The long return, Thu, 02 Jul 2020 | written by Simon
Jemma and Simon at a City, Museum in Europe, Germany

Yesterday, we made the trip from Meissen to just outside of Bayreuth. We were hoping to park at a lake to have a evening swim, but the first one we arrived to was tiny and had some teenagers partying by it, and the other turned out to be behind an industrial park and was quite smelly and full of mosquitos. So we gave up on the idea, decided to find a proper pool tomorrow instead, and found a quiet spot on some suburban street.

In the morning, we took our time getting up – need some laziness, this journey has been full on so far! We caught up on the journal and found an open outdoors swimming pool. But when we got there, it turned out that some lessons are going on and it won’t open to the public until 1pm. And so we ended up going to visit Wagner sooner than we thought.

Honestly, they don’t mess about in the Wagner House. From the start, the whole narrative is very much about Wagner’s antisemitism, his daughter-in-law’s close friendship with Hitler, and just all of the horrible things. It’s depressing, but also refreshingly honest and open. We often hear the argument that we can’t take down statues of horrible people, because by doing so we are erasing history, together with the lessons from their horribleness. Honestly, if there is one person on Earth for whom this argument works, it seems to be Wagner as he’s presented in his chosen home city. There is nothing apologetic about it, nobody is trying to excuse him and his family, and the Wagner festival has often presented very critical scenic interpretations of his work. Really well done.

The Liszt museum next door was unfortunately closed, so we just went to town, walked around a bit, ate some pastries, played with a dinosaur, and got some cash. Didn’t mention so far, but one interesting thing about Germany – you can rarely pay by card and there aren’t many ATMs around. It’s a bit of a pain, to be honest, and seems particularly odd in the time of pandemic where you’d really want to use contactless as much as possible.

Finally, we were ready for the swimming pool. The only open one in town was an outdoors pool park, with the restriction of a max 1000 people. There were about 20 inside. Us included. Everything was switched off – no slides, no waves, no jets, not even hot showers. Even with that, I doubt they can earn enough to pay the lifeguards they need to have. We had to wash our hair in the sink, but damn it’s good to be clean. Jemma got an instant +100 to life satisfaction.

Next step: Wagner’s Festival Theatre. We couldn’t get in (only pre-arranged tour groups now), but we had a great time walking around it and having some delicious food cooked on our gas stove in front of the main entrance. No better way to celebrate a composer’s greatness than to have a meal with him.

After the theatre, we just drove and drove and drove: France, here we come!