FIRST NIGHT IN WURZBURG....

Wednesday, March 20, 1996 Frankfurt, Germany - Wurzburg, Germany

The biggest challenge today will be to stay awake all day so that our body clocks will be adjusted to German time. Jim had rented a car in the USA prior to coming, they were out of that model and upgraded us (at same price) to an Opal 1.9, purple 4 door car with a trunk. We lucked out because we could never have fit all three of us with the luggage into the original car that we'd ordered! Basically we had a brand new car as it only had 10,326 KM at the airport. The back seat was half full of luggage. Barbara and I each cashed $500. in traveler’s checks while Jim was getting the car at the airport. The exchange rate was 1.44 with a commission of 12 marks on each of the $500. Jim is the driver for the trip. Barbara is the navigator in the front seat and I am taking the back seat whenever possible as I'm going to work on my computer and read, read, read!

Barbara is great about reading the information from the travel books. Left Frankfurt and drove to Wurzburg after we finally found the right exit from the Airport...not an easy feat. It was about an hour and a half trip by auto and the city of Wurzburg is beautiful. Barbara had previously made reservations at a Best Western hotel named Hotel Rebstock located in the center of the old town part of the city. We settled into our rooms…Barbara’s room is about the size of her closet at home with a single bed. She's not a happy camper about that!

Then off to the city…we walked and walked and walked. Stopped for a bratwurst sandwich (a german hot-dog) and a coke…they were in very large glass bottles and we had to drink all of it before we could leave the area…we were at a sidewalk café. Then we stopped at a department store and Barbara found the grocery section in the basement. We bought bottled water, two loafs of bread and what we thought was butter. It turned out to be some type of cheese which we threw away as no one liked it. Jim also bought some candy which was like white divinity candy.

We got back to the hotel about 6 PM and fixed dinner in our room. Barbara had brought food with her also and we used her meat and cheese with the things we’d purchased for dinner. She had dried prociutto ham and small cheeses wrapped in wax. Jim didn’t like the mustard so didn’t put it on his in the future! Delicious meal...and then after showers we finally hit the bed and tried to sleep. All of us were up and down all night. Barbara finally came knocking on the door about 7 AM as she’d been up for hours. She said that she thought that she had had a bowling alley over her room with someone dropping a bowling ball all evening!

MONEY: ONE DOLLAR = 1.48 MARK