9 April 2017 - Day 9 trip - Day 7 Cruse - Surprising Bamburg

Nice breakfast,  It was a lovely sunny day and we were tour group 39G, took the bus into Bamberg, they dropped us off at a square with a lovely big cherry tree in full blossom. We walked down a few streets to another square with a statue of a man with a cat on his shoulder. E.T.A. Hoffmann, the author of the original story of the Nutcracker that the ballet was based on, lived  in a little house in that square.

Continued on through the windy little streets past a jewish memorial which was placed on a wall. It commemorated that  in this area 1664 - 1910 the Bamberg Synagogue stood. In the hub was the inn Wiebe Taube" or wiebe pigeon. 1941-1942 Jews from the city and surrounding areas of ghetto should serve before being transported to the extermination camps. a kind of sobering moment in our journey that day. 

The small streets had lots of lovely old buildings holding shops and restaurants. There were also lots of statues and fountains. 

We crossed a little river and saw the monument on the ground to the Witch trials. They burned more witches in Bamburg than any where else at the time and the bishop had to come and tell them to stop as they were losing most of the town. The first was a young boy who thought he was possessed as he had been listening to the over zealous priest who was talking about witches. 

 The town has some really lovely old buildings along it waterways with lots of little bridges back and forth along the little river which meets up with a bigger river. 

The town hall was built on a rock in the middle of the river in order to avoid paying taxes to the church back in the 16 or 17 century , there was a 3 D map of the town for the blind, at one end of the bridge to the town hall, so that they could find out where they were. The bridge going over to the town hall , was full of university students  and tourists sitting in the sunshine. the bridge continued over to the other side of the river with the town hall sitting in the middle of the bridge. It was lovely and so unique. I loved Bamberg.

On the other side of the river were lot of shops including the beer street where the beer wars of 1907 were waged. It seems that the beer makers in the town knew that they made the best beer and so started to increase the price of beer. The townspeople objected so much that they refused to buy it and drank the “Bad” beer instead until the town beer makers caved in and lowered their prices back to the normal ones. Three gentlemen were awarded merit in that they drank more of the “Bad Beer  than other towns people so that the towns brewers lost a lot of money. Too funny. 

 We ran into Patricia and her husband from the cruise and when I asked her what time it was she gave me all her watches and rings. She was quite Old and had dementia. Her poor husband, whose name I cannot recall right now,  was also old and had quite a time keeping track of her. I told him I would give everything back on the ship so that they would not loose them.

Margie and I  proceeded and came to a large square with a bakery and a lovely church which we went into. It had one of the loveliest confessionals we have seen in a long time. Back out in the square there was a statue or toy made up of three sections of three people that you could create.  I made my Bamberg boyfriend, but decided to leave him as he was three faced.  In the square there was a fountain with a Neptune statue and his trident was a fork. 

 We then went to  the Fulenspiegel restaurant and had a St Georgebrau Buttenheim beer which was pretty good. We ran into Chris and Jo from our cruise at the next table and chatted with them for a while.

 We all headed back to our pickup point through the narrow streets , past the interesting doors and buildings to the lovely blossoming tree.

Back to the ship and after depositing our newest treasures had a lovely dinner. The routine aboard was pretty much the same every day. After dinner we would go for the next days activities talks and then have some form of entertainment in the lounge if we decided to stay for it

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