Saarbrücken; Sunday, 18 October, 2020

I woke up to a thick fog blanketing the city, with the opposite side of the river barely visible from my hotel room. It also meant that I’d not been woken up by any light or sound leaking in from outside and so I was rudely woken up by my alarm.

I had another slightly odd breakfast in the hotel restaurant before heading back up to my room and packing so that I would be ready to go once I got back to the hotel from my morning museum visit.

When I’d looked at the Historical Museum of Saar it had looked quite small and I though that would be an easy museum to tick off on Sunday morning before I started my journey home. It turned out that the museum is an iceberg with only the very tip of it being visible on the surface and probably 95% of it being out of sight below. The museum itself stretches underneath the neighbouring castle, making use of many of the cellars of the building as exhibition space, but even that isn’t the lowest level as it also drops down into the old moat of the castle, with the 15th and 16th century walls and bastions ruined, but still in situ beneath the modern palace.

Consequently, I didn’t really do the museum the justice it deserves, but I managed to have a look round many of the exhibitions. There is, of course, a lot on the history of the region which has been dramatic to say the least. In the 20th Century alone it left and re-joined Germany twice (both departures being after the wars, and resulted in France getting her hands on all of Saarland’s coal). In the 1920’s it was a protectorate of the League of Nations before voting by over 90% to re-join Germany just as the Nazi’s came to power. Following WWII it become it’s own independent nation, albeit with France once again controlling it’s coal reserves. Finally in a referendum in the late 1950s the country of Saarland voted to re-join West Germany (the first German reunification) as the 10th State in the country (the other 6 joining in 1990 when the reunification everyone knows about took place).

From the museum I headed straight back to the hotel, grabbed my bag and checked out before wandering through an almost deserted city centre back to the station. German shops are normally closed on a Sunday, so this was no different to any other city, but all the cafes, restaurants and even the small food carts were also closed up, and I didn’t pass more than a half dozen people on my way to the station – it looks like Saarland takes it Sundays seriously.

The train was equally quiet most of the way back to Mainz, only filling up in the last couple of stops. I’d brought a cheap regional ticket, that was nearly €15 less than the through fare, but that was only valid to Mainz and I had originally intended on hopping off the train here, getting a local ticket and then getting the S-Bahn down to the airport. It turns out that you can buy local transport company single and day tickets on the Deutscher Bahn app, so as we approached Mainz I brought a single through to the airport and was able to stay put for the last 25 minutes.

Of course, this did mean that by the time I arrived at the airport I had over three hours until my flight, but that did mean I could grab an early dinner and take it slowly through to the gate.

Weather

Foggy Sunny Intervals
AM PM
Warm (10-20C, 50-68F)
11ºC/52ºF