20 Years On - Part 14 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

Surprisingly, despite losing my hat and the rain, this holiday had gone quite well, but this was the day I lost my Inter-Rail ticket. Looking back it probably happened at the Residenz in Würzburg. The guidebook said I could enter the gardens at the rear of the building but two stroppy young grooms working physically barred me and shoved me back, saying I was going the wrong way.

Of course, not travelling by train that day, I did not know that the ticket was lost, but effectively that ended my holiday, though there was more rigmarole to go through before it was completely finished. Still being in Bavaria, I remember meeting two very frugal British women, annoyed that they had to hire bedding in the youth hostel and were leaving the town because of that. I thought it was a little extreme but advised them that if they found it such a problem they should get out of Bavaria for one of the other states with different rules .

My morning in Nürnberg shows the range of museum activity that you could engage in on a Sunday in West Germany.

Sunday 4th September 1988

Today I woke up promptly and walked into town as I had to do both Nürnberg and Würzburg in one day as everything in Würzburg is closed tomorrow. I looked around the German National museum, then went onto the town museum, Dürer's house and then the transport museum. Then I caught the train to Würzburg where I walked to the Residenz and went on a guided tour and walked around the gardens. The rooms were spectactularly decorated. Then I went to the youth hostel which I climbed up to and used the last of my film before buying dinner and coming back to sleep and watch some television.

Weather: Dull and mild.

Bridge in Nürnberg, September 1988

Statue in Nürnberg Market, September 1988

View from Residenz in Würzburg, September 1988

View of Church in Woods near Würzburg Youth Hostel, September 1988

View over Hills above Würzburg, September 1988

View across Würzburg, September 1988

20 Years On - Part 13 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

I certainly remember the train carriage filled with the solicitous elderly women. It was a good thing they were there as the sandwiches I had packed had gone mouldy and they gave me replacement food. Later walking through Nürnberg I had burnt up so much energy that I experienced what I now know was a hypoglaecemic attack, i.e. my body lacked sufficient blood sugar for the activity I was doing and I wolfed down the pallet of peaches one of the women had given me and the fruit sugar helped get me back to normality. I also remember being pestered by American religious people dressed in smart suits who seemed to haunt the railway station and you had to dodge away from.

As in Koblenz, the youth hostel in Nürnberg is in a castle with a great view down across the city. The medieval historic nature of the city is one reason Hitler used it for his rallies. In keeping with that I dined in a restaurant in a cellar. By the time I returned there in 2004 my knowledge of German had deteriorated so much I could no longer understand the menu, which had, however, changed little.

I remember on the tour of the castle, a local family: husband, wife and grown-up daughter taking around a British couple who in the UK would have been perceived as 'caravanners' wearing rather dated, dull, cheap synthetic clothing and almost 1950s hairstyles which contrasted sharply with the big hair of the two German women and very expensive designer leatherwear all their hosts had on. For some reason I remember the wife had a leather skirt suit with a nipped waist held with a bow at the back of the jacket, all very Eighties in style. The Britons almost seemed like their pets, being patronised and led around the place like children. I just wondered how these two groups of people had met because they seemed so different.

Saturday 3rd September 1988

Todau I actually overslept for the first time this holiday. I got up, had breakfast and talked to some Americans. I caught the train to Nürnberg at 09.20. The one [that left] an hour earlier would have got me there two hours earlier.

Just as an aside, here sitting in a train surrounded by three middle aged women - two Austrian and one German, all doing crosswords, those difficult arrowed ones without black spaces; German women seem addicted to crosswords. I also know now why there are so many cinemas in Wien - they are listed by district - because the television is so bad and boring.

I arrived at Nürnberg by 15.00 and walked quickly to the youth hostel which is just North of the centre, in another castle. After unpacking I went to the castle and had a guided tour, then I went out for a meal with Nick, an English cyclist, we had a tasty if basic meal - I had a hunk of meat, dumplings and salad. Then we came back to talk to two Finns before going to bed.

Weather: Dull, some rain.

Nürnberg Youth Hostel, September 1988

Nürnberg Castle, September 1988

Note the Bavarian Flag flying at half-mast

View across Nürnberg, September 1988

20 Years On - Part 8 of Account of Travelling by Train Around West Germany and Austria

When in my first year at university I had met a fourth year German language student (a British woman studying German as a subject; language degrees are four years rather than three as the students spend their third year in abroad) called Melissa and we had an ambivalent relationship. She used me at a party as a kind of shield against a very smarmy man called Tony and as a result I had my first real passionate kiss. However, as discussed before, I had no confidence in my abilities with women and did not know how to handle the situation. Melissa and her group of friends lived on the corridor in halls next to the one I lived on so they would often socialise with my friends as a group. I had not gone to university until I was almost 20, whereas most of my friends in my year were closer to 18, so in age I was not much younger than Melissa. She was a confusing character anyway, very flirtatious but then when you talked with her you realised she was very naive too and did not really realise what men expected from her given her flirtatious manner. Anyway, she had spent her year abroad in Freiburg-am-Breisgau in the South-West of West Germany and had mentioned she might be there in the Summer of 1988 and so I wandered around the town hoping that I would run into her and have some romantic encounter. It was wasted pining as when I met her at a party at her house in Herfordshire on the Saturday after I returned to the UK, it turned out she had never got to West Germany that year and instead had been in California. Anyway, she must be in her mid-40s now but I have not seen her for just under twenty years.

On the way to Freiburg-am-Breisgau in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) I also remember meeting a strange young German man on the train who was obsessed with cows. He had a book of photographs of different breeds and travelled the country to see them. He spoke about slaughterhouses as one might concentration camps and he constantly extolled how beautiful cows were. The photograph with the bicycle by the tree was my attempt to replicate a similar arty poster I had of Oxford, but the light levels were really too low with all the rain to allow it to be successful.

Fabrikstraße means 'factory street'. The term 'yuppie' was very much in fad at the time and stemmed from the phrase 'young upwardly-mobile professionals' who seemed to be at the forefront of Thatcherite society. In Britain, München is better known as Munich, Wien as Vienna and Nürnberg as Nuremberg. In the end I did not get to Augsburg until the following Summer. At that time I returned to Freiburg-am-Breisgau too and found out that the rain on this visit had spared me the key problem of the youth hostel there, which is that it sits right next to a broad, shallow, fast moving stream and throughout the night (if the windows are open) you are kept awake by its noisy bubbling.

Monday 29th August 1988

Today I work early and caught the bus to the station. Then I caught the train to Freiburg. I looked around the cathedral and the old town, then wandered around a park in the foothills of the Schwarzwald. I walked through the rain to the youth hostel, through real yuppie areas of new houses and fancy schools, ironically called Fabrikstraße. At the youth hostel they did have [clothes] washing facilities but the dryer was out of order. I did the washing which was smelling terribly and also read "Newsweek" and "Time" lent to me by an American. I ate in the youth hostel for DM6,- and with no lunch saved me some cash. Tomorrow I think I will got to München probably via Karlsruhe. If there is no room I will go to Augsburg, and onto Wien and then back to Nürnberg.

Weather: Heavy rain, sunny and warm later.

Market Hall in Freiburg-am-Breisgau, August 1988

Decorated Doors in Freiburg-am-Breisgau, August 1988

Cobbled Street in Freiburg-am-Breisgau, August 1988

Note channels along road side to allow stream to flow through the city

Bicycle Leaning on Tree in Freiburg-am-Breisgau, August 1988

View across Freiburg-am-Breisgau from the Schwarzwald, August 1988