Trip Update (From Our Fearless Leader Rick

This update was written 5 days ago by our trip leader Rick. Much of the devents I have already covered on here, but I will include anyways:


Dear family and friends,

It’s Thursday afternoon, on the verge of a free weekend, so I thought I would send out an update on the German Studies trip so far. I usually write an update after each week, but since this review encompasses two weeks I will apologize at the start for the length of this letter.

We arrived in Frankfurt on Monday and drove to our house in Margetshochheim, a small village along the Main River consisting mainly of old people, some of whom were sporting their “here come the Americans again” expression on their faces as we pulled into town. We were actually ahead of schedule, which meant that our house was still occupied by the previous weekend’s inhabitants. So we walked our thirteen jet-lagged students to the village across the river, Veitshochheim, in search of something to eat for lunch. Fortunately, Germans love to have “fests,” or festivals, and the residents of Veitshochheim were having a Pentecost Monday fest in the town square. Thus, the students were able to experience that staple of the German diet— the bratwurst and brot with senf (mustard)—for their first meal in the country. After walking around a nearby palace and gardens, which are everywhere in Germany, we ate an early dinner and slept off our jet lag.

On Tuesday we visited our main base for the study of European culture, Wurzburg, a bustling little city of about 150,000 people that was established around 700 a.d. (things are kind of old over here). Students quickly learned the German Studies routine: morning class, travel to a nearby city, lunch on their own, some group tour time, followed by free time to explore new places on their own. Wurzburg was followed the next day by Bamberg, home of the imposing Bamberg Cathedral. Friday featured Rothenburg, a well-preserved medieval town that has become waylaid by roving bands of camera-toting Japanese tourists.

The highlight of the first week, however (at least for some) was Thursday’s exploration day. Each student has a bicycle, and so one day each week I turn them loose to explore the surrounding villages and countryside in pursuit of RGA (Random German Adventures). The results were, as always, unpredictable. Andrew, Ben Pollard, and Nancy rode up to the little village of Erlabrunn in a quest to climb to the Falkenburg Chapel perched high above the village. Eventually, after getting lost, playing charades with a German woman to get directions, and scrambling up some steep vineyards, they made it to the chapel.

Afterward, they ate lunch at a little Italian restaurant in a town called Zellingen, where no one spoke English except a waitress who boasted of having spent two weeks in Las Vegas. As it turned out, this was the same restaurant that Brandon, Sam, and Stephanie Owen had visited an hour earlier in the course of their travels—biking to Zellingen, across the river to Retzbach, climbing up to a chapel in the vineyards above Retzbach, and returning home by way of Thungersheim, a little wine village nearby.

Thungersheim was also the destination of a third group—Ben Lusby, Ben Dowe, Sherry, and William—who rode down a bike path featuring lovely gardens and ponds but also featuring that common German sign, “Verboten” (forbidden). Finally concluding that they were on private property, they wandered into Thungersheim but failed to find any place to eat. They eventually made it back home to Margetshochheim where they hungrily devoured a very late lunch at a Turkish doner kebab.

Meanwhile, Meghan, Stephanie King, and Bryce had the most interesting adventure by playing their own personal game of Escape from Germans. After biking a half-hour into Wurzburg, they decided that visiting the university would be the best place to speak with some Germans. So they asked a disheveled German guy for directions to the university. This helpful man not only personally escorted them to the university, but he would not leave them once they were there. Finally, when his attention was diverted, they hopped on their bikes and dashed off for home.

Unfortunately, while biking back through Wurzburg, Meghan fell off her bike and skinned her knees and forehead. A helpful bystander, in typically bossy German fashion, insisted that she go to the city hospital for treatment for her cuts. Since by now it was late in the day, Meghan and Stephanie concluded that Bryce should be the one to call me and inform me that they would be late for dinner, though he should try to do so without divulging that they were calling me from a hospital.

Of course, I gradually learned that, in ascending order of importance, a) they would be late for dinner, b) Meghan had a bike accident, c) she had cuts on her knees and forehead, and d) she was in the hospital. I hopped in the van to drive to Wurzburg to pick her up, but when I arrived there she and Stephanie were already walking out of the hospital. As it turned out, they waited for about two hours for some bandages and ointment for her cuts (which, thankfully, did turn out to be minor). After still not receiving any help and being told that they could not leave until they pay (pay for what, we’re not sure), they walked out the doors, loaded the bikes into my van, and we drove away. Escape From Wurzburg was a success.

Our first weekend featured more time in Wurzburg on Saturday, followed by a drive up the river to the neighboring village of Himmelstadt for its “Weinfest.” Our region of Germany is filled with little villages that are way off the tourism maps, each of which has an annual festival, and these are some of the best tastes of local culture available to our students. Upon our arrival, I was chagrined to discover that the event was “absesagt,” that is, postponed, due to bad weather. On the way home, desperate to provide an RGA to our students, Gary and I maneuvered our vans up some winding paths in the vineyards almost to the base of the Falkenburg Chapel that Ben, Andrew, and Nancy had spent hours trudging up the hillside to two days earlier. A short scramble through woods and thorn-bushes brought us to the chapel and a wonderful view of the surrounding river valley. Ben and Andrew, in protest over our unfair use of machine power, remained in the van with most of the other girls.

