violist

UA1083 IAD SFO 1030 1328 739 2A

I really don't like the F seats made to the Continental
specification: it's hard to get quality sleep or even rest,
and as I've said here before the merger, I preferred the
physical product of United economy plus to Continental
first. This plane of course was an ex-Con, and I was
resigned to a sore butt and was not disappointed.

The cabin crew were pretty good but quirky; the front cabin
was served by a brunette woman with an intense, intense
stare, which was a little disconcerting. She provided
generally prompt and attentive service, though.

Food choices were roast chicken, "salmon and quinoa salad,"
and "vegetarian paneer." We all know about airplane chicken,
and we all know about airplane fish, and who knows what evil
lurks in the guise of paneer. I was tempted to say nothing,
please, but the prospect of some hungry hours in SFO didn't
appeal much either, so I said, I'll take anything. The
intense FA seemed personally affronted by this answer, so I
tried again: okay, the fish, please.

But first a Courvoisier, decent, and warm nuts, mixed - I
got the bottom of the barrel, so the base of my dish was
covered in salt; the cashews, being delicate, were assorted
shards that were made soggy by the warming, but the almonds,
being more robust, were crispy and whole,

Then a green salad, Kraft Creamy French on the side, a big
ounce packet. The salad needed all the help it could get,
and a big ounce wasn't enough to mask its faults. Some of
the lettuce (at best rather old) was stuck to the side of
the bowl, having turned to slime and then dehydrated in
storage. Red and yellow pepper strips that I thought had
been pickled but that turned out to be merely old. Yum.
Yes, Kraft Creamy French at 140 Calories the serving was
the best part of this course. Oh, yes, there was some
roast barley hidden underneath. Because I have new glasses,
this was the first time I had ever seen roast barley in its
true glory. It looks like bugs and tastes not much better.
Oh, yes, the salad had cheese on it, best described as like
Seymour Britchky's experience of Mamma Leone's cheese.

[Note a week or two later: US Air offers this same barley
in a spinach salad with beef or shrimp on the side. I wonder
whose idea this was.]

I had supposed that perhaps the caterer had run out of
quinoa and substituted barley and perhaps had run out of
fish and substituted nothing, or else a plate of naked fish
might arrive later, but at this stage we saw a small piece,
maybe the canonic 100 g serving, of pink stuff sided with
what looked like boiled hairy veg and baby snakes coming out
of their eggs. The pink stuff tasted like cotton batting
soaked in fish oil. The veg were, in fact, hairy with mold -
green and yellow squash and carrots. The other stuff was the
quinoa and in fact the best thing on the plate, though I
didn't try to eat much of it.

Chocolate chip cookies came late in the flight. Decent.

We landed way, way early, but there was the usual dance of
musical gate personnel and guess the gate. We ended up in
the 60s gates, and it was quite a hoof to the 100s gates.

UA 903 SFO FRA 1515 1050 744 15J
was 1445 1015
was 1400 0930
was926 SFO FRA 1900 1455 744 6B

lili was scheduled at FRA at 1155, and 903 was delayed 45,
so I decided to go for the earlier flight and meet her
there. The friendly guy at the desk gave me a boarding pass
in Y and told me to come back in five. Apparently they still
adhere to the old way, and when you want to move to the
earlier flight, they first confirm you in Y and then put you
on the list for an upgrade, even if you were confirmed in
biz on the flight you were abandoning.

I got called up eventually and was handed 15J as in jackpot.
A year ago I went through hoops to book a flight to Asia
with upstairs availability, reporting afterward here on my
last 747 flight. The mills of United grind slowly, and since
then I've been on maybe a half dozen of them. Still,
upstairs here is a treat, unlike on the 380, which feels
more like two regular planes one atop the other.

violist

For those who might be interested in what BusinessFirst is
offering for food these days, here's the menu; I can't
report, as I was asleep for most of the meal. I did have
breakfast, which was the usual.

