Worms Favorites

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Favorite thing: Haha, now this has a bit of VT history. The name of this city is Worms, and of course, Worms always meant Worms city for me, the city I grew up close to. When I was starting to write about Worms, Joan (scottishvisitor) dropped me a comment saying something about wiggling. It took me some time to realize what she meant and then I just could not stop laughing…. I never ever connected the name of the city to these little animals - one worm, more worms. And then, while reading in a little book about the city, I nearly fell of the chair from laughing and now I know, Joan was right in the beginning – Worms and worm(s) is not that far away from the meaning – lol.

So let me tell you the story I just learnt (and thanks to Fritz Reuter for writing about it in the little fascinating book about Worms’ gems):
Originally, the city was called Borbetomagus, a Celtic word meaning village in water-rich region (photo 1, from the Cathedral’s picture window). This adapted to Wormatia in Latin and became Worms later.

Fondest memory: Well, but for every official explanation there is always another one in form of a legend, which of course does sound way more interesting.
For Worms it is this one:
A beautiful young girl was captured by a dragon and everyone trying to rescue her ended up as yummie dragon lunch (or dinner, depending on the dragon’s sleeping habit). Finally a young and of course also beautiful blacksmith decided to put an end to all that dragon food. He made himself a steel jacket covered with sharp knives and went to say hello to the dragon. As expected, the hungry dragon ate him at once – but….. choked of course from all these knives – and sadly puffed out his last breath, erm… fire cloud. The brave blacksmith married the girl and they lived happily after at a place they named after the gruesome dragon, or worm (German name Wurm). Now Worms’ locals dialect transformed this into Worms, as Wurm is pronounced Worm in Worms’ dialect.
And voila :-)
Since then, the dragon is part of Worms’ coat of arms, at least on the one at the city’s town hall (see photo 2). And more worms = dragons, as the one sitting on top of the winegrowers' fountain, happily eating grapes (and not princesses).