Hamburg and Würzburg, 1-2.6.2025: Franconian Bratwurst and Imposing Churches

Würzburg, Marienberg

Sunday, the 1st, was a rest day for us after the big party on Saturday, and as we prepared for the drive on the 2nd to Würzburg. We stayed in W. and K.’s apartment, ironed the shirts and pants we’d washed to prepare for the trip, and packed. W. and K. had a lunch meeting with T. and A., then returned to heat up food they had brought home from the party for a mid-afternoon meal for us. Later in the evening, W. cooked an omelette for the four of us as he tried to use up the eggs in the refrigerator in preparation for being away from their flat for weeks ahead.

On the 2nd, we made an early start for Würzburg, leaving around 9 A.M. as planned, with K. driving. The drive was long but tolerable, with W. and K. switching several times to spell each other. At some point along the way, perhaps not long after we passed out of Lower Saxony and entered Hessen, we stopped at a roadside rest place and made a picnic of cheese, bread, cold cuts, and apples. W. and K. had intended to pack bottles of water and then forgot and left them behind in their flat, so the apples had to do for liquid.

We got into Würzburg around 4 P.M., later than W. and K. had anticipated. There were a number of Staus on the Autobahn, as there always are. Leaving Hamburg, the car was mercilessly hot, since W. and K. had the heat on though it was more than mild outside. 

Finally, Steve, who was sitting on the sunny side of the car, asked if he could open his window a bit, and at that point, W. offered to turn the air-conditioning on. Steve told me later he noticed that W. set the fan for the a-c at a setting of 2 out of 10. When W. and K. switched drivers, I noticed that K. turned the a-c off. As I said in a previous entry in this travelogue, the determination to heat things even in summer in the northern part of Germany baffles me. As we drove, Steve asked W. if he turned the heat off in their apartment when we left, and W. said he turned it down one degree — in June and July!

Würzburg: it’s clichéd to say this, but very south German in contrast to Hamburg. Grimier, clearly poorer, but with a determination among its inhabitants, it seems, to enjoy life. People move more slowly, amble, enjoy looking around and window-shopping. When we walked through the Marienplatz market, which was chock-full of small restaurants and outside tables (under tents and awnings), we noticed around 6 in the evening that the tables were full as people sat laughing and talking, enjoying beer, wine, nibbles. Though it was drizzling outside….

Würzburg, Dom

Würzburg, Dom interior 

Our hotel, Central Hotel Garni on Koellikerstraße, was ideally situated for us to walk in the Altstadt. From the hotel, it was only a hop, skip, and jump to the Marienkapelle and the market next to it in Marienplatz, the Falkenhaus, and the Dom, and the Alte Brücke and Rathaus were only a few steps down the way from those sites. The rooms at the Central were nothing to write home about, a bit shabby and with those stretchy synthetic sheets that form little pills and feel dirty against the body even when they’ve clearly been well-washed.

Würzburg, Alte Brücke

Würzburg, old Rathaus

Würzburg, Grafeneckart Rathaus

Würzburg, Falkenhaus

Würzburg, Marienkapelle

Würzburg, Marienkapelle door

Würzburg, Marienkapelle interior

Moreover, we had a room overlooking the street, and the noise was pretty intense at times. But all this slight inconvenience was offset by the hotel’s good price, with a breakfast buffet included in the room price — and a decent buffet at that, with plates of various cold cuts and cheeses, small platters of cherry tomato halves in herbed vinaigrette dressing with little mozzarella balls, small platters of green and black olives with herbs and cubes of feta cheese, stuffed halves of eggs, bowls of fruit, and a good assortment of breads and jams. The coffee was good, too, and there were pitchers of orange and apricot juice.

We visited the sites enumerated in the penultimate paragraph, enjoying seeing each one, then walked back to Marienplatz to look for a place to eat. W. and K. had rendezvoused with a friend of theirs in Würzburg and we told them please not to worry about us, that we’d enjoy walking around and then having a bite to eat at someplace that caught our fancy. 

There were so many restaurants in the Marienplatz market that the choices were wide. We wanted to sample something Franconian, something local, so we looked for menus offering locally made bratwursts (with lots of marjoram seasoning, if they’re authentic), bratwurst cooked in the Blaue Zipfel style (with the sausages boiled in vinegar flavored with juniper berries and other seasonings like peppercorns, cloves, and bay leaves), Eisbein, and so on. 

Würzburg, Wirthaus Lämmle

Any number of places in the market had those items on the menu.  Eventually, Steve suggested we return to a small, quiet restaurant we had seen in Marienplatz outside the market proper, a place that had a nice shady beer garden out front. This was Wirthaus Lämmle. We walked back there, sat down, and were served right away by a very engaging waitress who tolerated our bad German and assured us that we spoke good German.

We ordered glasses of dry Silvaner, with Steve deciding immediately he shouldn’t settle for wine alone — so that he ordered a mug of draft beer called simply “beer of the season.” The drinks came right away, so we then placed our order for our meals. Steve chose bratwurst with sauerkraut and puréed potatoes, and I picked a pork schnitzel in paprika sauce, which came with fried potatoes.

It seemed we had only ordered when, hey presto, the plates arrived. I found my schnitzel a bit disappointing. I ordered Paprikaschnitzel because I’d never tried it and wanted to see what the paprika sauce might do for it. It didn’t do much, honestly. The cooks had used ripe red peppers to make the sauce, and to my taste buds they were on the bland and too sweet side. 

By contrast, the french fries were perfectly prepared and came in a mound sufficient to feed a small army, with a packet of tomato ketchup and one of mayonnaise on the side. Steve’s bratwursts were very good, very strongly flavored with marjoram, and he declared the puréed potatoes the best mashed potatoes he’d ever had. 

A good time was had by all.

Then back to the hotel to read a bit and try to sleep with motors roaring beneath the window. Fortunately, I had saved those little ear plugs they give you on the airplane and found that once I stuck them in my ears, I had halved the noise.

Würzburg street scene