TO BEGIN

Chilled appetizer
Prosciutto and melon with garnishes

Fresh seasonal greens
Tomatoes, Kalamata olives, Parmesan cheese and croutons
with your choice of ranch dressing or Italian vinaigrette

MAIN COURSE

Tenderloin of beef
Asiago broth, brown-butter gnocchi and green asparagus

Cajun-style breast of chicken
Cajun cream sauce, white beans with chicken sausage,
collard greens and grilled onions

Newburg-style seafood
Filet of turbot and shrimp with a creamy lobster sauce,
green lentils and mixed vegetables

Vegetable-filled mezzaluna pasta
Pomodoro sauce, zucchini and Parmesan cheese

TO FINISH

International cheese selection
Grapes and crackers served with Port

Dessert
Ice cream with your choice of toppings

MID-FLIGHT SNACK

Assorted sandwiches
Sun-dried tomato basil tortilla wrap with
turkey and cheddar

Hummus and pepper Jack cheese

PRIOR TO ARRIVAL

Herbed scrambled eggs
Potato gratin and turkey sausage

Cereal and banana
Served with milk.

violist

Since I was last stuck in Frankfurt the lounge situation has
changed, with numerous relocations and renovations and stuff
like that. I ended up at the upstairs business lounge in
lower A, as that was where our departure gate was going to
be, and tried to track lili down.

Eventually I got a note that AA 120 was delayed, but lili
had scheduled herself to arrive in FRA at 1520, okay for
our 1720 connection; but delay followed delay, and the domino
effect happened, and she didn't appear on the 1520 (which was
itself 15 min late) - some frantic e-mailing revealed that
that she had missed the flight owing to a mishap at CDG and
would be arriving on the 2200 flight. I asked the agent at
the counter if I could reschedule, and he sensibly said that
it was only a 20-minute flight, and the change fees would be
high, so why bother.

Back to the lounge, where I sampled the house red wine, a
most undistinguished Dornfelder. I decided to go with Beck's,
which vom Fass in Germany has much more punch than the
bottled stuff has in the US. Soup of the day was some kind
of chicken noodle: not bad.

And so to the gate by myself.

But not for long - a huge crush there, which sorted itself
mostly out when they called for business class, HON, Senator,
and Star Gold. Only one person was rejected at boarding and
required to stand to the side.

LH 148 FRA NUE 1720 1800 733 7A

It was about a 25-minute trip, and so it was earlyish when
we landed, and I made it to the hotel in full daylight, which
given my eyes is a good thing. Piece of cake taking the
subway to the main station and hoofing down Bahnhofstrasse.
Though only 300 m from the station, part of the route is cut
off by construction, so I had to cross the street
coincidentally next to a Chinese restaurant called Fulihua,
out of which some pretty good smells were coming. I resolved
to give it a looksee when I got my room squared away.

The Hampton Nuremberg is new and clean and fairly snazzy.
Though I like the Hilton south of town a lot, I will probably
stay here again.

A pleasant fresh-faced girl checked me in. I asked if the
Chinese place was any good, and she got this serious look
and said "All restaurants in Nuremberg are good."

When I came back down after putting up my bags, she had been
replaced by a Chinese kid to whom I posed the same question.
He said things were good, some not so good. Then he leaned
over and sort of whispered, "Don't order the fish."

Figuring I was going to have enough Franconian food over the
next few days, I did go there and ordered the eight treasure
duck (ba bao ya), which sounded promising, in my German-as-
a-third-language, from the cute young new immigrant waitress
for whom German was no doubt a third language, only hers was
tons better than mine.

The food took a while to come out: a battered, deep-fried
boneless half bird minus the thigh meat (I figure this was
the kitchen's tribute (I've encountered this many times in
many restaurants, even the most eminent) in the style that
in Cantonese-American eateries is called "hon sue," in
a brown cornstarch gravy with soy and hoisin in it. Also
cashews, red peppers, broccoli, bamboo shoots, pork, beef,
and chicken. I can't figure what the eighth bao was, maybe
the duck itself, or perhaps it referred to the pitcher of
extra sauce on the side. Steamed rice was fresh and of
good texture.

