August 10th, drive through the racist town Quedlinburg

Today was the final leg of our vacation journey - it went by so quickly!

We escaped hectic Holiday Inn express in Frankfurt and met up with Romiks at the old town square later in the morning. After a quick discussion a consensus was reached to keep get on our way so that we could visit a few sights on the way to Berlin.

The first stop was magnificent Marburg. Home to the university that educated brothers Grimm (and Lomonosov) the town is filled with little exhibits reminding of the stories in their books. A giant shoe, huge flies sitting on the book store building at the old town square and more. Adults who built the town made sure that their fancies will be served too: the town-hall door is right out of the fairytale for the overgrown gnomes. We agonized about taking a break from our drive to sit down at a cellar bar that looked and smelled perfect. The castle complex at the top of the hill was beautifully architected ensuring a good combination of effective and whimsical. It was first built in 1248. We were sad to see it go when we got on our way.

After another 3.5 hours stopped at another Unesco town -Quedlinburg. Its famous for its half- timbered homes - over a 1000 of them. The boys had to look for another parking spot so the ladies got our way through the park to the old town square. I was surprised to see a young girl emerge from the bathroom and crouch down with a cigarette - a lot of people smoke in Germany (areas we visited) but she looked only slightly older than our 12 year olds. Then a little boy came out of the bathroom joined by a man in his late 20s- father/husband? slovenly dressed in a dirty “wife beater” unfazed by the girl smoking. We stared as several more men came out looking very much the same but unrelated to the prior group.

Perplexed we got on our way and soon settled down in a seafood restaurant near the main square. They have a private seating in a little garden with a lemon tree and a leafy koi pond without the fish. Boys joined us. Dan ran out to visit a few stores around before they close at 6pm and got lucky, like a whole little lot bag lucky. 

The waitress, kindly older woman who knew not a lick of English, was very patient with kids - it was funny watching them discuss the portion sizes using the body language. The food was excellent.

We rolled out onto the main town square and saw that it was locked in from all directions because they had some kind of town fair going on. Other than a few merry go-arounds and several food vendors we did not see any great perks that would warrant 5 or 8 euro entry fee but we did want to see the main square. So we said to the ticket sellers that we just want to go through and they let us in. 

The center was lovely - we strolled taking in the old sights in between the colorful vendor booths. That’s when there was some commotion near another entry gate near us and Dan looking very tense urged us to get out of the town square. 

Turns out there was an Indian man with a little girl who said in English to one of the entry guards that they are staying at the hotel on the main square and asked if they could be allowed in. The guard grabbed the man by his neck and dragged him to the building he was pointing to, little girl following horrified. 

Would we get the same treatment if we looked Indian? Suddenly it did not seem that impossible and we looked at this town in a different light. What if told him we are Jewish? This appalling lack of dignity with everyone watching and no one saying a word. If anyone from Unesco organization is reading, stop by at this town for a bit. Designating something as a World Heritage site means that the entire humanity deserves equal access the site. Perhaps a few folks in town need some retraining for the town to keep this designation.

We got on our way and soon arrived to our final pension-hotel in Berlin. To our happiness it was located in the same neighborhood as the last one but was even bigger and more glorious with enormous high ceilings and the balcony. 

Kids stayed up until after midnight repacking our luggage so that we will be all set for sanitation when we get home.