William Townley 1866-1950 – footballer

Posted on 25 February 2015 by MMarks

Another Englishman in Fürth (see William Wilson, earlier entry).

William Townley’s career in the glorious days of Fürth football are well documented:

The following year he was hired by the northern Bavarian club SpVgg Fürth. This club owned the most advanced facilities in Germany and was quickly becoming the largest club in the country with a membership approaching 3,000. Two months after his arrival Fürth lost against English side Newcastle United only 1–2. He guided the club to its first two Bavarian championships (Ostkreismeisterschaft) which heralded the onset of a golden era that would last into the 1930s which saw the club become one of the most dominant football sides in the country.

except for a gap in the First World War:

In December 1913 Townley got the call from Bayern Munich, but on a loan arrangement he re-joined to Fürth in April of the following year to guide the that club through the national championship rounds. In the final Fürth captured its first national title, defeating defending champions VfB Leipzig, holders of a then record three German titles. It is not clear, but he may then have returned to Munich, before the horrors of World War I overtook the continent, obscuring knowledge of Townley’s activities during this period.

National Express to take over Nuremberg local rail network

Posted on 7 February 2015 by MMarks

National Express to run Nuremberg’s overground urban trains

12-year contract is first time German national rail company Deutsche Bahn has lost a big S-Bahn franchise

People in the UK don’t usually believe that British companies take over property in Germany – the tabloids give them the idea that it only happens the other way round.

I note that although the Fürth Oberbürgermeister, Thomas Jung (the only mayor I know who you can wave to in the street and he waves back), has had trouble with Deutsche Bahn for years – they are trying to drive the Nuremberg-Fürth line in a new direction through farmland, and are not keen to pay for the upkeep of Fürth railway station – he seems less than happy for Britishers to take over a German railway.

Streit um neuen S-Bahn-Betreiber: “NX weiß, wo Vach liegt”

Er befürchte bei der Umstellung „über Monate größte Verwerfungen“, sagte Jung ins Mikrofon, und weiter: “Neue Gesellschafter aus England – keine Ahnung, ob die überhaupt wissen, wo ein Bahnhof Vach oder ein Bahnhof Großgründlach liegen.”

Jung seemed only slightly mollified to hear that Tobias Richter, the head of National Express’s German subsidiary, is a Franconian, trained at Vach, worked from Fürth Hauptbahnhof for four years and knows that there is no station at Großgründlach now.

The local railway in the Nuremberg-Fürth-Erlangen conurbation is a fairly new enterprise. It has always been a real pain for students and others to commute from Nuremberg or Fürth to Erlangen – sometimes in the past standing in corridor trains. However, I hope National Express does well. I have stopped coming home late at night on their c2c Fenchurch Street trains as they are full of slightly inebriated people travelling to Essex and eating beefburgers, chips and curries. The District Line does have its virtues.

Football – Lokalderby

Posted on 13 August 2014 by MMarks

On Monday, there was a match between FC Nürnberg and Greuther Fürth. Both are in the 2. Liga at the moment.

Lisa Neun, one of the earliest bloggers I remember, who blogs cartoons from Fürth, also belongs to a group of Fürth supporters in Erlangen. See the cartoon Warum ich Frankenderbys liebe.

The reason why Greuther Fürth’s symbol is a green cloverleaf has nothing to do with the Germans’ love of Irish pubs. The cloverleaf is a symbol found all over Fürth architecture – for reasons unknown – and green is the club’s colour.

Fürth won by 5 to 1 and the Nuremberg fans contributed some real fireworks.

Millionaires shortbread/Englisches Flair

Posted on 9 January 2014 by MMarks

Apparently millionaires’ shortbread was invented in Australia in the 1970s, but it has become very popular in the UK recently. It is a confection made for the hoi polloi (like me), but it seems that England-Fans in Fürth are selling it as ‘the British biscuit for the more aristocratic Londoners’:

Dafür empfehlen die England-Fans besonders diverse Varianten des Millionaire’s Shortbread. Ob mit Schokolade, mit Karamell- oder leichter Whiskey-Note – das britische Teegebäck für die nobleren Londoner bietet ein besonderes Geschmackserlebnis – und ist nach dem Weihnachtsfest mit seinen Stollen und Plätzchen eine echte Alternative.

Blasentee

Posted on 30 December 2012 by MMarks

I tried some Husten- und Bronchialtee recently when I had a cold, but it didn’t seem to help, perhaps because I didn’t believe in it enough. Tee (tea) has a wide meaning in German and most of these teas sound like the condition they are supposed to avert. As one of the tweets quoted by Bettina says, Blasentee (bladder tea, diuretic tea) is not the same as bubble tea.