Ambience: not much, though there were a number of dating
couples there; weird muzak including messed-up versions of
Beethoven and Tchaikovsky with a rhythm section, something
that sounded like Azerbaijani mugam, and odd renditions of
pop tunes that I sort of recognized from my youth.

A Tucher Pils was exceedingly fruity and went well with
the duck.

By the time I left, the place was hopping, and a sizable
part of the clientele were Chinese.

After a couple beers at the lobby bar it was time to hit
the sack. The sack did not resist.

gaobest

Very cool! I used to go to NUE every February (1994 to 2008) for a trade show, so I love reading anything on Nuernberg. I'm excited to read your continued posts - hope your friend finally arrived. I definitely miss NUE and just don't have the time to go now.

violist

Lilli finally showed up with tales of woe caused by American
Airlines and the Aeroports de Paris; she bore a few scars
and bandages from the experience.

An untaxing morning wander (I missed breakfast), and she
and I made the lengthy trek to the Meridien Nuremberg, where
at noontime our junior suite was not ready: the friendly
desk staff gave us (her, actually; she's platinum and I am
nothing) a coupon for a free drink. This was interpreted by
the friendly bar staff as a drink apiece. We got a Domina
(local red grape variety that dominates in these parts)
and a Beck's and then went on a haphazard walking tour
pointed vaguely at Die Hutt'n, said to have some of the
better Nuremberg Bratwursts in town. It's way up the hill
by the Durerhaus, and by the time we got there we were both
hungry and thirsty. She of course had the bratwurst, making
a special request for French fries instead of whatever
normally comes, potato salad and kraut I think. Used to
tourists, the waitress did not seem surprised at all.

I got the Krustenbraten plate, a good-size but not over the
top serving of crunchy-skinned pork belly with a very salty
smitane sauce that I'd never seen in Germany. On the side
the usual gluey potato dumplings and a vinegar-dressed
cabbage and dill salad. All were pretty good. Our drinks
were a glass of Domina and a Lederer, this being one of
the local brews. The Domina here was not so suave as at the
Meridien.

More random walk, up to the Durerhaus, back downtown, over
to the somewhat interesting, somewhat festive, and somewhat
overpriced Sommer in der City festival, where we got to
walk on sea sand trucked in from God knows where, watch
beach volleyball, and in general experience things that
one normally does not find in Franconia. We also had the
opportunity to do things that one normally does here, such
as drink beer. On the way we'd stopped at Hans-Sachs Platz,
which commemorates that eminent shoemaker and musician,
and St. Margaret's church, where the Meistersingers used
to meet and which stood for something like 500 years until
it was reduced to a shell by Allied bombing in 1945; it is
kept in that condition as a reminder of the horrors of war
and a rebuke to Anglophone tourists but is sometimes used
as a concert venue.

Back to the hotel, where it turns out we got not the corner
suite that we had coveted but an almost equal-sized one
overlooking a quiet side street; its most notable feature
was an enormous bathroom that could sleep four easily.

In the room along with our luggage we found another bar
coupon, which we happily used downstairs and used on a
Domina and a Lederer this time. We chatted happily with the
staff, and the coupon was well offered, as it primed the
pump for a pleasant evening of drinking. No food but some
peanuts, as we had eaten enough at Die Hutt'n to last all
day and then some.

Early to bed (very firm but comfy) because we wanted to go
to Bayreuth next day.

violist

The breakfast that lili chose for her elite gift was
abundant but ordinary. I sampled all the animal protein
offerings, which were unexceptional and unexceptionable.
No chocolate croissants, so I had maybe six glasses of
juice of various sorts. The grapefruit is pretty good;
the orange doesn't taste like anything I know but is
very sweet; and the strawberry was the unsweetened fruit
puree, very healthy-tasting. Mango had run out by the time
I was ready for it.

