The Day-trip Diaries - Part 3: Bayreuth
It was a day of opera...
A day of sports....
A day of palaces...
A day of monuments...
A day of people dressed as bread...
It was July 3rd: a beautiful, hot, and perfect Saturday to go for a day trip. My destination: Bayreuth (pronounced BUY-royt)
There were several good reasons for making the long trip with regional trains to this town in the far north of Bavaria. The purpose of this blog is to show you the many reasons why it was such a great idea to visit Bayreuth.
I had to change trains in Nürnberg. There was an hour layover and so I decided the best use of my time would be to go and get a few photographs in the morning light that I didn't get when I was there a few days ago. Also I wanted more Nürnberger sausages...
I ran over to the Rathausplatz near the castle...
And stepped inside the Bratwursthäusl for some tasty grilled Nürnberger sausages in a roll...
I meandered back towards the train station through side streets of the medieval city. Here is Hangman's Bridge..
An old storehouse on the Pegnitz River...
Nürnberg...
Happy with my pictures and sausages I got back to the station just in time to catch my train to Bayreuth.
An hour and a nap later I was pulling into the Bayreuth station and it was time to go off and explore. First I went to the Tourist Info center and got a free map and some bus info. Then I went into the old town. I noticed right away that something was different in the city that day.
It was the annual Bürgerfest! (nothing to do with sandwiches... it was the citizens' festival!) The streets were decked with stalls and attractions. It was all very festive...
Now of course, the more classical-musically inclined among you will have recognized Bayreuth as the city of the great 19th century composer Richard Wagner...
And everyone will recognize his music. Go ahead and click below to hear a familiar tune of his (no need to watch, just listen as you read)...
This is "Ride of the Valkyries" from his opera Die Walküre, (which actually premiered in Munich!)
Wagner was one of the 19th centuries most important and influential composers. He was a genius and it made him a bit of an insufferable jerk at times. He was constantly fleeing creditors while asking others for money to support his art. One friend who came to Wagner's aid in his later years was King Ludwig II of Bavaria (the one who built Neuschwanstein Castle). King Ludwig supported Wagner in Munich for several years before the Münchners started getting angry with all the money spent on opera. So Wagner left Munich and settled in Bayreuth, where he would establish a theater built specifically for the production of his lavish operas.
One of the reasons why Bayreuth was an attractive place for Wagner was because of the existing Opera House in the city.
This theater was built in the 1740's by the resident Margraves of Bayreuth. It is one of the few remaining Baroque theaters in Europe...
The inside is a lavish affair...
Princess Wilhelmine, older sister to Frederick the Great of Prussia and wife to one of the Margraves, participated here as writer, player, actor, composer, and director in the 1700's...
The ceiling...
There was a rather lack-luster light show narrated by the Princess Wilhelmine. Here I am in the theater...
When Wagner decided to settle in Bayreuth, he built a villa that he called "Wahnfried" or "Peace from Madness." Today the Wahnfried is a Wagner museum...
I didn't bother paying to go inside, I just snapped a photo from the doorway...
The backyard is directly connected with the city park and serves as a quiet place to sit on the benches and relax...
It also includes Wagner's grave. Wagner was a man of philosophy, of the arts, and of the world, where God is irrelevant, and religion pesky distraction. His gravestone is completely blank, reflecting, if not to him then to me, the bleakness of his afterlife beliefs...
I meandered into the city park...
And found it was also connected to the Neues Schloß (palace), where the Margraves lived...
The flowers were nice...
And then another palace...
Here is the front of the Neues Schloß...
I wandered the streets a bit and came across someone dressed as a kornspitze, which is a type of roll or bun made from cornmeal. It was the first time I had ever seen a roll dressed in lederhosen...
I came back around to the main part of the old town where vendors were setting up for the Bürgerfest, building their booths out of crates of beer...
Folk music was drifting through the streets and I found the culprits... a small wind band at an outdoor restaurant...
The smallest house in Bayreuth...
I came back around to the main drag...
Where the Bürgerfest was in full swing. There was even an American kiosk...
And a martial arts demonstration...
It was hot, and I was tired and hungry so I found a table at a restaurant with a good view of the street. From there I could do some great people watching as I enjoyed my sausages...
One of Richard Wagner's best good friends was the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. You know Liszt, he wrote this (it's worth watching if you've got time, otherwise just listen and read)...
One of the rifts in the friendship between Wagner and Liszt came when Wagner began having an illicit affair with Liszt's daughter Cosima (who was also the product of one of Liszt's illicit affairs), while living in Munich. Liszt was originally against the union, but after Wagner divorced his wife, he married Cosima and they remained together until Wagner's death in 1883. As father-in-law, Liszt often visited Wagner and Cosima in Bayreuth and would reside here for periods of time at a house next to the Wahnfried.
