That tower is actually one of the suites-not your everyday hotel room!
As we were packing up the car to leave, the hotel owner came by and seeing the car he got talking to me and wanted to show me something in the garage...
A vintage BMW but I've forgotten what year it was from.
Once the luggage was stowed we sail goodbye to the Burg Hotel and set off on a pleasant drive to Bayreuth less than two hours away.
We'd first visited Bayreuth for the Wagner festival in 1999. In 2002 while staying in Berlin we had driven there to have dinner and visit Wagner's grave-a round trip of 400 miles (crazy!)
This time it would just be an overnight stop, staying at the Arvena Congress hotel and would also include a backstage tour of the Wagner Festspielhaus- Wagner's theater which hosts the annual summer festival which began in 1876.
Here's the theater
The backstage tour would be conducted in German so we understood some of it, a few phrases here and there, but it was worth doing it (if you're a fan of Wagner, that is)
The inside of the theater is made of wood and there's no carpet on the floor to dull the sound so the acoustics are very warm and "wet". The sound is crystal clear and smooth, never muddy nor brash.
There are wooden seats for 1925 people. The boxes are at the rear only so there's nothing distracting along the walls. The doors leading into the theater are on the sides, unlike normal opera houses and each door feeds into only 4 rows so it is very quick to fill when the audience enters and really quick to empty at intermissions.
It's a theater where Wagner wanted the singers to be heard above the orchestra (which can have as many as 120 players in the pit making quite a racket at times -which is fine by me!) and also he wanted the orchestra to be unseen so that viewers wouldn't be distracted by watching the musicians.
The orchestra pit is deep and runs from the auditorium to under the stage. It is hidden by a curved wooden hood as you'll see from this photo I took when standing near the edge of the stage.
The audience only sees the stage and the scenery on it and the room is plunged into darkness when the music starts-something that wasn't typical until Wagner came along in the 1840's.
Here are some of the many side doors that get people in and out fast
After the 45 minute tour we enjoyed visiting the gardens that surround the theater
There's a quiet garden with a bust of Wagner
The gardens are enjoyed by patrons during the opera intermissions which are an hour long,
Everyone has time to visit the bathrooms, have a sit down meal indoors and out (served in courses and reservations are needed) There are also snack stands outside where you can have beer and pretzels or bratwurst and the service is fast.
You can wander away from the crowds with your drinks and find a bench to sit on and find yourself surrounded by natural beauty. Members of the orchestra's brass section will come out 15 minutes before the performance to play a short refrain from the upcoming act. They repeat this at 10 minutes, then 5 minutes before the act begins. The sound travels to all corners of the garden and is your signal to return to the theater.
We like to sit down by the pond with it's beautiful willow trees
After our tour and our walk in the gardens it was time to get back in the car and head downtown to Richard Wagner street where his last (of many) homes stands
Here we relax in his back garden
Wagner and his wife Cosima (daughter of Franz Liszt) are buried among the trees in the back yard in a very simple stone grave above ground. There are always bouquets of flowers placed there from people from far flung places like South Africa and Japan.
Our one evening in Bayreuth was centered around having a nice dinner in a favorite restaurant-Weihenstephan on Bahnhof Strasse. Eating outdoors of course on a warm September evening.
Back at the hotel I met our waiter from our first visit in 1999-Herr Hemmel from Tunisia and remembering him to be a BMW enthusiast took him out to show him the new car. We would meet again on our next visit in 2013 and he recognized me after 10 years.
A good night's sleep was followed by a delicious buffet breakfast and we were packed and ready for the next leg of our tour. We would again be heading into unknown territory- North to stay in a castle hotel high above the river Rhine, a river we only knew from photographs and TV shows.
We left Bayreuth in our rearview mirror and joined the Autobahn for a brisk drive....
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