June in Germany and Austria – our Trip to Bachfest Part 2

Another Peril of Group Travel and Beautiful Bach Concerts

This week, I’m writing to you from aboard a cruise ship enroute from Naples, Italy to the port of La Spezia, from which we’ll travel to Florence. Since this cruise has pretty much been perfect so far, it’s hard to think back 4 months to the worst night of our Germany trip in June …… the evil group dinner.  (not that the group was evil, the dinner was evil!)

The theory of the dinner was a wonderful one – let’s all have one dinner together, early in the trip,  and let’s have it in a really unique spot -from Wikipedia “Auerbachs Keller (Auerbach's Cellar in English) is the second oldest restaurant in Leipzig, Germany. Already one of the city's most important wine bars by the 16th century, it owes its worldwide reputation to Goethe's play Faust as the first place Mephistopheles takes Faust on their travels. Young Goethe often visited Auerbach's Cellar while studying at Leipzig University from 1765 to 1768 and called it his favourite wine bar.” Its connection to Bach is that it was a regular part of his daily commute to his position at St. Thomas Church.  Sounds great, right?

Here’s where the actions and lack of communication of the travel agent went horribly awry. Instead of providing a group of adults with a choice of meal items, she had the restaurant provide us with an entrée of Rouladen. You know, the dish that centers around a giant pickle?  People, Rouladen is vile.  At least we think so, as did others at our table.  So, we proceeded to fork out $80 for schnitzel, which the staff then brings to us before serving anyone else in the group.  Not good optics. It also wasn’t great schnitzel and was so big it was hanging off our plates. Not a fun time at all – except we did have quite a few giggles with our tablemates and got to know them better, which was really the entire point of the dinner. 

That being over, we also took in a walking tour of the city centre of Leipzig – such a gorgeous place!  We visited the Bach Museum which was really cool – here are some pics of the Bach family tree, a portrait of Bach and an excerpt of an original manuscript of Bach’s. 

We also learned about the 2 key churches in the city – St. Thomas and St. Nicholas – both beautiful inside and out.  Since I’m a little obsessed with church ceilings, here are some pics to give you an idea of how amazing they are. 

Here’s what I’ll say about the Bachfest concerts.  They were all beautiful – we went to 13 concerts in 11 days.  It was overwhelming, and I’ll confess that some were so much so that we occasionally left at intermission.  Our group leader (and dear friend) picked 10 concerts and those were part of our package. We then chose 3 additional concerts to attend that really interested us, and those were our favourites.  One was a German brass quintet, and another was a chamber orchestra (who we saw at noon on a sunny Saturday in a Church right next to our hotel) that was truly amazing.  The other concerts were mostly choral with small orchestras, who often played on period instruments, which made the sound even more fascinating.  However, since our seat locations were so bad for most concerts (not those we booked on our own), the sound was not what we would otherwise have experienced.  However, overall, it was a really well-organized Festival, and we’re glad we went there. 

Next week, we’ll talk about European train travel, and our day in Dresden, Germany. 

I’d love to help you with your trip planning! 

Happy Travels!