We checked out, promising to return in a couple days.

The R3 train runs pretty frequently, and an hour and change
after embarking, we were in Bayreuth.

I'd booked the CPH Bayerischer Hof, because there was no way
to get lost - it's next door to the train station. Our room
wasn't ready (it was still quite early), so we stored our
traps in the closet behind the desk there and started on our
tour of the city, beginning with the famed Festspielhaus. It
was closed, partially shrouded in construction wrap, until
festival time in July. The grounds are very nice, though,
and there was a cooling breeze, and lots of historical
displays, mostly about the Jewish question, and we took our
time. A very thoughtful treatment, pretty detailed, in
German (for what German I can read, slowly and imperfectly),
with a somewhat thoughtful and not very detailed precis in
English. Commemorative monuments for those artists who fled
or were imprisoned or died during the Reich. Powerful stuff.

When we went back downhill, our room was ready, so we put
up our traps and went downtown, to find that the Richard
Wagner Museum and the Margrave's opera house were also
closed for renovations. The Hermitage is way off down the
way, and I didn't know which bus to take, so we merely
wandered around town, ending at the Hofgarten, which is
worth a visit. It being almost dinnertime, we went back
into the pedestrian district and resolved to park at the
first likely-looking place for drinks.

This turned out to be the Cafe Louis, which serves a mixed
menu of local specialties and Italianate dishes. We were
only going to stop for a glass or two, but the waitress
cunningly put menus in front of us, and lili discovered that
she had a sudden yen for pepperoni pizza. I said, they don't
have pepperoni pizza. Here it is - she pointed to an entry
that said pizza con mozzarella e peperoni. I broke it to her
gently enough, I think: peperoni of course aren't pepperoni,
they're peppers. Further perusal of the carte allowed us to
discover that salami pizza was on offer, so that's what she
got. Being caught up in the mood, I ordered lasagne. The
pizza was quite good, the salami tasting just like American
pepperoni but with no hot pepper. The lasagne were hugely
abundant and very good-tasting, the only issue being that
there weren't enough layers, and each component was blobbed
all together - white sauce, then three noodles in one layer,
then red sauce (with meat), then mozzarella, then grana,
instead of an artful arrangement such as I would do myself.
But then I do it as a labor of love, and the poor apprentice
in the back room here does it as a labor of labor.

Our drinks: a couple iterations of Aktien Landbier, which I
liked, and some Argentine no-name Malbec, which lili thought
merely okay.

It was still light when we walked back to the hotel, as
some of our destinations had been unavailable. The hotel
is a kind of eccentricly-designed place. Each floor has a
sort of planned identity - the one above ours sort of urban
grunge; ours antique '50s America. There's a sunning roof,
unfinished and so far uninviting, and a little ground-floor
garden. The place is a warren of nonrectilinear passages,
not what I'd expect from the name or the location, Kind of
fun all in all. The renovations are not complete, and there
is a pervasive smell of paint and new construction, and one
might turn a corner and discover an unfinished passage with
painters' tarpaulins or construction detritus. This goes
only so far, so it was early to bed and early to rise.

violist

You would have enjoyed the Do itself.

I don't know when the next Franconian Do will be, but f0zzyNUE, who hails
from there, will probably be organizing another in a year or two. I went to
his first one and have been back to Franconia periodically, both within the
context of his Dos and on my own.

violist

Breakfast was not included in our rate, so we took an early
train back to Nuremburg so as to catch the Bierfest in the
moat, one of my favorite things to do. We'd forgotten that
it was a holiday, and the train was chockablock, but we got
there eventually, storing our bags in a locker in the train
station and moseying to the festival, which seemed smaller
than it had been when we've visited before. Maybe that was
because it was a weekday, holiday or not.

