August 26th & 27th

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Funny side note that I’d forgotten to add:
We rode into town and through most of it without finding a hotel or gasthous. We stopped and Margaret pulled out the Garmin and used the “points of interest” function to pull up a list of the local hotels. She chose the one at the top of the list (closest) without looking, and hit “Go!” to navigate to it. The GPS then said “arriving at destination on right”…we had stopped not more than 30 feet from the Hotel Walfisch without realizing it! Oh, and the bookstore that was nearby? RIGHT next-door 😉 Oh well, sometimes you fail to see the forest for the trees, or is that individual trees for the forest around you.


August 26th
A little bit lighter ride day today, with “only” 27 miles, but it was planned. We headed out of Hassfurt towards Zeil A. Main, Steinbach, Ebelsbach, Stettfeld, Oberhaid, Hallstadt, and finally into Bamberg, our destination for a planned 2-3 days as one of the brewing capitals of the world. As it turns out, we’d actually made a bit of a wrong turn and didn’t re-cross the Main River like we should have at Zeil A. Main, and ended up on some of the not-so-good bike trails which finally dead-ended at a highway just east of Staffelbach. With a detailed GPS check we realized we were on the wrong side of the highway and railroad tracks for the bike trail that continued on towards Unterhaid and Oberhaid, so we turned around and rode the half mile back to Staffelbach, crossed over the tracks, and continued on towards our day’s destination of Bamberg. We picked a hotel brewery destination from the ones that Margaret had researched beforehand, plotted it into the GPS, and started riding. Bamberg’s the biggest city we’ve been in besides Frankfurt, and the GPS once again did it’s thing and got us to the place we’d selected…..which was currently closed through the end of September. Oops…The good news is that there’s another place right across the street that suits our needs just as well, the Fassa Brewhaus. Once we checked in, we hiked off towards a well-regarded café / biergarten from Margaret’s files, while looking for a drugstore to buy soap (this hotel is one of several we’ve stayed at now that doesn’t have it in the rooms) and a bookstore for a more detailed map of Bamburg. Got the soap taken care of pretty quickly, then continued on towards the train station where, where the pub was “just behind the train station”…as the crow flies, anyways. To actually get there on foot you have to go two blocks down, cross over the rail yard via bridge, go two blocks back in, then 2 - 3 blocks up to where you actually find the Café Abseits. Luckily, it was worth the walk as they had *52* different German brews on hand, and quite a large menu besides, which included Tex Mex offerings! Having overcome our sense of wariness regarding European Tex Mex from our trip in 2006 by downing two Weisse style brews relatively quickly, we decided to see what it was like here with a combo called “New Mexico” while we started in our the next brews in our list from their excellent menu. Besides, we found it a moral imperative to find out just what the hell “spicy-slicy kartoffelchips” were 😉~ Turns out they were home-made kettlechips, and they weren’t spicy (though they *were* good). The quesadilla roll-ups and they were really black-bean flautas. The chicken-wings were ok, as were the onion rings. The salad with mixed greens, beans, corn, cucumber, carrots, and red & green bell pepper with almost a thousand island dressing was a little out of place, but good. What was REALLY good was the selection of beer. We both had a Huppendorfer Weizen to start, then we’d each order something different down the menu. Next up were Andechser Dunkel, Gries Kellerbier, Erdinger Urweisse, & Georg Schneiders 1608 Reserve. All were outstanding. All shall be checked on further in the states with BevMo! By the time we finished off the 1608 & Urweisse, it was getting on to the time we should start heading back to the hotel. Off we hiked, and of course by the time we got there it was time for another brew! Continuing our plan, we ordered a Fassla Pilsner and a Fassla Lager (since we’re staying at the Fassla Brewhaus) and shared a table with a very nice older German couple who barely spoke any English, but we had a grand old time and ordered a wonderful dinner of jagerschnitzel (sort of an un-breaded pork steak with an excellent mushroom sauce) for Jesse and a delicious pork tenderloin sort of dish for Margaret, and of course we ordered the next beers on the list, the Zwergla and Weizia Hell. Our companions left, then we struck up a conversation with a father & son at the next table, who both spoke decent English and had been quietly laughing at some of our exchanges with the older couple. They’d only just come back to Germany a few weeks ago from a visit to Miami & Key West in Florida, and there other son is currently studying in San Francisco. Small world sometimes! We again had the Zwergla & Hell since Fassla doesn’t have that many types of beer, and finally a last round of pilsners were bought by the father for us. We headed off to bed with our first big Bamberg beer night behind us.

August 27th, 2008
After breakfast we walked around window shopping for awhile, and Margaret was quite happy when she bought a new pair of Birkenstocks. Then we headed into old town Bamberg, doing some serious window shopping along the way. We stopped at the Island Town Hall, which in it’s current form was constructed in 1461, though there had been a Town Hall there since 1386. The half-timbered south side addition was added in 1668, retains it’s original form to the this day, and is usually prominently featured in any photos of Bamberg. Since 1995 it’s housed the Ludwig porcelain collection, which is quite impressive. There are many unique (and I mean unique) items in the collection, with absolutely exquisite detail in the sculpting, color variation, and painting. From there we headed up (and up) the hill, passing the Old Residence (a half-timber complex constructed in 1573) to the Church of St. Stephan, which was built in the 13th century in the Gothic style, and then later topped with Baroque towers. Continuing up the road we then passed the New Residence, which was built just 32 years later in a much heavier and “impressive” stone construction. Our ultimate goal was St. Michael’s monastery, founded in 1015, which also houses the Bamberg Brewery Museum. The Museum has an extensive collection of old brewery apparatus, mugs, steins, bottles, etc., that extends down into several levels of the monastery’s basements. Hallowed ground indeed for followers of the brewer’s art! We then toured St. Michael’s itself. Gold leafed filigree and complex statuary covered the interior, making it seem a little gaudy for what you’d think of at a monastery, but the cathedral’s white ceiling with green painted vines and flowers was exceptionally beautiful in our eyes. Leaving the Monastery, we walked back down the hill towards the river, then followed the river while looking at what the locals call “Little Venice”, which was on the opposite shore. This picturesque row of steep-roofed houses, mainly of half-timber construction, is adorned with numerous gables, balconies, arbors, and tiny front gardens (one with a lawn!) that mostly end in little docks for small, narrow fishing boats or tiny dinghys. One or two of the houses in the row have some pretty interesting degrees of sag in one side of the building or other. I guess one should expect a little settling of the foundation after five or six centuries of sitting on a riverbank. We left Little Venice behind and returned to the hotel for a little blog updating and a siesta. Newly fortified, we headed out to another of the brewery’s on Margaret’s list where we had more good beer, and a good dinner of schnitzel, currywurst, fries, and potato salad. Another two different brews got added to the list before we left there, and headed to one more brewery just down the street where we added another two delicious brews to the list. We then headed back to the hotel via one of the lovely bike trails that wind along the river. It’s likely the one we’ll be taking out of the city as we wrap up our all-too-brief stay in Bamberg.

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[Sarah]

Man Down!
There goes Pete...