Sunday, the 13th of May was the International Museum Day. Admission to the museums was free. We used this opportunity to see Coburg, a small town with a big place in the European history. The same day, Coburg also happened to host an Old Timers show. Vintage car enthusiasts from all over the area drove their treasured vehicles to display them at the show. Oksana, two of her sons and I went for the museums. Oksana’s husband brought his motorbike to put it up for sale at the Old Timers.
Coburg fascinated me ever since I watched the BBC series Victoria. This backwater town managed to establish ties with several royal houses by marrying its Dukes to Europeans queens. The most famous of them is, of course, the marriage of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. When BBC filmed its TV series the Allerton Castle in Britain was chosen to represent Prince Albert’s home in Germany. It looked very glamorous in the movie; however, I wanted to see the actual place where Prince Albert was born and lived until he moved to the Buckingham Palace. Ehrenburg Palace, the residence of the Dukes in Coburg, was more modest than its cinematic double but it did not matter. It was real; Princes Ernst and Albert walked through its rooms.
We went to every corner of the palace that was open to visitors and climbed to the top floor of the tower. In the (Giant) Hall, there was a concert of a string quartet. We sat down and enjoyed the music.
The oldest part of the town is the Veste (Fortress) Coburg situated on the hill. The fortress is a mighty structure that dates back to the 11th century. Its exhibits include the arms and armor, paintings, a large glass collection, and many exquisite historic and art objects. My ability to describe them is no match for their beauty.
Coburg has an unusual coat of arms. It depicts the head of St. Maurice, the black patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire.
Because of his name and native land, St. Maurice had been portrayed as black ever since the 12th century. The insignia of the black head, in a great many instances, was probably meant to represent this soldier-saint since a majority of the arms awarded were knightly or military. With 6,666 of his African compatriots, St. Maurice had chosen martyrdom rather than deny his allegiance to his Lord and Saviour, thereby creating for the Christian world an image of the Church Militant that was as impressive numerically as it was colorwise. Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/ssecretum.html
We took our time to look at the vintage cars and to walk around the town center. After that, Oksana drove me to Rosenau Castle near Coburg where Prince Albert was born and spent his childhood. It was exactly 5 pm when we got there and the Castle just closed for the day. I did not see it inside, only the park around this small romantic Castle that Queen Victoria loved so much that she wrote in her diary “I cannot describe what I feel here – it is a feeling as if I had spent my youth here.”
For dinner that day we had pizza that Oksana’s husband made himself. It would be hard to top what I saw and experienced during the weekend with Oksana and her family. But Monday came and it was time to say goodbye.
Oksana took me to the station in Coburg. The 8.33 am train to Nuremberg arrived 10 minutes behind schedule. During my few days in Germany, three trains were late and my trust in the German railways was severely undermined. Out of the original 16 minutes for the connection in Nuremberg, only 6 minutes remained to find the bus to Prague and I had no idea where the bus station was. I mean I looked up its location on the Internet before leaving Oksana’s home. The map showed it close to the trains. I thought it would be well visible and did not need to get more details.
When I emerged from a pedestrian underground walkway at the Nuremberg train station I found myself facing a square with no evident signs of any buses. Confused and panicking, I ran across the square hoping that once I was on its other side I would see them. That move did not help; I lost precious time and asked for the directions a man who was talking on his cell phone because there was nobody else around. He pointed to a building a block away from us and resumed his conversation. I was not sure if the man understood me correctly or if he really knew where the bus station was. I had no choice but trust him. I ran to that building not seeing any buses outside it. Only when I came close I noticed that the narrow inner alley was filled with large coaches. Passengers with their luggage crowded the little space in between the coaches. That was the bus station in Nuremberg!
The departure time of my bus had passed. I hurriedly moved from one bus to another checking if it was the bus to Prague and praying for a miracle. I found it parked on a neighboring alley. The bus driver calmly took my ticket as if I had not been 15 minutes late and loaded my backpack into the baggage compartment. I plunked down on the seat, thanked my guardian angel for looking after me and promised never-never to do another stupid nerve-racking connection like this.
The bus traveled without stopping and we were in Prague at 2.15 pm. Let me skip description of my one-night stay in Prague. I did nothing special there, visited the usual tourist places together with the hordes of others and left Prague by night train to Krakow, Poland.