Much to our disappointment, the Sau im Weckla guy wasn't
there any more. lili made up a happy story about him sitting
retired in his chalet someplace and putting up his feet and
saying, ah, I don't have to work the Bierfest any more. It's
just as well, as dinner was to follow. Oh, lili got a
Thuringer Bratwurst, as she hadn't had much to eat - it was
enormous, and I got a taste. Good. Grillteufel - remember
the name for next time. Also remember that the Pyraser stand
has more kinds of beer (10 or so) than most of them, and it
is 50c cheaper a mug. As I like Pyraser products, and as the
smaller breweries seem these days to be enamored of the
fruity (but to me cloying in an almost Belgian style) wild
yeasts, I was perfectly happy with this situation, as the
Pyraser red beer is dear to my heart.

Back to the Meridien for drinks, where the bartenders
welcomed us back and asked about our previous day's
adventure, and we had the usual.

At cocktail hour our host f0zzyNUE joined us, soon followed
by a couple dozen of our nearest and dearest, upon which was
lots of talk about miles and points with friends new and old
(mostly the latter), and then it was off for a traditional
Franconian dinner at Barfuesser, a venue we have come to
know well. We ended up with two longish tables next to each
other; I arrogated the responsibility for ordering for our
table. one Krustenbraten, a couple of Haxen, a couple of
Schaufele, and a plate of sausages. All were good, and there
was plenty to eat but not an enormous overplus. I think we
saved a bit over getting a set meal scaled for 8 (we were
10, I think), so there was more dough for beer. Yeah!

lili and I said our mananas, as we had a long trek to the
Hilton. But we'd missed our bus! and the next one wasn't
due for quite a while, as this was a holiday, and it was
pretty late. So I said, we'll just take the S-Bahn, but the
monitor at the track said the train was 5 minutes late. And
then 10. And then 20. It was close to time for the bus to
go, so we slogged back there ... only to find that the bus
was broken down. So grumblingly back to the train tracks
for our now 40-minute past time chariot. I think that they
just took the delayed one out of service, and this was the
next one, more or less on time.

At Frankenstadion we dragged our luggage through a rock
festival (?!) and to the hotel, which received us with
open arms and free drinks.

gaobest

Very fun about the Do!
I definitely loved Hutt'n back in the day. Glad it's still there. Duererhaus is ace as are several of the restaurants nearby (Schlenkerla, Albrecht Duererstuebe).... Ah the memories. And I loved Bayreuth when i visited it in 2008. I miss franconian food (ESP schauferle!) but I don't miss the cholesterol :-)

I now lack the time and budget to return to Germany or Europe. I only want to travel with my family, and our last Europe trip (2013) was 29 days in Italy via paid P fares. Our next travel holiday is reduced to a week in Maui in February. Otherwise, our 3 trips to Chicago a year for the in laws via paid discounted F still don't count as holiday :-)

I really loved this TR. it brings back lovely memories. Thank you!!

ToGo

I miss Pictures...

violist

Breakfast was as remembered, pretty much the standard,
except that the breakfast links had savory and nutmeg or
somesuch in them to keep them in line with the Bratwursts
of local renown. I had assorted proteins and fruit products
as usual, plus an extra banana for potassium.

There was some guy up front who raised a ruckus because
breakfast wasn't included in his rate, and he pushed and
pushed and got a concession for half price provided he and
his family ate only the breads and cold foods (I guess
that's the "continental" option). He complained loudly
throughout the meal; we could hear him well despite his
table being nowhere near ours. There were a lot of well-
tattooed young folks from the rock festival who quietly
ate and occasionally rolled their eyes at the guy.

Time to check out and get lili some more Starwood credit.
We took the bus downtown, deposited our stuff at the desk
at the Meridien, and wandered around town again, then had
a light lunch - sausages with bread and beer - at Bratwurst
Roslein, and I mused on how funny it would be if this
ended up being a stop on the tour to come. After which we
met all the FTMMers for the afternoon guided walking tour,
whose theme was the local foods of Franconia, with samples.
First stop of course: Bratwurst Roslein.

