A Week of Wandering: Würzburg

In the morning, I ate a free breakfast in the dining room on the first floor. Despite the temptingness of the spread, I still had a poor appetite; so I stuck to a slice of iced cake loaf and a cup of café au lait. The only quibble I had with my lodgings was that there were only two keys for my room, and even when I borrowed one of them, it refused to unlock the washroom door, so I'd had to change in the bedroom.

As I walked along the streets back to the Bahnhof, they were empty, as it was Sunday morning. The restaurant tables and chairs were locked together, the street tram rails unused, and the election posters (among them a xenophobic one for the right-wing Republikaner party: "Wir lassen die Kirche im Dorf . . . und die Moschee in Istanbul!") were ranged along the sidewalks in forlorn state. There seems to be much resentment against the right in Würzburg, by the way. The CSU and Republikaner posters were sometimes defaced, whereas the Green Party, etc. posters were untouched; an FDP poster bore the slogan, in yellow lettering on a black background, "The strongest contrast to black." (black is the colour of the CSU); and in an arched tunnel at the hostel someone had scrawled, in German, "Nazis and cops = right-wing pigs."

After endeavouring in vain to use my EC card to withdraw money again, I went to the hostel where M. was staying, and waited for her in the kitchen. This hostel has an amusing anything-goes attitude. When I thought that the door wasn't open, and rang the doorbell at the cellar, an ex-hippie with long, flowing hair popped his head over the roof (six or so floors above me) and shouted directions, not losing patience even though I had no clue where his voice was coming from for two minutes or so. I could pay for my room right away or later, it didn't really matter. I just had to give my name to register (I'm not sure if this is even legal, as I had to provide a boatload of information at the other hostels, and when M. asked in Munich why we had to give our passport numbers, the lady at the front desk said that it was required by law). The kitchen is an informal affair, with a heterogeneous collection of dishes, shelves full of food brought by the people staying there, counters whose sides are constructed of untreated OSB, and a tall refrigerator scribbled over with a black flurry of names. There is free coffee and tea, though other drinks had to be paid for; in the lounge at the other end of the room there is a computer with free internet access (wireless, and the browser was Firefox 3).

The reunion with M. was very nice. She had had a bad night — bed linen would have cost an extra 2.50 Euros, so she had gone without, and had slept shivering with the cold as a result; also, her bedroom door wasn't locked — but was willing to go off adventuring again. We retraced my steps (and hers; she had also looked for it and hadn't found it) to the hostel, crossing the Alte Mainbrücke again, but turning to the right on the far end to climb to the Fortress Marienberg. We were tired; our progress, up stairs, past a toppled portable toilet, up more stairs, and then up a bridge into the maw of the fortress, was slow and interrupted by pauses where we sat on benches and refreshed ourselves with hazelnuts and chocolate.

It is a beautiful hill, clad on one side with rows of grapevines, and steeped in green elsewhere by grass and dandelion and clover leaves; pale blue chicory; rosebushes bearing black hips, and elderberry bushes laden with dark fruit; and apple trees, horse chestnuts and other leafy trees. The edifice itself has a mighty old foundation from the 13th century, immensely thick-walled and with immensely tiny windows. Altogether it fit with my train reading of Nathan der Weise (which is set during the Third Crusade) very well. The crest of the prince-bishops of Würzburg is carved in stone on one side of the wall, and its quarters are filled with two wheels, a set of three zigzags, and a flag that resembles a key; two swords are crossed behind it, and a crown hovers above.

Then we climbed up further to the Renaissance and Baroque buildings that surmount this old foundation. They are not so impressive, in my view, though the moat between the outer and inner wall was; and the red sandstone of the window lintels wept into the whitewashed walls. But the light-blue-ceilinged chapel where the prince-bishops are buried possesses no small share of pomp, and the grey keep in the middle of the courtyard, though not at all ornate, is not so shabby either. The other visitors were mostly German.

After that we descended the hill, and, to our own surprise, summoned the courage to attempt the hill beside it. There the bright yellow and white, black slate-roofed Baroque chapel of the Wallfahrtskirche (pilgrimage church), built from 1748 to 1752 by Balthasar Neumann, stands. As we wound up the Nikolausstraße, we were tempted to climb into one of the gardens and partake of the apples in an orchard, but we resisted, and went on. We reached the first of the fourteen stations of the cross, which are sheltered in yellow and white niches, and were carved by Johann Peter Wagner from 1767 to 1778. There is also a row of four prophets, Jerodias and Moses among them, who stand in the midst of the stairway overlooking a lovely courtyard shadowed by plane trees; they taunted us by implying in a choice selection of Biblical verses (which were engraved on books or scrolls that they held) that the effort of climbing the hill was nothing. As for the chapel, it is a Baroque fantasy. M. was deeply in awe. I, on the other hand, didn't like entering a church to gawk; also, the ornamentation expressed (in my view) much more of the expensive tastes of the prince-bishops than of true devotion. So I promptly slipped out again. M. then bought a postcard, after which we climbed down the hill again, talking about religion.

We then walked onward to the Residenz, a palace also built by Balthasar Neumann for the prince-bishops, by way of the Ringpark, which is a swathe of green that embraces the city on its eastern perimeters. Along the way there is an impressive university building, which bears the bronze legend "Veritatis" and is surmounted by an outsize sculpture. The garden of the Residenz is most pleasing. Presently there are yellow roses, trimmed evergreens, and a lively ring of flowers: heliotrope, crimson dahlias, amaranth, larkspur, white cosmos bipinnatus, etc. A tall staircase and wall overlook and embower it; a fountain or two mists and cools the air; and the shady passage of silvery evergreens and linden (?) trees, fitted out with stone benches and sculptures of cherubs, is a charming specimen of its kind. I rested there and read, while M. went off to take photos from a finer vantage-point.

We did not enter the Residenz itself, except to peek at the chapel, which was well worth it, and to go as far as the ticket office, which was temporarily closed. Then, parched by the heat, I bought a bottle of Apfelschorle in a bakery that was avidly visited not only by people but also by wasps, and we returned to the hostel.