Travel Tips

The "real" Coburg is not a small town, but rather a large town or a small city. With a population of almost 50,000 people, Coburg's history separates it from just about any other small city in the world. The "spoof" in my introduction, while sort of accurate historically, at least as far as the events are concerned, the rest is purely my own imagination and I do apologize to anyone who finds it offensive. It was not my intention and I ask that you read on.

It is a matter of history that the Coburg royal family, as well as some of the city's aristocracy, did marry into the great families and royalty of Europe. The town is filled with examples of that history in its' museums, Ehrenburg Palace, Veste Coburg, as well as many of the beautiful patrician houses that dominate the countryside. It can be said that Coburg maintains it's presence as a royal city by proxy in that it can be envisaged as the "Queen Mother" for the royal houses of Europe.

For my visit to Coburg, I allowed only an afternoon and night plus the following morning, which was woefully inadequate. I do believe that this city deserves 2 full days and nights to really get a feel for the history and culture. Most of the tourists who visit here are from Germany and nearby European countries. It seems that the rest of the world's tourists seem to skirt this part of Germany which is a real loss for those who never visit this city.

Coburg is different. I noticed it almost on arrival. I did not know what the difference was, but I knew that I could feel it. I identified it that night after taking photographs around the market square. Because I was using a tripod, I attracted a certain amount of attention and a number of people walked over to see what I was seeing in my viewfinder. They all made suggestions about other good pictures in the city, and even gave me a short list of prospective photographs. One man stayed with me for about 15 minutes.

I prefer to take pictures in twilight's semi-darkness because I like to have a blue night sky as opposed to black (see photograph). That means that there is a very short period of about 20 minutes when the pictures will show a deep blue sky. Because of all of the "help" I was getting, I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted, but I did figure out what it was about Coburg that had struck me as different. A statement made by one of the people who was "assisting" came back to me when I was walking back to the hostel. She had said, "We just want your pictures to show how beautiful our city is." That is what stands out about Coburg to me. It is their personal and collective civic pride. Every person I talked to mentioned how much they love their city, and everywhere that pride showed.

Looking at the picture for this chapter, please notice that there is not a scrap of debris anywhere in the photo. The entire old city seems to be like that. While making my way up to the fortress, I met a man who was raking the crushed stone path (see Tips). He told me how much he enjoyed making his city pretty. At the outdoor cafes, gasthouses, ice vendors, etc., there is scarcely any liter to be seen. It took me some time to realize that the streets had not just been cleaned. At 9:30 PM there were many people on the streets or at the outdoor sections of the gasthouses. Many people were smoking, but few cigarette butts were on the cobblestones. I was not there long enough to know if it is always this clean, but I don't doubt that it is. I am not trying to say that the city is antiseptic, it's just clean and neat. In German, it is said, "Alles in ordinung." It translates like it sounds, "Everything is cool."