Day 7 - Bamberg

Bamberg is a city of about 75,000 people, with 8000 of those being students at the university there. Bamberg boasts the highest density of breweries in the world. It is also known for a smokey tasting beer that smells like BBQ sauce and tastes like ass. (I'm not making these facts up.) There was a nice gothic cathedral called The Dom and a beautiful rose garden (though it's just a bush garden at this time of year) and some quaint little buildings on cobble stone streets. The city hall has a large baroque mural on one side and there are some nice sculptures around town.

We found another lovely cafe with free wireless after our city tour today. It was the perfect day for cafe internet surfing -- overcast and most of the shops were closed. Ranjana had a Schokolade "Spicy" and I had a "HOT SPICY CHAI". They both had crushed red pepper sprinkled on the foam. The cafe is called Liv Coffee & Shop and is run by Karen (Kah-ren), a very bubbly 68-year-young woman who should be a part of everyone's tour of Bamberg. Her 42-year-old son, Swen, a moto-crossing single dad who lives in The Dom, owns the cafe. She jovially calls herself his "sclava" (slave). She says that his job has something to do with looking after the catherdal and he has keys to a secret network of underground tunnels. Karen doesn't speak much English, but she was somehow able to speak German in a way that we could understand her. It helped that she likes to act everything out and write down names and numbers. She told us all about her family, where she's from and where she's been. I could feel myself learning German for the first time. Or then again, maybe we completely misunderstood her and I made all that up. In any case, just when we made a friend, it was time to set sail again...