The most interesting part of my day was probably my train ride, so I should probably describe that first. When I sat down on the train to Mainz, someone asked if the train was going there, and I answered that I thought that it was. An elderly couple sitting across from me disagreed, which confused me. "Train go to Mainz," I repeated. "I would like to go to Mainz. I'm a tourist." The couple asked me where I was from and was impressed by the number of destinations that I listed on my itinerary; things were going pretty well until they asked for how long I would be staying in Germany, at which point I grew stumped. While I have learned to count to five, I still cannot go any higher than that, and, while I can understand the word "day," I cannot produce it myself. I tried to gesture with my fingers until they asked if I spoke English, at which point we switched languages and our colloquy grew a little more sophisticated.
What we ended up talking about as we rode the train was, naturally, travel. When I pulled out my rail map of Germany to clarify some question or other about geography, the wife of the husband and wife combination sidled up to me and sat down in the seat next to mine. For the next twenty or so minutes, we discussed different places in Europe that I would like to visit and that she had already seen. The woman was very enthusiastic about Europe and had some interesting things to say about places that I had never heard of; the only problem was that her vocabulary was limited. "You must see Heidelberg; Heidelberg is very nice," she told me. "Burgundy is very nice," she said when I mentioned southern France. "I love to travel in Switzerland. Switzerland is very nice." And so on.
I was not sure what to expect when I got off of the train in Mainz, as I had already seen it through the window as the train that I was on pulled in to it yesterday, and I grew worried, after seeing and visiting some small villages, that Mainz would not be any better in person, so to speak, than it was through the window. Happily, it turned out to be a very pleasant city with a lot to see and a reasonable layout. It was easy to get around it on foot and, although it was the first city that I had visited without the help of a tourist map (as there was no tourist information kiosk in sight), I managed to see everything that I had seen listed on a large map of the city in the historic city center. Its highlights, in my mind, were a church with exclusively blue stained glass windows, to which I donated a Euro, much more than I had donated to any other church so far (I usually ditch my small coins - 20 cents and less); I was deeply impressed by the effect of the blue light pouring onto the floor and pews of the church. Mainz also contained the foundation of a ruined fort or castle, and it had a spectacular cathedral, like every other city on or near the Rhine.
Wiesbaden was a disappointment compared to Mainz. While it is probably a perfectly charming city on a good day, it struck me as ugly (despite being very full of trees), noisy, and hard to walk around. It had much broader roads and far more cars than Mainz*, and its train station was a good distance from any of its cultural highlights. The only real good that I took away from being there, besides getting a look at the cathedral and a very nice library connected with Schiller's name, was a few scoops of fairly good gelato that I bought in the city center for 3 Euros. I had decided, earlier in the day, to try to avoid visiting a bakery today (which is harder than it might sound. Bakeries offer cheap, tasty, filling food, and since they often sell milk products in Germany, they create the illusion of affording one something of a full midday meal.), and I happened upon a grocery store as I was walking towards Mainz' city center. The result of my find was that I had a pint of plain yogurt, a few slices of plain bread (which was very cheap - 1.39 Euros for a whole loaf), and a pint or so of fizzy, delicious apple juice for lunch. My attempt to be healthy backfired: the lunch that I was able to purchase without buying prepared food was so repulsive that I had to buy something tastier in the afternoon to make up for it. I plan to get a prepared sandwich tomorrow, even if is more expensive than buying plain bread (which I would have supplemented with cheese and meat if I had a fridge here), and a milk product that is a little tastier than plain yogurt, which I got, like the bread, for its price.
I was not sure what to expect when I got off of the train in Mainz, as I had already seen it through the window as the train that I was on pulled in to it yesterday, and I grew worried, after seeing and visiting some small villages, that Mainz would not be any better in person, so to speak, than it was through the window. Happily, it turned out to be a very pleasant city with a lot to see and a reasonable layout. It was easy to get around it on foot and, although it was the first city that I had visited without the help of a tourist map (as there was no tourist information kiosk in sight), I managed to see everything that I had seen listed on a large map of the city in the historic city center. Its highlights, in my mind, were a church with exclusively blue stained glass windows, to which I donated a Euro, much more than I had donated to any other church so far (I usually ditch my small coins - 20 cents and less); I was deeply impressed by the effect of the blue light pouring onto the floor and pews of the church. Mainz also contained the foundation of a ruined fort or castle, and it had a spectacular cathedral, like every other city on or near the Rhine.
Wiesbaden was a disappointment compared to Mainz. While it is probably a perfectly charming city on a good day, it struck me as ugly (despite being very full of trees), noisy, and hard to walk around. It had much broader roads and far more cars than Mainz*, and its train station was a good distance from any of its cultural highlights. The only real good that I took away from being there, besides getting a look at the cathedral and a very nice library connected with Schiller's name, was a few scoops of fairly good gelato that I bought in the city center for 3 Euros. I had decided, earlier in the day, to try to avoid visiting a bakery today (which is harder than it might sound. Bakeries offer cheap, tasty, filling food, and since they often sell milk products in Germany, they create the illusion of affording one something of a full midday meal.), and I happened upon a grocery store as I was walking towards Mainz' city center. The result of my find was that I had a pint of plain yogurt, a few slices of plain bread (which was very cheap - 1.39 Euros for a whole loaf), and a pint or so of fizzy, delicious apple juice for lunch. My attempt to be healthy backfired: the lunch that I was able to purchase without buying prepared food was so repulsive that I had to buy something tastier in the afternoon to make up for it. I plan to get a prepared sandwich tomorrow, even if is more expensive than buying plain bread (which I would have supplemented with cheese and meat if I had a fridge here), and a milk product that is a little tastier than plain yogurt, which I got, like the bread, for its price.
