The Fastest Car In The World

While riding the bus in Berlin on Saturday, David spotted the VW showcase (? - museum?).  I'm not sure what to call the place but we made sure not to miss going inside and seeing this beauty:

We first saw this car on our favorite show, Top Gear.

It is so pretty in person.

I just wish I could hear the sound of the engine in person.  If I did, I think I would melt.

We saw all sorts of wonderful cars while driving on the Autobahn.  Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and more Porsche's than you can shake a stick at.  Not to mention all the Audis and VW's everyone was driving, even the taxis were Mercedes.  But this one surpasses them all.  What a treat.  What a car.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

We arrived home on Tuesday in the early evening. It was nice to be greeted by Matt and Michele and their girls. Michele was kind enough to bring us supper. We ate and then went to greet Grandpa and Grandma for a short time. By 7:30 or 8:00 pm we were all in bed and most were sound asleep.

It was quite refreshing to sleep in our own beds. And still a bit on German time, plus going to bed so early, we were all awake by 6am. Today we will spend getting back into the swing of daily life tasks.

We are sorry we haven't posted in several days. When we arrived in Berlin we were without Internet access. We do plan on continuing to post about our trip as we sort through the all the pictures and remember our wonderful time.

Not a Mundane Monday

We had planned to spend the day in Eisenach touring the Bach house, the Luther house, and the Wartburg castle. We did those things but first, at the invitation from Pr. Kallensee, we drove to Gotha.

Pr. Kallansee you may remember serves three parishes. Gotha is one of them and also the city in which he lives. He invited us to see his church and also a quick walking tour of the town.

Here are some pictures of his church:

 

 

 

 

Here are some pictures of Gotha:

The kids looking at the city view.

 

Pr. Kallensee explaining the meaning on the door of the chapel of the castle we were walking around:

 

 

Lucas Cranach the Elder's wife came from this city. This building is where she was born.

After about an hour Pr. Kallensee had to teach a class but first invited us into his home, a parsonage right across the street. We were able to meet his wife who served us coffe, water, or juice, plus a little snack. We visited for a bit and discovered they too have five children. Three girls and two boys. Their two youngest are the same ages as ou Hannan and Nathan. Unfortunately we couldn't stay very long and said good bye to our new friends.

We drove on to Eisenach and decided to tour the Wartburg first. But when we bought our tickets we realized we first had time for lunch. We ate at the restaurant at the top of the castle. Who would want to climb down all those stairs and back up again? Just for lunch? Not us!

After lunch, we had a nice tour of the Wartburg. It was a small English group and our guide did a very nice job. After the tour, we quickly went through the museum rooms and ended at the Luther room, our whole purpose for visiting.

Oops, that picture is on Hannah's camera and she is in bed already. I will post it another day!

It was here that Luther was taken after he was kidnapped and lived for ten months as Junker Georg. In about eleven of those weeks he translates the New Testament into German.

 

 

We then toured the Luther house and the Bach house before calling it a day. More about those visits in another post.

 

Organs

Just some pictures of my favorite instrument so you can see how its appearance matches the beauty of its voice.

The organs in St. Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Yes, There are two. Yes, I am jealous.

The organ in the chapel of the Augustinian Monastary in Erfurt

The organ in St Peter and St Paul's church in Eisleben

The organ in St. Mary's dome in Erfurt

At the Weißkirche

At the church in the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt

At a church either in Gotha or in Eisenach, my memory fails me

At the church where Bach was baptized

At St. Andrew's in Eisleben

At the Schlosskirche

 

Please forgive any mistakes I made in trying to name all the churches and please also overlook the sometimes horrible pictures. It's hard to take pictures in churches.

Hannah

Bach in Black

Yes, I totally did just combine Bach and ACDC... What is this world coming to?

Bach has been my favorite composer for as long as I can remember. So it has been extremely fun to see the Bach sites here in Eisenach, Mühlhausen, and Leipzig.

 

In Eisenach we toured his birth house. When mom and dad came to Germany five years ago they didn't get to see the museum. But this time we did and it was well worth our time.

This is a plaque in the church where he was baptized, only a few blocks away from the Birth house.

One room was dedicated to Bach's settings and variations of Luther hymns. You could listen to an orchestra and/or choir perform the piece while reading about the hymn, a backstory on why Luther wrote it, and how Bach wrote his setting. Interesting fact 1: Bach and Luther went to the same Latin school in Eisenach.

At the birth house there was also a live music performance every hour which we got to attend. The man played on two organs and three harpsichords, and explained something to the group which we couldn't understand because everything he said was in German. I picked up a little, but not enough to really tell you anything. :) Interesting fact 3: services in Bach's day started at 7:00 and went on for three to four hours.

When we were in Mühlhausen we got to see a church were Bach was organist for a year. Like there is often is here, there was a statue outside of Bach that we posed with. Interesting fact 2: Bach was put in jail for four weeks for, and I quote, "Obstinacy"

 

In Leipzig we went to another Bach museum, once again one that mom and dad had never been to. It was also very good, we got to see a bunch of instruments from his day and the organ console from the church in Leipzig where he held the position of organist for over 20 years. Interesting fact 4: Bach wrote a new cantata every week for the upcoming Sunday. Feast days got especially elaborate ones and his St. Matthew's Passion has over 60 pieces, all of which would have been played on Good Friday.

At both museums we got to see books from his huge theological library. We got to see a few of his bibles and even some Luther books that he owned. It was also neat to read that one of his bibles, called the Cavlov bible, is owned by the St. Louis Seminary.

