September 11, 2010

Written September 28

Friends and Families ,

This diary started out as simply a record of a nice drive from my Offenbach "home" to our real home in Pommersfelden, Bavaria. Note some impressions. Post a few pictures. Something to do on a quiet day or two. Now, a couple of weeks later, I am still trying to find some quiet time for writing and posting. Explanation later.

Marianne had joined me for a couple of days while I worked in Offenbach, near Frankfurt. She does this from time to time and it makes my business travel MUCH more enjoyable. To get home this time, we chose Saturday morning over Friday afternoon because the freeway becomes a huge parking lot at the end of the work week.

Even on Saturday, the quick way home came be discouragingly slow, so we decided to make a pleasant day of it by taking side roads. There are in fact several side routes between Offenbach and home, but our current favorite is down the Tauber River valley to where it intersects with our own valley, the Aisch River valley. Neither of these "rivers" is much more than a country stream, but each has its own chain of villages and feel.

To reach the Tauber, we drove east on the infamous A3 Autobahn for just a few miles before turning south, initially along a part of the Main River. The Main is a real river, with long distance shipping as it forms part of the water link between the Atlantic and the Black Sea. This day the skies were blue and the landscape its late summer mix of green and plowed-field brown. The road followed along the Main.

Eventually we picked up the Tauber valley. I say "eventually" because we could not really tell when we left one river valley for another, except that at some point we noted that the waterway we were following could hardly carry a canoe, in contrast to the ocean barges we had been seeing before. Along the Tauber, everything was smaller. The hills were shorter, the farm fields tiny, and the communities were villages, not towns.

We pulled off the road at Burg Gamburg, because we were tired of sitting and it looked like an interesting little place. Honestly, it wasn't, at least as much as we managed to see. The 12th Century fortress, the "Burg", formed a looming presence over the village, but we ran out of steam half way up the hill so we never got to see it up close. We tried to visit a hillside church, but it was locked, somewhat unusual in our German travels. Oh well, not all picturesque Germany villages live up to expectations.

At least we had gotten in a walk before we got back on our twisty country road. There's not much to report for this section. The road was almost empty, the sun kept shining, the fields were green or brown, and the gentle hills seemed to isolate us from the bigger world. It was great.

Eventually, we reached the junction with the Aisch valley, a place we know well since this is almost our backyard. We stopped at a very typical brewery/restaurant for lunch. We had eaten here a few times before and it was generally OK. Today, however, was an off day. The fish was old, the server just a bit surly (or was it the server was a bit old and the fish was surly?) No matter, we ate and hit the road.

We only went about 50 meters. There was a "fascinating" model train exhibit. We knew it was fascinating because the sign on the building said so. Ever since our visit to a truly amazing model train exhibit in Hamburg, we have had an interest in this very German interest in "toy" trains. If this were to prove "fascinating", we would add it to our touring visitor routes, because it's just on the way between home and the can't-miss Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

We paid our five euro fee, plus 50 cents for taking pictures, and had a look. It was ... interesting, but probably not fascinating. It was essentially the work-in-progress of an ardent hobbyist. He had spent the last several years recreating buildings, bridges and tunnels from part of Switzerland and he said he felt he had another three years to go. His wife said at least four. I think we will wait for the completion before we add it to a standard itinerary.