Bayreuth, Germany
Spring is in full swing here in Germany as my allergies have confirmed. After knocking myself out with antihistamines yesterday, I was ready to get out again today. The weather continued to be excellent with temps in the 60s and mostly sunny skies.
I enjoyed an hour-long train ride from Nuremberg to the northern Bavarian city of Bayreuth (pronounced bi-royt). I have a buddy who played tennis for Nebraska, Chris Aumüller, who’s from here and I wanted to check it out.
I was impressed from the beginning. This guy on the bike waited in front of me with all the other rule-following Germans until the light turned green for the crosswalk. I wasn’t sure what an American Deposito was but I decided against tapping on his shoulder to find out…
Bayreuth was a handsome city full of substantial buildings. This had obviously been a place of wealth for centuries. It’s known internationally for hosting the annual Bayreuth Festival, where performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented.
Leading up to the Second World War, Bayreuth was a favorite destination of Adolf Hitler who attended Wagner performances in the Bayreuth Festival Hall. In early April 1945, roughly a third of the city was destroyed in bombing raids. Bayreuth was then occupied by the U.S. Army.
It wasn’t a long hike from the train station to the center of town. Today was Good Friday and fountains were decorated with greenery, bright yellow bows and ribbons of eggs for the Easter holiday.
Many of stores and shops were closed and people were taking advantage of the weather to amble through the Hofgarten. The warning sign for people to keep dogs on short leashes featured a rather smart-looking Hunde to me.
Again, I was impressed by the architecture throughout Bayreuth. The town center still possessed the typical structure of a Bavarian street market with the main road widening into a square.
Bayreuth’s show-stopper was the Margravial Opera House which opened in 1748. Unassuming from the outside, the building’s interior was a wooden Baroque wonderland. As I sat in the main hall and gaped up at the tiered balconies and ornate ceiling, my eyes didn’t know where to rest.
The box theatre was completely preserved in its original condition, except for the curtain which was taken by Napoleon’s troops on their march to the 1812 Russian campaign. Otherwise, this was one of Europe’s few surviving theaters of the period. How it survived wars and fires, I had no idea. Purely a miracle.
After all that high culture, I was ready for a beer and thankfully, this was another one of Bayreuth’s specialties.
I found an expansive beer museum that housed a restaurant and even let you sample flights like back in the States. This was such a great way to experiment with unfamiliar beer selections.
Hiking back to the Hauptbahnhof, I consulted the departures (always on yellow paper with arrivals on white). Europe uses the 24-hour clock so the 18:30 train back to Nuremberg would be ready to pick me up at 6:30 p.m. on platform 2.
Sure enough, trusty Deutsche Bahn was right on time and quickly had me rolling back to Nuremberg.
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