*I was surprised by Wiesbaden's being bigger, apparently, than Mainz because Mainz seems like more of a travel hub and is located right along the Rhine. I guess that slightly less accessible cities can sometimes grow bigger, for some reason or other, than cities that are right in the middle of things.
There was another reason for my feeling that I needed ice cream, though: I felt vitiated by the heat and desperately wanted an excuse to sit down. I kept my tour of Wiesbaden relatively short and came back to Frankfurt before the afternoon's end; I had little energy, was walking far more slowly than usual, and felt as though my will had deserted me. I expect that I had mild sun stroke, as, while Germany has been uncomfortably hot for the past few days, today it was unbearably hot. The sun beats down on one here (as I noticed last year in Vienna) with a vengeance, and, while one's skin can quickly grow acclimated to large amounts of sun, I do not know if the rest of one's body can adapt quickly enough for excessive amounts of sun to stop enervating one on mercilessly hot days. I am going to keep close track of my energy levels tomorrow and make sure not to tire myself out unduly; if I start to feel exhausted, I will come back here and finally try watching a movie as a way of winding down. I feel pretty much fine now that I have eaten dinner and sat around for a few hours, and I expect that I should be fine tomorrow, but I want to make sure not to get too worn out, as I have to stay the course for some time longer now.
My conversation with the old lady who was enthusiastic about travel did have one important effect: she convinced me to modify my plans for the next few days. When I mentioned that I planned to visit Heilbronn from Heidelberg, she made a face and declared that it was "not so nice," saying the same of Saarbrucken and Karlsruhe when I mentioned them as possible substitutes. As a result, I have decided to try to visit Strasbourg from Heidelberg in two or three days (after my first night there). If I see Wurzburg tomorrow, Speyer and Heidelberg the day after tomorrow (on Monday, I think), and Strasbourg the day after that, then I can still pass through Heilbronn on the way to Stuttgart if doing so will not add too much to the cost of my train ticket, as that would make for a more interesting train ride (along the Neckar) than going more directly to Stuttgart, and Heilbronn is still probably worth seeing, if only for an hour or two. My interlocutor said that Stuttgart was not a very historical town, as most of the city center was destroyed by bombs in World War II. If I get there in the middle of the afternoon, I should be able to see a satisfactory amount of it by dinnertime, departing on the following day for Nuremberg.
That more or less sums things up for now. I tend to see a lot of interesting things from day to day and then forget to relate them in these emails; the most interesting anecdote that jumps to mind is that one of Mainz' three train stations is located just a few yards from the remains of a Roman theater. I am off to shower and relax before bed. Etc.
I remembered that I had one more comment to make about churches and old buildings - rather, about churches and cathedrals specifically. Some of the cathedrals that I have seen may have taken decades to build; they must have been monumental architectural projects. One immediately wonders why city rulers considered it necessary to make religious monuments of such grandeur. It is understandable that governmental buildings be extravagant, as their appearance must be meant to impress upon citizens that they are of huge importance and that what goes on in them is much more momentous than what happens in day-to-day life. Why make religious structures so impressive, though? Is it to inculcate in laymen that they are insignificant and unworthy of God's grace, and that they should therefore give all of their money to the church and do everything that the priest says, or is the idea to show off to rulers of other demesnes that one's own church is the best? Perhaps the splendor of the church served a duel purpose of lowering peasants' self-esteem and increasing their owner's prestige, much like a BMW does today. It is curious to me that buildings of religious significance should often be the most architecturally virtuosic in an entire city.
Goodbye for now!
That more or less sums things up for now. I tend to see a lot of interesting things from day to day and then forget to relate them in these emails; the most interesting anecdote that jumps to mind is that one of Mainz' three train stations is located just a few yards from the remains of a Roman theater. I am off to shower and relax before bed. Etc.
I remembered that I had one more comment to make about churches and old buildings - rather, about churches and cathedrals specifically. Some of the cathedrals that I have seen may have taken decades to build; they must have been monumental architectural projects. One immediately wonders why city rulers considered it necessary to make religious monuments of such grandeur. It is understandable that governmental buildings be extravagant, as their appearance must be meant to impress upon citizens that they are of huge importance and that what goes on in them is much more momentous than what happens in day-to-day life. Why make religious structures so impressive, though? Is it to inculcate in laymen that they are insignificant and unworthy of God's grace, and that they should therefore give all of their money to the church and do everything that the priest says, or is the idea to show off to rulers of other demesnes that one's own church is the best? Perhaps the splendor of the church served a duel purpose of lowering peasants' self-esteem and increasing their owner's prestige, much like a BMW does today. It is curious to me that buildings of religious significance should often be the most architecturally virtuosic in an entire city.
Goodbye for now!
Mainz appears to support a rental bike system.
The people of Wiesbaden collectively work hard.
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