Tour #13: Goethe’s Journey
Weimar – Thuringian Forest – Meiningen
A journey by mail-coach along the Classic Roads,on the old route of the Prince-Thurn-und Taxis Mail
„On top of the Yellow
Carriage...“
......who does not know this popular folk song. It reminds one of a time, long
before rail roads, cars and aircrafts, when the horse drawn mail was the only
means of a regular and reliable transport of news and men.
The trotting of the horses, the rolling wheels on cobbled streets, the sound of the post horn have disappeared. Mail coach man and posthorn, however, have become symbols of the good old times, which seem to have been in the memory more colorful, more comfortable, cosier, more tasteful than in the reality of those times.
Johan Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Haendel and Robert Schumann used the tune of the posthorn. For Johann Wolfang von Goethe, one of the most frequent traveling poets of his time, the mail-coach journey itself had become even the parable of the way of life in the poem „An Schwager Chronos“.
Traveling by mail-coach in those times might have been more tiring than nowadays, but it was not more boring: The traveler could better receive the impressions and report later the experiences in long letters to home. A piece of poetry has disapperaed together with the mail-coach, which had had its place in the hearts of the people.
These bygone days can now relived: A mail coachman in historic livery drives an original four- or five-in-hand coach. The coach offers 8-9 seats. From Weimar the tour runs to the moat house of Gross-Kochberg and to Ilmenau, onto on the top of the Thuringian Forest and via the medieval town of Schleusingen to Meiningen, the city of the theaters. Five days pure romanticism!
By the way: you will be surprised by the comfort and how easy this original coach out of 1860 rides!
Itinerary
Day 1: Weimar
Individual arrival
Overnight: 5* hotel „Elephant“
Things to see: Goethe’s house, Schiller’s house, the Wittums palace, German
National Theater
On request: guided tour through Weimar, dinner in the „Elephant cellars“
Day 2: Gross-Kochberg
Overnight in a simple pension inside the moat house
Things to see: the moat house, former home of Charlotte von Stein, the elder
mentor of the young Goethe, amateur theater
On request: chamber concert
Day 3: Ilmenau-Gabelbach
Overnight: 4* hotel Gabelbach
Things to see: Goethe’s hunting lodge, all wellness opportunities
On request: gourmet dinner in the Romantic Mountain and Hunting hotel
Day 4: Schleusingen
Overnight: 3* hotel „Golden Lion“
Things to see: Berthold’s Castle, museum of of natural sciences, the Henneberg
Highschool, the monastery of Vessra, the Henneberg farm museum
Day 5: Meiningen
Overnight: Romantic 4* hotel „Saechsischer Hof“
Things to see: Southern Turingian State Theater, theater museum, castle
Elisabethenburg, English Garden, fortified churches
On request: visit of the Theater, festive dinner in the
Romantic hotel
Day 6:
Individual departure
On request: Transfer from Meiningen to Frankfurt
Included: