Off to Bayreuth with a 5 hour scheduled stop in Eisenach. ICE train from Berlin to Leipzig changing to an IC train to Eisenach. The train was 10 minutes late arriving in Leipzig and we had a 7 minute connection, but they held the IC train long enough for everyone to make the change on the adjacent platform. We shared a compartment with a young man on his way to Paris for a job interview. With a PhD, he explained “Jobs are hard to come by for the ‘over qualified’. Everyone is looking for soldiers who know how to salute, not generals.” We sympathized with his predicament. He was curious when he saw my “book” with all the train tickets, bus schedules, hotel reservations how I dug up all the info. “Internet. Its all there if you know where to look.”
Got off in Eisenach and stashed the bags in a station locker. One 5 euro locker holds 1 large suitcase and 1 small suitcase and 2 backpacks. With one hour till the next bus, we wondered to the central market square, which is quite lovely and looked in at the birthplace of J S Bach. Then we picked up the city bus to the Wartburg Castle, just 1.50 pp from the driver.
The Wartburg Castle is perched on a mountain top and it is still a healthy hike up from the bus stop. We took the English tour with an excellent guide who explained the history of the castle which goes back to around 1050. It’s most historic feature is as a hideout for Martin Luther for 1 year while he was wanted “dead-or-alive” by the church. In that time he translated the bible into German. Since there was no unified German language at the time, just 14 regional dialects, he labored to make it readable in all of these dialects, thus “standardizing” the German language into what it is now.
At the end they took us into the music hall on the top level. It is the scene of the singing contest in Wagner’s opera “Tannhaeuser”, so naturally they put “Entry of the Guests” on the PA. The room is stilled used for concerts today. Then it was back to the train station for the continuation.
Now in backwoods Germany, it is not always possible to get to another backwoods destination without several train changes. Here we would have 3, at Neudietendorf, Saalfeld, and Marktzueln. Our train was late leaving Eisenach because it was waiting for passengers from a late arriving ICE train. We arrived at Neudietendorf, outside of Erfurt, and quickly scurried under the tracks to pick up our connection on the other side, which appeared immediately and we hustled on board. I followed our progress on a map, but after a half hour, it seemed like we were deviating from the route. Finally we arrived in a town called Ilmenau, and the train announced in German, “That is the end of this train. Everybody off.” I corralled the conductor, who had been sitting in the cab jawing with the driver, and showed him our ticket with “Ich habe eine probleme.” He looked and mumbled “falschen Zug” (you got on the wrong train), pulled out his handy and wrote down our connections on a slip of paper. Get back on the train, get off at Arnstatd and wait 20 minutes for the next train to Saalfeld and we would eventually make it to our destination. Apparently we missed our intended connection at Neudietendorf and this train was coincidentally running 5 minutes behind the other one.
So two and half hours later and after viewing some lovely scenery in the Thueringer Wald (coming and going) we arrived in Bayreuth.