Followed by the (sites of the mediaeval) goose market,
granary, meat butchery, wine storage, the oldest church in
town, the town brewery, punctuated with snack stops with
more or less appropriate goodies - the hard but savory brown
bread, gingerbread, sausages, and so on; the sillily amusing
one was gummy candies to illustrate the wine place. Our
guide was an earnest, cute, and very nervous young student.
We tried not to be too disruptive and distracting and goofy.

The tour ended at the Altstadthof brewery, where we were
treated to a sample of the local red beer. The rest of the
crew went off to do the Bierfest thing, which we'd already
done, so we stayed here for a round: I had a rather nice
Schwarzbier.

Back to the hotel for a supposedly better junior suite,
which had its oddities. For one thing, to make the extra
space, it had been built out into the corridor, creating a
stenosis that must have annoyed people trying to get past
with their luggage. For another, the floors weren't flat,
with the passage into each area an open invitation for one
to stub one's toe. And most oddly, the sleeping and living
areas were separated by a TV and its mounting only. There
might have been a little more room than the other had had,
but the extra space was not apparent, and the bathroom was
about 2/3 the size (still perfectly adequate).

It was soon time to go to the cellar at the Alte Kuch'n,
where we were feasted as befits a group of rowdy mediaeval
knights and their molls (or whatever they were called),
with bardic musical entertainment. We learned a traditional
song, To Drunkenness, whose words any tippler can remember
even after several rounds:

Zum Rausche, Zum Rausche, tra lalala lalala lalala la,
Zum Rausche, Zum Rausche, tra lalala lalala la.

The food was served in big platters. To tell the truth, I
remember it in not so much detail, more because it was
(though perfectly fine) not memorable than because of any
condition of inebriation.

Here's the menu as presented by the Website:

Mead served in a bullock's horn

Wow, this was sweet. Not too alcoholic, but as I found later
in the trip, sugariness multiplies the effect of ethanol on
me. Not much honey flavor, either.

Flat cake with lard, herbal curd and radish

This was a scantily leavened bread served with
Griebenschmalz, which is so much more than lard - it's pig
fat mixed with ground-up cracklings; Krauterquark - dairy
product with vegetables; and Rettisch and Radieschen - both
big white and little red radishes, the white one cut up
with a spiral slicer that I doubt had been available in
mediaeval times.

Home made jellied meat

Head cheese. This didn't seem to go over too well with my
tablemates, so I got plenty. It was kind of sour but very
porky, and the texture was appropriate, which means not
American-friendly.

Rich beef soup with small dumplings

The small dumplings were !matzoh balls!.

Stuffed quail wrapped in bacon fresh from the stove

I was a little disappointed, as the quail were rather
overdone and whatever flavor quail have was overwhelmed by
the bacon. I like bacon, but a nice poultry flavor shouldn't
be submerged like this.

Roasted spareribs with cabbage salad and lambs lettuce

I had one. It was fine. There were also some nonrib bits
on the platter, including a pretty Schweinshaxe. For some
reason, the meat was covered with pickled peperoncini.

House made Apple-pancakes grandmas style

I was hoping for Kaiserschmarrn with apples, but this
was plainer and not moreish at all. The good thing about it
was that it wasn't too sweet.

The alpine dairyman's cheese and fruits

The cheeses looked pretty modern. The fruits were Red Globe
grapes.

So ... not particularly mediaeval. But I admit a lot of fun.

Especially with lots of Ritter Sankt Georg, a Franconian
beer, which was reasonably reasonable in price and quality.

As we had a big day coming up, afterbar barhopping was
deemed not to be a great idea, and we staggered to our
respective lodgings; most of us wisely had chosen places
near the train station, either the Meridien or the Hampton.

violist

Early morning train to Wurzburg. We all met at 0830 at the
tram stop and trooped to the track. All were accounted for,
and we assorted ourselves into groups for our Good Weekend
tickets, which gave us enormous discounts on the train fare.

It was a short, chatty trip, and we all gathered at our
meeting point with our guide for the city tour, a woman in
young middle age with an interest bordering on obsession
with church buildings.

