Ton picked Erfurt because it had a medieval bridge that has homes and stores still built on it and in use. This used to be a common thing in Europe. A few cities most notably Milan still have bridges with businesses on them, but apparently Erfurt is the last place that still has people living on the homes on the bridge.
I knew we were walking on the bridge, but it is difficult to tell you are on a bridge when you are crossing it. It feels like any medieval street. You have to go around back to see that it is indeed a bridge.
It is not a large bridge, but during the middle ages when most cities were fortified real estate was at a premium within the walls. This caused many towns to build stores and housing on bridges. Over time this practice faded because of maintenance cost and other reasons, think about how much stuff that makes your house a home is buried in the ground. So today there are only a handful of bridges like the one we saw today.
We were both surprised by the size of Erfurt. The population density is much lower in Central Europe than Germany and it showed up today when Erfurt which is at best a regional city felt much more bustling and crowded than Bratislava or Brno.
We headed out to check the Cathedral and walked by one of the icons of the town Bernd das Brot. He is a character on a children tv show and is characterized by chronic depression. Ton called him the Grumpy Breadman until we learned his real name.
After posing with Bernd I decided to do another must do thing here which was to have a Thuringen Bratwurst. The Brats here are lower in fat than normal Brats. It was good washed down with a beer which interestingly was the Bud from Czechia and not a German beer.
Erfurt is located in the old East Germany and despite that appears to be quite prosperous and on par with the cities further west to our eyes. There are a few reminders of the communist past including the main avenue being called Yuri Gagarin Strasse.
Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet cosmonaut and the first man in space. He visited Erfurt after his flight and they named the main road after him. After the fall of communism they retained the name for the road. Ironically Gagarin never returned to space because after a fatal accident involving another cosmonaut they government decided it would be bad for the first man in space to die in a rocket accident so they sent him back to the Air Force. While retraining as a fighter pilot Gagarins Mig 15 crashed and he was killed.
We enjoyed Erfurt but decided to head back to the campground. It turned out to be a misadventure as I had us get on the right bus, but heading in the wrong direction. After a couple of stops we got off and crossed the road to get on the one going in the right direction, but the next bus didn’t come for 30 minutes it was the same bus we had got off so we might as well have gone on a city tour, the bus driver gave me a knowing nod when I waived our tickets at him. Not my best day.
When we returned to the campground I noticed that it was very full. Erfurt is not the kind of place that should fill up a campground on a Thursday in May. We had decided to move on to Frankfurt tomorrow, but I decided to check availability at the one campground in Frankfurt and found there was no room. While I looked at a couple of other places I asked Ton to see if this is a holiday weekend and it turns out it is Whitsunday and Whitmonday. So it is a long weekend both here and the Netherlands.
I tried several campgrounds on our route to Amsterdam and all of them were fully booked for the weekend. Our hope now is that they will let us extend here but we don’t even know if that is possible as we didn’t realize the problem until the office was closed.
So tomorrow is very much up in the air. The good news if worst comes to worst we can dry camp somewhere safe for a day or two on the way to Amsterdam.
