july 25

July 24th (sunny with rain)
Bubi had a lovely breakfast table set for us, including flowers and traditional music playing. It has been 35 years since we have seen Bubi and he seems genuinely excited to see us and talk about old times. Bubi is a batchelor living alone in the house and his main interest in life is travel. He has been around the world five times by ship and everywhere in the house are souvenirs of his travels.
After breakfast, we drove in our van around the perimeter of Nurnberg avoiding the traffic congestion. We visited the house, Geismann’s Hof, which the entire Nerreter rented for approx. nine years immediately after the war as their house was totally flattened by bombing. Then we drove into the old section of Nurnberg and Bubi took us on a “blitz” tour of the city. One interesting stop was Jakob’s Church in which both Bubi and Jurgen (Georg) were baptized. That was a bit of an emotional moment.
We returned to Bubi’s house where we tapped a keg of Austrian beer and ate a meat salad appetizer that Georg totally enjoyed anticipating Helmut’s visit. Helmut, Bubi and Lewis all travelled throughout North America and Mexico in 1963 for three months using, at that time, a Greyhound promotion – “$1.00 a day”. Bubi prepared a delicious potato dumpling, roast pork and salad dinner followed by some Oktoberfest beer which he had saved for us. After draining the keg of beer, plus the specialty beers and wines and cognacs, I was kaput by 9:30. Georg lasted another hour. He was not kaput from the alcohol, but from the food and thought he was going to explode.