We stopped at the imposing grounds of the Juliusspital, a
multipurpose social welfare organization founded by one of
the more progressive prince-bishops of the 16th century: it
encompasses a hospital, hospice, and rest home, but it's
most known for its winemaking - it owns the largest single
vineyard (over 400 acres) in Germany.

Then, in a shaded little courtyard near the cathedral, the
tomb of the mediaeval poet-musician Walther von der
Vogelweide, author of such top-sellers as Ah Where Are Hours
Departed Fled and and Closed to Me now Is Fortune's Gate.
In his day, these actually were top-sellers.

We were encouraged to spend a fair amount of time admiring
the many beautiful churches in the old city, reserving most
of our attention to the Cathedral of St. Killian (inside and
out) and the church of St. Mary (outside only).

Walked through the throngs at the Weinfest, and our tour
concluded at a Biergarten in the old town hall, a fitting
end point, but for lili and me, a bench at the Weinfest
beckoned, and at the Juliusspital booth we ordered a crisp
Schweinshaxe and a bottle of Julius Rotwein cuvee 14, which
was fruity and agreeable and went well with the big but not
too big serving of meat and the smallish but too big serving
of Kartoffelkloess.

At about half-past one we joined some of our group at an
ice-cream parlor on the way to the Residenz. I didn't have
anything. It was getting hot, and most of us scattered to
look for bottled water: some found little bottles for a
couple Euro at the tourist stands; other more enterprising
among us got bottles three times that size at a local
grocery store for 85c. Perhaps they could have been truly
enterprising and started a water concession.

2:05, and it was time for another encounter with an earnest
and scholarly historian for the tour of the castle's public
spaces. I prefer tours that include kitchens and dining
areas, because that's the way I am, in addition to the
uniformly ornate receiving rooms, which begin to bore me
after a while. I admit that the grandeur of the Tiepolo
frescoes of the four continents take your breath away, but
after a while one wants to breathe. All in all, this took
maybe an hour and half, and there was plenty of time for
another ice-cream parlor visit or (for me) a lie-down on
the steps by the fountain.

Our final visit was to the huge wine celler, the Staatliche
Hofkeller underneath the castle, with its impressive tuns
holding upwards of 600 gallons each. This was also designed
by Balthasar Neumann, who had been the architect of the
castle itself. Bunches of the usual propaganda about the
wonderful terroir and the history and expertise behind every
glass of elixir, that kind of thing. At the conclusion of
this, our reward was a taster glass of a young Riesling,
fresh and fruity, typical in style but with a more
pronounced peachy apricotty aroma than usual.

We had been an obedient little group, so our day concluded
a bit early; some of us decided to make good use of our
remaining hour and so had a drink at the Weinstube near the
train station belonging to this selfsame Juliusspital, where
I ordered a bottle of Domina 14 for the renegade red wine
tipplers. At a tad over $5 a glass, not too bad. I'm not
certain what the white people had - there were so many
choices by the glass, with even more interesting options in
bottle. I do remember someone giving me a taste of a
somewhat delicious Black Riesling, which looked and felt
like a red wine but tasted more like a white - an uneasy
combination. Turns out this isn't a Riesling at all but
another name for the Pinot Meunier.

violist

@gaobest - you're welcome! I like reliving my travels by writing about them,
hence the sometimes obsessive detail (stuff I want to remember) and the
sometimes glaring omissions (stuff I don't care about). I'm glad some of this
resonates with some people. As for traveling, I presume you have a young
family and a demanding career. I am retired and travel with other retired
people. There are ways to travel in relative style and comfort at relatively
cheap rates, see Premium Fare Deals in the Mileage Run forum, which is
useful not only for mileage runs - something useful might come up now and
then.

