Bayreuth, Germany

At some point during our dinner the previous night Carissa apparently agreed to go to Bayreuth the next day, despite the fact we had just had guests 3 out of the previous 4 weeks.  We managed to get out of bed, get showered and over to our meeting place in Eschenbach (next town over) by 10am on Saturday.  Tatyana and her boys Tarasyk and Yaryk (she's Ukranian) were leading the way in our little caravan.  We parked in an outdoor lot in Bayreuth about 45 minutes later and then walked into the center of town.

Bayreuth is a pretty big town (72,000) and is known for it's opera scene and the fact the composer Richard Wagner made his home there.  In looking up the population I also noticed that it has a pretty ugly Nazi history.  Apparently it was a stronghold for Nazi ideology and was to be turned into a model Nazi town.  The Nazi's loved Wagner and in fact Hitler himself frequently attended Wagner performances in the festival hall.  None of this was in the brochure.

At any rate, it's got a great main street which is entirely pedestrian only and that day was the site of some sort of festival.  All kinds of tents were up, selling various home goods, along with a bunch of tents in the middle selling food.  We spent a couple hours wandering around and sat down at some picnic tables for some lunch.  Tatyana was trying to find some shoes for her boys and we ended up in a huge shoe store that had a slide running along the side of the stairs.  I parked myself on a bench at the bottom and the 5 kids rode the slide down over and over while the women shopped.

Afterwards we walked to the other end of town and turned into the yard of the home of Wagner, which is now a museum.  We didn't go in, but instead skirted around the side of the house and through the backyard which opened up into a lovely park with a man made pond running down the middle of it.  The park is part of the Bayreuth Palace which is at one end back toward the center of town.  We strolled along the lake and then through a palace gate that led back to the streets of the city.  At this point we were pretty much shot and walked back to the car and drove home.  

Rick and Sandy were arriving Thursday so we had another couple days of turning over the house for guests and getting ready for another trip.  Also, baseball, soccer and gymnastics had started so we were running to those at night.  On top of that I had begun my job search and had a couple interviews.