Augustusburg and Chemnitz

Today I ditched class a little early and hopped a train to Augustusburg, a village with a renaissance Schloß on the outskirts of the city of Chemnitz.

You arrive at the tiny valley train station of Erdmannsdorf, from which you transfer to the funicular Drahtseilbahn for the 8 minute climb to the village. Emerging at the Bergstation, it's a steep 10 minute walk through cobblestone streets to the entrance to the Schloß.

Constructed in the late 16th century, the castle complex contains several museums, including a Motorcycle Museum, a Game and Bird Lore Museum, a Coach Museum and a Torture Chamber. 

The unexpected highlight, though, was the Motorcycle  Museum, which has 170 exhibits and 300 (!) vintage motorcycles, including an 1894 Hildebrand & Wolfmüller and two 1928 Boehmerlands (apparently the longest bike series ever built). 

  

The views from the castle grounds over the surrounding countryside are breathtaking, and there is a beautiful old yellow church with a tranquil, atmospheric churchyard just below the castle  gates.

After Augustusburg, I headed to Chemnitz for dinner. Renamed "Karl-Marx-Stadt" during the DDR years, the city was all but destroyed in WWII and reconstructed in a Soviet style. Old Chemnitz, sometimes called the Manchester of pre-war Germany due to its industrial roots, emerged in the 1960s as something of a grim German Minsk. Since reunification, however, the powers-that-be have been recasting the city with a vengeance. The former Altstadt retains precious few historic buildings, but those that remain have been lovingly restored and are now flanked by visually appealing, ultramodern glass-walled stores, fancy new shopping galleries and a sparkling office building with a dramatically curved roof. The wide streets are plied by new Siemens trams, and the overall feel in the center is spiffy and bright, and not at all drab.

One DDR eyesore that Chemnitz has apparently decided to keep is a 1970s sculpture of a giant glaring head of Karl Marx in front of a very ugly and wide socialist-era building. A not-so-subtle reminder of the bad old days.

I had dinner in the Ratskeller, the town-hall cellar restaurant that almost all German cities have. This one is particularly impressive. In the main room there's a vaulted ceiling elaborately painted with almost Jugendstil patterns in black, browns, creams and olive/light greens. The vaulting is supported by thick polished stone columns with gilded bas-reliefs at the top. The one facing me was an illustration of a man (who looked like one of the 7 dwarfs) stuck in a cider press! There are dark-paneled walls topped with arches filled with almost Grecian silver and gold illustrations on a black stucco background -- urns, wreaths and couples twining garlands around trees -- as well as stained-glass windows with various bacchanalian scenes of putti bearing fruits and grapes. The tables are festooned with wheat sheaf, waxed apple and grape centerpieces, and bunched green damask strewn with lady apples, pine cones and apple ribbons.

I started with Waldpilzsüppchen (forest mushroom soup) that was generously laden with fungi but would have benefited from a splash of white wine or brandy, and an Einsiedler Landbier. Having missed lunch, for the main I ordered, from the section of the massive menu entitled "Empfehlungen Schlemmergerichte mit Tradition", a dish described as Sachsenländer Schlemmermahl. "Hearty" does not begin to describe what was placed before me: a hot, curved metal plate with two grilled pork medallions nestled with pink ham strips, mushrooms, sliced onions and a brown sauce, topped with strands of melted cheese, lettuce, pickled cauliflower, sliced tomatoes and parsely. At the core of all this were crisp rösti potato slices.

I only made it through half of this concoction before waving the white flag; it was delicious in a scary sort of way, but tastes change and I reached the satiation point relatively quickly. I spent a little more time walking around the center of Chemnitz, very impressed with the transformation that the city has undergone as the new buildings glowed against a twinkling sky.

Before leaving, I bought a book called Chemnitz - Karl-Marx-Stadt und zurück ("Chemnitz - Karl-Marx-Stadt and Back"), which chronicles this plucky city's painful transformations during the 20th century. I am glad that I had a brief chance to see it.