Ansbach and Wurzburg!

Well over a week has gone by since the last post. Things have been rather busy, so sorry it's taken longer to post. I know I told a few that I would do it a few days ago!

Last weekend after work, the Katterbach girls went to Ansbach to explore the city. It's pretty small, and we feel we saw most of it withing the 5 hours of walking around. There are a lot of really odd statues that I have no clue what the meaning is. One that I did take a picture with (a smaller weeping statue), is called Kasper Hauser. I just googled it....apparently it was a young child who was raised in a dungeon in Nuremburg. The article was long, but basically he was led to Ansbach and killed himself at age 22(ish). He was a man full of lies, and at first declared that somebody else led him to the gardens and stabbed himself. How depressing to have statues like this in your town?? Here is the link to the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser

There was also a beautiful garden place, with a building that reminded me of a country club. Apparently, however, it's a place where they have a Rococo festival and dress up in old costumes. I think of it like the Renaissance Fair in KC. This wasn't going on while we were there, but that is where it happens at.

 

We went to an Irish Pub that night when we met up with the other half of the girls by accident. They had amazing shots that looked that the German flag.

It was a small place, but very sociable and pretty fun.
On Sunday, we all went to Wurzburg, which was pretty neat, had awesome historical buildings and statues. We took a train ride that was a little over an hour. We don't really have plans when we get there, we just walk around and figure it out once we see it. The reasoning for going to Wurzburg in the beginning was the winefest. I didn't have any (really expensive, and I'm not that much of a wine drinker anyway), but the crepes were good (filled with Nutella and banana)!!


We walked around downtown Wurzburg, saw some amazing Catholic churches, including the Eleventh Century Romanesque Basilica- Wurzburg Neumunster.

It was built over the Stone Coffin Of St Kilian, The Irish Missionary murdered there in the year 689. We walked over the Alte Mainbrücke, which is an old bridge over the main river. It was built between 1473-1543. There were many figures on the foundation of an older, eighth century Romanesque Bridge that were added in 1730. The link is to some of these sites is:
http://www.romanticroad.com/wuerzburg/sights.htm











From this bridge, we saw a beautiful castle. We had no clue what it was, but started walking that direction. We decided to go up the huge mountain/hill to get to it.

Took over an hour (probably wouldn't have taken so long if we didn't stop for pictures so much). They grow grapes (this is where most of the wine is produced here in Germany), all over the place. You walk through it on your way up to the castle. I found out this castle is called the Festung Marienberg, or the Marienberg Fortress. It was the residence of local prince-bishops from the years 1253 to 1720. After taking so long to walk up, we were all pretty exhausted. We didn't walk around the huge fortress for too long, other than to see the view.

Apparently it has some of the rooms the bishops lived in and such. It also has many of their tombs (which I did see). They also had a museum to go through, but it cost $$ and we were cheap. You really don't get how huge this place is, otherwise we might have taken some time to look around. It was getting later by this point and we needed to head back to the train station anyways since we managed to get a few miles away.

My work week: I have been working with Kindergartners this week since they don't start school until a week after all the other students. I have been working in an after school program, called SAS. I have my own "family group, " full of first and second graders. I plan activities/short lessons for them. I am also the homework teacher. When they have homework to be done, they come to me! There are 3 sessions, 1st is homework, 2nd is a lesson/activity I choose, and 3rd is more free choice. Next week I start doing part days at the CDC and part days at SAS. I'm excited to see what it will bring!
We leave for Prague for our 3 day weekend trip in 6 hours, so I should get some sleep!! I'll post again when we return!