buildings and Marianne throwing in comments about history and culture. We stopped for cappuccinos at one point, and Marianne explained that the concept of a coffee “to go” is very new to Germans. They used to always sit and enjoy them before leaving up until a few years ago (another striking difference from the states, so many people are always so rushed back home). We ran into bad luck with churches, however…two of the three we encountered were closed. The first (closed) was unlike any other church I’ve seen…entirely made out of red brick, but still very tall with many turrets and ornate decorations. The second was made out of some sort of yellow stone (I’m horrible with identifying stone types), but was also closed and under construction. We did walk around to the back, though, and I got some neat pictures. The third was open, and was also quite different from the traditional. It had dark brown painted spider vaulting, which got more ornate where a dome would have typically been. The stained glass windows didn’t depict Saints or biblical characters, but were rather just abstract shapes, mostly red, blue, and white. The two towers on the front were very high and the tops almost looked to be made of lace…very thin and delicate.

We walked back to the train station, bought our tickets, and had some time to kill so we walked next door to the mall. Marianne explained that it’s actually pretty strange to have an indoor mall, most of the time stores are just outside and open air. We poked around in a few clothing shops, but didn’t really buy anything since not much was on sale. Most shirt were 12 € ($19-ish), and jeans usually ran anywhere from 34 € to 54 €…and I’m not paying $87 for jeans, even though I need a new pair! We took the train back to her town, stopped by a local grocery market for small bottles of water (we’ll take them into Frankfurt tomorrow and with us to Amsterdam) and some eggs (she didn’t realize until I arrived that I’m vegetarian). Tomorrow we’re heading into Frankfurt to pick up our friends who arrive at 10:20am. Jeff goes to school with me, and MJ went to high school with Jeff. MJ is studying abroad in Germany this semester, and Jeff is doing the Rome program with me. Marianne knows them because she did a study abroad program at their high school years ago…she hasn’t seen Jeff since then, so it should be fun. We’re going to pick them up at the airport, put their things in a locker, then explore the city. Tuesday we’re taking an early train up to Amsterdam, which will apparently take us 6 hours, spending the night there, then taking a train back here the following day at 2pm. Not as much time in the city as I would have liked, but the train tickets would have been much more expensive if we’d stayed longer, plus we would have had to pay for more nights in a hostel.

Well, tonight Marianne and I are hanging out in her house, and a friend of hers from the area is coming over (he also speaks English). We may watch a movie or something, who knows? More later!

PICTURES: A building in Marianne’s town, a winery we pass to reach her home from the center of town, and the music building in Wiesbaden where she once performed.