Wurzburg!

This post was added to the blog by my sister Suzy, while in Germany with my mom!

Today we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany after leaving nyc late last night. We arrived around 10:40am, earlier than we were supposed to. No problems with the flight or customs. Note to self, how sweet were the Singapore airlines flight attendants outfits?!

Mom and I got our bags and waited anxiously to meet Karl -  Heinz. He is the ATAD liaison in Wurzburg. Took a while to find him but once we did everything went smoothly. We had to walk a very long way to get to his car. When we got there, most of the cars in the garage were VW, Audi, and Mercedes!

We started the roughly 120km drive to Wurzburg from Frankfurt. The traffic was unreal!!! The "autobahn" or thruway has no speed limit and people can go as fast or be as reckless as they want, yet somehow it manages to still get clogged with traffic. It took us almost 2.5 hours to get to our hotel, over an hour more than it should have. Needless to say we got to take a detour and see the German countryside, lots of Apple trees, rolling hills, grape vines, flowers, very green! In fact, not so different from upstate NY. We saw sheep and goats grazing and drove thru some very cute villages. Karl-Heinz pointed out all the red roofs, which we loved. The buildings were largely made of red sand stone. Very cool.

Once we got to Wurzburg tho it was perfect. Mom described it as a doll house hotel. Nothing is huge but it has this interesting feel of a quaint and modern style put together. Our room has one of the best views of the city, we can see the Main River, the fortress and the 1000 year old bridge.

Next was time for a nap...

We awoke refreshed and got ready to meet Karl-Heinz (I think ill call him KH) and his wife, Birgit. We first walked over to the old bridge and Karl-Hienz gave us the full history. The bridge is called Alte Mainbrucke. This once was only bridge allowing people to get from one side of the city to the other. KH told us an interesting story about how when the US were bombing the city in March of 1945 some German soldier panicked and blew up the middle of the bridge so the US soldiers couldn't pass. The US then used equipment that they had to cross the broken bridge anyway. I guess the Germans think he was a very foolish soldier.

KH pointed out many other parts of the city as we stood in the middle of the bridge. We got an idea of how the city is laid out and what other things we would be seeing while we are here visiting. Next we walked through part of the old city. We saw the Market Square and all the shops and restaurants around it. The area is nice because it is for pedestrians and bicyclists only!

KH and his wife took us to a wonderful restaurant for dinner that has its only winery. They are friends with the owners there. Of course the wine was great, and we got to eat traditional German food. Mom ordered "pepper speak" or steak with pepper sauce. I got the Weiner Schnitzel! They both came with awesome potatoes!! We talked for many hours during dinner. KH struggles to speak English but its much better than he thinks it is. He explained a lot to us about how the German school system works. More about that later...

Back to the hotel and to sleep we went. We had only been here half a day and seen so much already!

Auf wierdersehn!
Suz

Karl Heinz, Mom and one of our ATAD students in Wurzburg!