Sunday morning featured a visit to St. Johannes church for a Lutheran worship service. It was a beautiful old church that, like much of Wurzburg, was rebuilt after the war. Of course, this being Germany, our presence at the service practically doubled the number of worshippers in attendance and halved their median age. The service itself, however, was worshipful and beautiful, but also fairly inaccessible to the students because it was in German.

After church we took the students to a local German restaurant where the breakfast special for the day featured “Heffeweizen.” Intrigued, Sam asked me what that word meant. I was tempted to let him order it and find out, but I relented and translated it for him, thus preventing him from ordering a half-liter of German wheat beer for breakfast.

Monday was Reformation Day: After viewing the film Luther the night before, we traveled to Eisenach for a tour of Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther translated the Bible into German while hiding out from Emperor Charles V. We had a great tour of the castle and time to wander through the accompanying museum. Not wanting to overdo it on the history and culture, we followed that with a visit to one of my favorite cultural sites in Germany—a thrift store featuring German army surplus clothes, used bike jerseys, and lots more. We topped that off with a visit to McDonalds for good predictable American snacks.

On Monday evening, Sam, Bryce, Gary, Lonnie and me decided to give Himmelstadt another try, with much better results. The little town square was full of Germans eating, drinking, laughing, singing, and dancing to live German folk music. What’s more, our arrival coincided with the official crowning of the Himmelstadt Wine Princess, which was followed by a goofy dance that seemed like the German equivalent of the Hokey Pokey. Our evening culminated when Bryce boldly sauntered over to the Wine Princess and asked to have his picture taken with her, which she of course agreed to. Thus ended what was probably the first-ever visit by Americans to the Himmelstadt Weinfest.

On Tuesday we had class and visited a local chapel for the afternoon, then after dinner we had one of my best RGA’s yet. Our landlord, Michael Zimmermann, owns some cherry trees in the surrounding hills that his grandfather planted eighty years ago. These huge old trees are now sagging with cherries, and so after dinner we loaded up the vans and drove up into the hills to pick cherries. Most of us soon tired of picking cherries and resorted to playing Frisbee in the orchard. Ben Dowe, however, climbed up to the top branches to continue filling his basket while we threw apples at him.

After the cherry-picking, I took a group of students in our van up some old tractor-paths that I had discovered on my bike that lead up to some huge modern windmills at the top of some one thousand-foot high hills that surround the valley. We timed our visit to coincide with one of the biggest thunderstorms I have ever experienced in Germany, and thus got some stunning pictures of rainbows, surreal cloud formations, and lightning flashes over the surrounding landscape.

On the way down we ended up on a tractor-path that dead-ended into wet grass. I maintained a fake smile and a careless laugh as I gingerly backed the van up and felt the wheels spinning wildly on the wet grass as the rain increased in intensity. I could just picture eight American college students attempting to push a van up a remote hillside in Franconia, Germany.

Wednesday featured a visit to Nurnberg, my favorite city in Germany, which boasts a wealth of cultural and historical treasures but which unfortunately the Nazis appropriated for their purposes in the 1930s. The day included cathedrals, castles, museums, the requisite shopping time, and a visit for some of us to the Nurnberg Starbucks. We topped off the day with dinner at the usual place: an Italian pizzeria with generous portions where all of the leftovers made their way down the table to the plates of Sam, William, and Ben Lusby.

Today is Corpus Christi holiday in Bavaria, so we visited a big ceremony in Wurzburg Cathedral then had class and lunch at the house. Now the students are studying for tomorrow’s class and preparing for their free weekends that begin tomorrow afternoon. Gary, Andrew, and Ben Pollard will travel to Prague; Ben Dowe is accompanying Sherry and Nancy to Basel, and the rest of the students are taking a train to Munich—a fun, clean, safe city just a few hours away. Lonnie and I will take a belated anniversary trip to Strasbourg, France, since we both forgot our actual anniversary two Saturdays ago.

As far as the group goes, everyone seems to be getting along well. Bryce has been placed on a quota of one pun per day so as not to drive us crazy. Having three Bens in the group was a challenge initially, but was easily solved by distinguishing between Ben the Quiet, Ben the Tall, and Ben the Cynical (readers who know our Bens will easily assign the labels correctly).

The five girls have laid claim to the house’s top floor, which is now known as the Treehouse, from which they occasionally welcome visits from others. Lonnie’s cooking has been great, and she has somehow managed to supply Stephanie King with her beloved chicken every few days.

We look forward to a good free weekend and more adventures in the weeks to come.

Auf wiedersehen,

Rick