Getting from Koblenz to Coburg by public transport was somewhat cumbersome. It was not a great distance, but the fact that I had to take 4 trains. Some connection times were very tight. I bet on German punctuality and bought a ticket to Coburg where my friend and a fellow translator Oksana was going to meet me.
The 9:53 am train Koblenz – Frankfurt ran along the Rhine. Fortresses and castles were on every hill on both sides of the track.
In Frankfurt, I had half an hour which allowed me to buy snacks that I could eat later. The train to Würzburg left the station after a 10-minute delay. My connection in Würzburg was also 10 minutes. I was so nervous that I would not make this connection that I could not enjoy the scenery. The train sped up and almost succeeded in making up for lost time. That lifted my spirits until the train came to a stop in the middle of a large green field. I became jumpy again. We waited and waited until the train got moving, slowly at first, then gaining speed. Of course, we arrived late, but not too late. Luckily for me in Würzburg, my next train to Bamberg happened to be on the same platform. I quickly ran across and caught the Bamberg train. Now I was worried about not missing my fourth and last train to Coburg.
The Coburg train was also behind the schedule. After hours of sitting, my back started to hurt. I also noticed that being nervous aggravates this condition. To prevent the pain from getting worse, I do stretching exercises. Seeing only a couple of passengers on the platform, I decided that it was okay to stretch, bent down without bending the knees and placed my hands flat palm down on the platform floor. Touching the toes is not enough to stretch my back muscles. A German man came over and asked how old I was. 62 was not an answer that he expected to hear. The man said that he was a few years younger than me and also suffered from back pain. Two operations on his spine did not help much. He questioned me a little more and talked about his health. Somehow, this interaction relieved the stress that I was under all day long. By the time when the Coburg train finally showed up, I stopped worrying.
Oksana waited for me on the platform in Coburg. We met two years ago in Stockholm where both of us attended an international conference on interpreting and translation. Originally from Ukraine, Oksana lives with her German husband and three teenage sons in a small town of Lautertal which is 12 km (7 mi) from Coburg.
Oksana drove me to her home. The family occupies a 2-story house with the bedrooms on the top floor and a kitchen, dining and living areas on the first floor. After dinner, all we could do was to relax. Oksana suggested going to thermal baths. We grabbed our swimsuits and drove to a nearby town with a recreation center. I never saw such a variety of various pools in one facility. American aquatic centers are pretty simple – lap swimming plus waterslides for kids to entertain them. Here there was everything one could wish for – small pools with warm and icy cold ankle-deep water where the tiles were rough and massaged our tired feet; water jets for different groups of muscles; a pool for water aerobics, hot tubs and more. My favorite was a circular pool with a strong current that carried swimmers around. We only needed to stay afloat and be careful not to smash into the walls by doing occasional strokes that kept the body within the current.
The following day was Saturday. In the morning, Oksana worked on an urgent translation. Freelancers do not have weekends and holidays. I also had things to do on my laptop; among them was booking an air ticket from St. Petersburg, Russia to Varna, Bulgaria. I calculated that by May, 27th my overland journey across the entire Western Europe would be over and I could fly to my vacation apartment where I was going to spend the summer. I also bought online a bus ticket from Nuremberg to Prague for Monday. While the ladies were busy, the boys cooked a traditional Bavarian meal with baked turkey.
After the meal, Oksana took me to some historic and scenic places.
Kloster Banz is a former Benedictine monastery and a beer garden. Bavaria is a beer lovers’ paradise and I, unfortunately, don’t drink beer, but I enjoyed the walk and the architecture.
Basilika Vierzehnheiligen, or the Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, is associated with the following legend that I found online:
On 24 September 1445, Hermann Leicht, the young shepherd of a nearby Franciscan monastery, saw a crying child in a field that belonged to the nearby Cistercian monastery of Langheim. As he bent down to pick up the child, it abruptly disappeared. A short time later, the child reappeared in the same spot. This time, two candles were burning next to it. In June 1446, Leicht saw the child a third time. This time, the child bore a cross on its chest and was accompanied by thirteen other children. The child said: “We are the fourteen helpers and wish to erect a chapel here, where we can rest. If you will be our servant, we will be yours!” Shortly after, Leicht saw two burning candles descending to this spot. It is alleged that miraculous healings soon began, through the intervention of the fourteen saints.
The Basilica has a rather unusual white-and-gold interior that is more typical for palaces than churches and it is very pretty.
Those thermal pools sound so good!
Germany is studded with thermal baths. It is also a very beautiful country.