@ToGo - I'm notoriously unvisual; a friend got exasperated by my not taking
photos of where I've been and gave me her old 20 Megapixel camera (she
uses her phone, which takes pictures arguably better than it does), which
I use sporadically but enthusiastically. Maybe someday my pix will get into
my trip reports; I doubt it, though.

violist

Return by train to NUE

By some miracle we all made it to the platform on time
and got 18 seats together. Plus beer, which some of us had
picked up a case of and the swilling of which in public is
not frowned on in this country, which is enlightened in
this regard.

Some cute young girls came down the aisle selling what I
thought was schnapps but turned out to be weird fruit
liqueur - I didn't have any singles so bought a bunch,
of which I had a plum and a something else and gave the
rest to whoever wanted. I think this contributed to my
being under the weather later. Anyhow, I recall little
after that. As the hotel was so close, lili and I went
back for a wash-up; after a bit of recuperating time, we
joined the group for dinner at Marientorzwinger, which,
thank the gods, is right close by. The weather was fine
enough, so we found the group in the outside Biergarten.

I was oddly tired of roast pig parts by now, so I ordered
a Schnitzel (of course pork) au naturel; the waitress was
surprised that I didn't want any side dish with that. lili
had a burger, I believe her first on the trip. To go with,
beers. They tasted like Lederer I think, but in this
condition I was unqualified to judge. The Schnitzel was not
overwhelmingly large, which disappointed me at first, but it
turned out to be just the right size. It was properly
pounded thin, breaded, and fried just so. Quite good.

I forgot that I'd paid. lili reports that I tried to pay
twice. It's lucky the hotel was just a couple blocks away.

-

Many thanks to f0zzyNUE for arranging everything and
shepherding a bunch of FTMMers around Franconia.

-

LH 147 NUE FRA 1115 1205 733 24E, 25F
LH 236 FRA FCO 1540 1725 321 10F
was
LH2157 NUE MUC 0945 1025 CR9
and
LH1846 MUC FCO 1600 1730 321

United is prone to messing up things, as you may know. And
booking tickets on partner airlines is not its forte. I had
reservations out on a particular set of LH flights and back
on a set of LX flights. The itinerary failed to ticket
properly not once, not twice, but three times, and I was
eventually forced to make an all-LH reservation for about a
hundred smackers more. Isn't LX part of LH or something?

The good part is that I got to fly out on the first leg with
lili.

We left the hotel at 9 something and were inside security by
10, even with an eventually successful attempt to get my *G
number in the reservation and a futile one to get seats
together (I'd been too under the weather to figure this out
the night before).

We ended up with a middle seat in the third to last row and
a window seat in the second to last row. I tried to reassure
myself "it's only a dream ... only a dream ...," but when
that didn't work, "it's only a 25-minute flight ...".

The Senator lounge was far away, the Business one close to
where she was leaving from, so we chose ease and convenience
over deliciousness. She was leaving before I, but we had
just an hour or so to make future plans and to nosh on the
abundant but not particularly tasty food offerings: the
Wiener sausages were actually quite okay; the bean soup
(contains chicken and pork products) shall we say not
Senate bean soup. A Sicilian red ink was better than the
local stuff - I let lili sample and choose which one she
wanted; she made the right choice; the other was almost but
not quite throwawayable, so I drank it down. Had an hour
after we said goodbye to repent my foolishness and cleanse
my palate with other potables.

My next flight, way up the way, was uneventful, except
that FCO is in a certain state of turmoil because of the
fire that had ravaged Terminal 3 some weeks before.

The train to Fara Sabina, where my friend Jim picked me up,
is the end of the line, how convenient is that.

And upon these heels follows a few days of down time during
which my friends and I ate stray rabbits and chickens and
drank copiously of cheap red wine and reminisced about
decades-old triumphs and failures in musical life, whose
description would interest nobody, myself included.

gaobest

Fun to see bratwurst Roslein and Alte Kuch'n - I definitely enjoyed both places way back when. Nuernberg has so many lovely restaurants and many have great views and menus. Then in the 90s, a lot more cuisines popped up as well. Hope you are enjoying your Italia travels!