Stained glass windows in St. Thomaskirche of Bach and Luther respectively.

We also got to see St. Thomaskirche, where he was cantor. The organ he played on no longer exists and the console is in the museum, but it was still very neat to see the church where he played organ and where some of his most famous pieces were first played. It is also where he was buried.

 

And in case you're wondering, there weren't pictures allowed in the museums so that's why there aren't any from the museums in this post.

Hannah

Can't See Everything

We left Erfurt on Tuesday morning. We had planned to stop in Weimar to see the famous Lucas Cranach altar painting, and then a stop in Eisleben to see Luther's birth house, death house, and baptismal church before finally arriving in Leipzig for our overnight stay.

When we got to Weimar and parked we walked to St. Thomas. We noticed much construction on the outside, found the door to go inside, and saw this:

 

 

Yes, it was totally under construction. They were doing archeological digging leading to restoration. The organ was covered, the walls were covered, even the famous altar piece was covered.

 

I'm sure it will look marvelous when it is all done, but it was a bit disappointing to come see in person one of our very favorite paintings and not be able to. Ah, such is the nature of travel.

We drove on to Eisleben and did see the churches and the birth house, but not the death house as it too was under construction. I guess this means we will just have to come back another time eh?

Churchly Ideas

German churches have been a fertile ground for David to gather new ideas for his church back home in America.

First, at St. Peter's Cathedral in Vatican City, he discovered outfits that would help everyone identify the on-duty elders and ushers.

What do you think elders and ushers? Do you want to dress like the prestigious Swiss Guard?

Second, while at the Museum of Crime and Punishment in Rothenburg aub der Tauber, he learned a technique to insure better attendance and attentiveness at church.

 

Finally, while being shown around our sister church in Gotha, he noticed that Pr. Kallensee has figured out how to get his parishioners to sit close enough that they can actually be identified from the pulpit. Here are the back rows in his church:

Don't you think those are good ideas?

Sunday Afternoon

After our wonderful morning worshipping in Mühlhausen and having a brief tour of the city we went for a Sunday afternoon drive through the German countryside. That sounds pleasant doesn't it?

Our goal was to find the place where Luther was kidnapped and taken to the Wartburg castle. Rachel, David's cousin's wife, had told us it was a neat spot to see if we had a car and gave us these directions to find this out of the way spot:

"It's not far off of the L 1027 (the name of a road) from (the town of) Steinbach in the direction of (the town of) Ruhla, where after a curve on the right side of the road, a sign is posted on a small forest path."


But we were now coming from the north, so we pulled out the map we purchased the second day we had the van and looked at the map. We saw where we needed to go and headed south towards Eisenach using our GPS.

Our intent was to find a place to eat soon as everyone was a bit hungry but found no place until Eisenach. And finding a place to eat was no easy feat because we didn't have a clue where we were going or an idea of a place to eat and tensions rose with the heat.

Finally after much driving this way and that through the city of Eisenach, we found a Thuringian Bratwurst Stand at the side of the road. We gladly paid the parking fee, ordered brats, cappuccinos, waters, and sat in the hot sun. Don't try this at home. Instead save your tasty brats for when you can wash them down with a good dunkleweiss beer or save your cappuccino for a nice afternoon sitting in the rocking chair on the front porch. But please don't have your brat with your cappuccino while sitting in the hot sun. Save that for the clueless Americans driving through the German countryside on a Sunday afternoon.

Now that we were refreshed, ahem, we climbed back into the van and proceeded south. This time we put the GPS destination as Steinbach and followed along. We were now driving through the Thuringian Forest and the road was perfect for a Porsce 911. However David was driving a nine passenger VW Caravelle and it just wasn't the same experience.

It was a winding road, proceeding up and down and all around through the hills. Here's a picture from google maps:

 

And here is one I tried to snap out the front windshield:

 

And to get a better picture, think of how little children like to scribble on a piece of paper. Have that image? Good, that is what the road was like. And all the sporty cars and motorcycles behind did not appreciate David's cautiousness.

But we did eventually find the spot. And it was just a sign by a curve (having driven that road, that now makes us laugh). After pulling off and parking, we hiked a bit down the path.

 

 

There we found the monument marking the spot of Luther's kidnapping.

We stayed for a short time and headed back to the van. We were all ready to be back at the hostel and David was more than ready to be off that winding road with all its many, many double backs.

But no, we still had more of that road to go because we took a wrong turn and drove through part of the town of Steinbach. It is located on the valley and hill below the spot of Luther's kidnapping. A quaint, pretty town, but with roads that get narrower and still are supposed to be wide enough for two vehicles. We quickly turned around when we realized our wrong direction and took that winding road once again.

Finally after about ten kilometers of that winding road and about ten more kilometers of country roads, relief came in the form of the autobahn. It is definitely a day we will not forget.

 

Mühlhausen

Here are some of the pictures we saw on our quick walk around the city of Mühlhausen on Sunday after church. It is not on the list of cities that tourists visit in Germany, but it is just as full of history and beautiful streets as the more popular tourist cities. It will be on our list to explore more deeply on a future visit.

The old city wall from medieval times.

 

One of the many pretty streets:

A gargoyle on one of the churches we saw. Many of these churches are now museums.

 

 

 

On the side of one building there were several of these figures. They amused me.

 

 

What would you think of having this type of downspout on your home?

 

The man who was the architect for the Brooklyn Bridge was born in this house in Mühlhausen.