Trip miles 888
-3 overnight
It was an easy drive out of the city on the ring road and
south towards Leipzig. The motorways moved quickly and we reached our planned
stop-over at lunchtime and decided to keep going to Dessau. On arrival the
industrial town was cold and bleak and the free camping offered by the isolated
and run-down private airport was uninviting. We continued on until finding
Naumburg.
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| No thanks Dessau! |
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| An icy night in Naumburg |
This lovely town still has many of its original medieval
merchant buildings and was an important trading post for centuries. It’s
impressive hotel ‘The Three Swans’ welcomed Napoleon, German Emperors and
Goethe amongst its guests. A walking tour was tempting but the cold was so
biting we opted instead to warm up with the locals in an old ratskeller. The
bar was simply two pumps selling dark or light ‘bier von fass’ for as little as
1.30 a glass. The heavily smoking clientele, all men and most of them elderly
were crouched over gambling games of dominoes or cards and passing coins
furtively under the tables. We enjoyed
the scenes and left just as a passionate argument broke out at one table and
once back in Bertha realised that the memory of the bar would stay with us for
some time as our clothes now reeked of smoke. It would take the biting easterly
wind a couple of days to fully air us out!
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| The infamous bar |
In the morning we did an hours’ walking around the town
clutching coffee from the bustling market square in icy hands and reading up on
the histories of the elegant and colourful buildings surrounding us. Many of
the painted renaissance houses had oriel windows with wooden carvings of
mythical people and animals dating back to the 1500s. A visit inside the
Romanesque cathedral of St Peter and St Paul was too expensive for the daily
budget so we didn’t get to see the beautifully mysterious statue of Uta, one of
the Dom’s dozen benefactors and one of the cathedral’s treasures which include
many realistic and expressive sculptures of the Passion by the anonymous 13th
century Master of Naumburg. The town is definitely one to return to!
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| Traders setting up for the day in the Markt |
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| St Peter and St Paul |