In 1886, while visiting his widowed daughter Cosima, Liszt died in this house...
Liszt was then buried in this cemetery in Bayreuth. This small chapel marks his grave...
The last area of my mission, the town of Sopron, Hungary, was just a few kilometers from Liszt's birthplace in a small Austrian village. He even gave his first concert as a nine-year-old in Sopron. So it was interesting to also see the place where he died at age 75...
Liszt's gravestone surrounded by plaques in German and Hungarian commemorating the composer's life...
Liszt was the equivalent of a rock star in his day. Women fainted at his concerts and fought over pieces of his glove. He was one of the greatest pianists who ever lived and had a flair for showmanship. He lived a rather wild life in the early decades (think Elvis or Keith Richards) and had many an affair with his "groupies."
But later in his life, Liszt felt the emptiness of such a life, particularly after the death of two of his children. He went to Rome and began a partially solitary living in a monastery. He became increasingly religiously devout at this time and wrote several deeply spiritual works. He even joined the Franciscan order there.
Like Wagner, Liszt was a man of profound genius, but in stark contrast to his friend, he believed, at least in the latter half of his life, in the greatness of God and the humility of man. And in contrast to Wagner's blank gravestone, the chapel over Liszt's grave includes the hope-filled epitaph: I know that my Redeemer lives...
In the afternoon I took a bus out to the outskirts of the city to the Ermitage. This was the summer palace complex built by Princess Wilhelmine and her Margrave husband. It was loosely designed after parts of Versaille palace. Here are the main fountains...
Busts over the arcade...
It was a good place for a wedding...
The palace grounds were filled with gardens, hedges, gazebos, and other palacey things...
Even fake ruins, which was all the rage back in the 1700's...
The Old Palace...
The palace gardens stretching out into the Franconian countryside...
And a Chinese gazebo (Orientalism was also all the rage at that time)...
After exploring the Ermitage I took the bus back to Bayreuth, enjoying the July countryside...
Back in Bayreuth, my next stop was the Festspielhaus, built by Wagner specifically for the production of his Ring Cycle: four sequencing operas based on ancient Germanic legends...
The Wagner society still produces the Ring Cycle to this day. The waiting list for tickets to the Bayreuth Festival is around 7-10 years, and you have to send in your application every year!
Do a dance!
The theater was empty when I was there, so I wandered around the premises and got a look at some of the large set pieces behind the theater...
These Wagnerian operas are where we get Brünhilde, the fat lady with the horned helmet and ponytails. View from the side...
I wandered back into downtown Bayreuth and found the streets almost completely deserted. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone. What was happening?
Everyone in Germany had their TV tuned to the World Cup soccer match, Germany vs. Argentina. Wherever I went, I could hear cheers erupt from the city every time Germany scored a goal. It was nice having the streets to myself.
It was rather hot and my feet were tired and so I found a little place along one of the city canals where I could take off my shoes and soak them in the cold clear water. It felt sooooo nice...
As I sat relaxing with my feet in the water I heard the last great cheer erupt from the city. Germany had defeated Argentina 4-0!
The empty streets suddenly filled with revelers and the noise of shouting, vuvuzelas, and horn honks covered the town.
Flags waved from windows...
And the streets became alive with walking and talking German flags...
This group was pretty excited...
So was this group. Their shirts say, "I came. I saw. I conquered."
In the late afternoon light, it was nice to walk around the festive city streets. Back near the old opera house...
Walking back to the train station was an event in and of itself with all the happy Germans...
Germany would go on to lose to Spain, who later became the World Cup champions. But memorabilia was a hot item that July...
I got an ice cream cone and boarded my train back to Nürnberg. An hour later, in Nürnberg, I had another hour layover and so I ran across the old town to the Bratwursthäusl and got me some Nürnbergers in a roll. It was my fourth time eating from this restaurant in one week...
And it was worth it. At the train station I grabbed a smoothie and settled back into my train seat comfortably for the ride back to Munich. While on the train, however I realized that my mobile phone was missing! I looked all over around where I was sitting, but it must have fallen out on the Bayreuth-Nürnberg train. It irked me a bit, as cellphones are never easy to replace.
Oh well... I had had a beautiful day in northern Bavaria and I was happy with the excellent day-trip.
...And what happened the following Sunday? The Sister Missionaries called me and told me that someone had found my phone on the train and called them wanting to return the phone. The sisters gave him my info and asked if there was anything we could do for him. He said, "no thanks," and a few days later I got a package in the mail from some nice stranger in Nürnberg with phone inside! Pay it forward, people!
And in case you didn't get enough Liszt, you should watch this one (if only for Victor Borge's pants)...
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