Mainz, Cathedral City and Carnival Stronghold

Pencil Sketches

Blog 13


Until I immigrated to Canada, I was lucky to live in a beautiful and central part of the Rhine-Main area that consists of some regions of Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Bavaria. I was born in Rüsselsheim, the city famous for Opel, the car factory, now General Motors. Rüsselsheim is at the river Main between Frankfurt and Mainz.


When I was seven years old, my family moved to the adjacent small town called Nauheim, where I lived most of my youth. In my early adulthood, I moved to Königstädten, a suburb of Rüsselsheim.

 

Whenever we needed new clothes, my mother drove us to the big department stores in Mainz, the capital of the Rhineland-Palatinate, less than 20 km away. Although you can shop well at the modern department stores and shops, Mainz has so much more to offer. The city has a beautiful historic town centre with many half-timbered houses and market squares. It is famous for its Mainz Cathedral, the Mainz Carnival, Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, and the Mainzelmännchen, the happy cartoon characters that are the mascots of the German public service television broadcaster ZDF. In Mainz, you can even cross the streets at one of the many Mainzelmännchen traffic lights for pedestrians.

Fastnachtsbrunnen

During my spring visit, I was not fit enough to go sightseeing or shopping. Instead, my sister and I enjoyed a relaxed brunch at a café near the famous Fastnachtsbrunnen, a fountain with about 200 carnival characters, a reminder of the Fifth Season, the carnival season between November 11 at 11 AM and Ash Wednesday. The city celebrates this season with parades and many carnival sessions.

Instead, we observed the happy visitors passing the Schillerplatz. Watching the busy surroundings was a highlight and a challenging exercise in capturing some people around us. It was much easier to draw the Gardetrommler (Guard Drummer) on the other side of the road. At least he didn’t move.

Bassenheimer Hof

Around the place, you can admire the beautiful Osteiner and Bassenheimer Hof, magnificent palace buildings of the aristocracy. Nowadays, the Osteiner Hof is an apartment building.

Augustiner Kirche

Walking back to the train station, we passed the Staatstheater Mainz (Mainz State Theatre), where you can watch opera, drama and dance performances. After a quick view of the marketplace and the cathedral, we turned into the Augustinerstraße, a cobblestone road with many historic buildings that house boutiques and restaurants. The area is a pedestrian zone making it a wonderful place to stroll and sit outside to eat. The Augustinerkirche (Church of St. Augustin) is one of the elaborate examples of the ecclesiastical architecture of the past.



Luckily, there is a direct connection from Mainz to the small train station in Nauheim, which made it very convenient for us to use public transportation to make our outing even more enjoyable.



While writing this blog, I realized how much I could tell you about Nauheim, the small city where I grew up. I will tell you more about it in two weeks.