flying, phildalphia, flying, wuerzburg

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So it's been two travel-days (~7-8 weeks) since I last updated, and I've had a good bit happen. On the way over, my mom and I enjoyed a 10 hour layover in Philadelphia during which we visited my grandma and other old relatives. Since I had my saxophone with me, I performed the Ave Maria for them amidst the obligatory accompaniment of sniffling and passing-around of tissue boxes. We left almost as soon as we got there, but not before eating some of grandma's famous... soy nuggets?

The flight over could have been worse; we watched Die Fälscher on my laptop and slept. We took the ICE from Frankfurt straight into Würzburg and walked to our hostel in the northeast of the city. It was something like 7AM by then. Würzburg was just opening up then, and we walked around the town. For those of you that haven't been to Würzburg, it is a small, green and brown city, with hills covered in weintrauben (that's wine-grapes) surrounding it. The river Main runs along the west side of the town, separating it from more vineyards and some notable old buildings. We walked from our hotel, across the Alte Mainbrücke, one of the many bridges crossing the Main, and then up a winding road that led to the Marienburg Fortress. The hill atop which the fortress sits is now covered in grapevines. We strolled through the old fortress, but since the tour was in German, we got to make up most of what the buildings were for. The most obvious was of course the huge tower in the middle, which was used to store wine after the harvest, at which time the locals would gather around and drink from spouts at the bottom. There was some urgency in this, because if they did not drink fast enough, there would not be enough room for the subsequent marshmallow harvest, and thousands of bushels of marshmallows would go bad. Rapunzel was undoubtedly at the top, eating mallows and waiting for her hair to grow long enough. Someone should tell her about prenatal drugs.

After that, we walked back to the city and took a bus up to the new university campus at Hubland and visited the library and the Biology building. The campus is pretty spread out and, since school isn't in session, pretty deserted. I will spend a lot of time here.

We ate, slept for a while, and woke up.

I made a bank account this morning, so now I feel pretty good.

Final impressions: thank thank thank god that everyone here speaks English.

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Photos

gma
hot nugget

Comments

[Sprocolate]

Marshmellows, eh?
Is the tower at the bottom the tower with the wine? Are we allowed to get into that wine tasting action? When I was in Würzburg, it was just a brief stop on my way from Frankfurt down to Rothenburg, but I was planning on popping in there again.