Today's time schedule for the morning was a little more humane, which was good, since we did not have a great night's sleep in that overly warm room. Mine was, in fact, lousy. We got up at 6:58. The bags were to be out at 8 and my husband put them out, when he went to breakfast at 7:53. I left about 8 and had a very long wait for the elevator, because they were using one of them for luggage.
The breakfast spread was good, but the dining room was already warm.
We went back up to brush our teeth and collect our hand luggage. We were to depart at 8:45 and we were forced to give up on the elevator and use the stairs. We stowed my bag at the seats two ahead of where we were yesterday, as was the preordained pattern. We broke out the headsets, which the guide was now calling "whispers". The group then headed off for the Luther House.
We were walking along the same main street as yesterday, but in the opposite direction. Some of the buildings were old and others were obviously more modern. I really liked this apartment building.
We'd already seen Luther products at the hotel and a shop, including mugs, chocolate, noodles, etc.
If we didn't find all the Luther stuff we wanted on the trip, we figured we could buy it on line, based on this sign.
One building we passed was the Melanchthon House, where he lived, taught and died. I'd never heard of him before and had to learn how to say his name. Over the course of the day, I learned more about him, even though we didn't go in this building.
At the end of the street, we came to the Luther House. We passed through a passageway with quotes in German by Luther. The courtyard that we entered was bright and sunny and the day was warming up.
We had been split into two groups and we hung out with our city tour guide, Matthias, in the courtyard, awaiting our turn to go in the building. He was a young guy, who did this on weekends. He did finance for a nearby town. His wife is a full-time city tour guide and I was really surprised to learn his daughter is 8. He did not seem that old. The wife recently got to play Luther's wife in a town parade and the daughter played the young version of Luther's wife. Quite an honor for one family.
This building had been where Luther lived as a monk. As the Reformation progressed, the monks cleared out and he lived here alone. When he married Katharina von Bora, this is where they made their home and he taught. I had not had high opinion of her before the trip, but when I learned she'd entered the convent at 4, my feelings toward her softened. That is not an age at which you make an informed decision and she'd never really had the chance to experience life on the outside. So, her decision to leave the convent was more understandable. She was charged with not only taking care of the family, but overseeing their property and taking care of the students. He called her "Mr. Katie", according to Matthias, because of how well she ran everything leaving him to his religious studies. (This phrase bothered me a lot and he said it more than once. Searching on the internet, I found that Luther did indeed call her "Herr Käthe", which can be translated as Mr. Katie. However, for that time period, that is inaccurate. That usage corresponds more closely to "my Lord Katie", as in lord of the manor. She was doing the work of the lord of the manor. "My Lord Katie" is how wikipedia.org translates the wikipedia.de version of her bio. I felt so much better after that research!)
They had an exhibition called, " Martin Luther: Leben-Werk-Wirkung" (Martin Luther: Life-Work-Effect). The panel of the Ten Commandments by Lucas Cranach, the famous artist who lived in the town and ran his workshop there, was not on display, but they did have a nice picture of it. Later, I saw that the colors in the picture are much brighter than in the actual piece. We found out that yellow was a sign of evil and sin back then.
We saw the incredibly fancy podium where lectures were delivered, as well as Luther's Stube with its beautifully preserved wood, where he had his "Table Talks".
I picked up a couple of postcards before we left at 10:05. Matthias led us through the town telling us about it and Luther. A lot of his high school classmates left town to look for other opportunities, since post-reunification there were not a lot to be had in the area.
Along the way, I saw a giant version of the Playmobil Luther that I had picked up yesterday.
He took us to the ev St. Marien church, the "Mother Church of the Reformation". We had a few minutes to look around inside and I'm fairly certain that there was a sign that you had to pay to take photos, that the folks totally ignored. It was a nice church, but it had been stripped of a lot of nice Catholic things, I'm sure. The choir loft and organ were certainly pretty.
When we went past the town square, Matthias noted that it had statues of Luther and Melanchthon, the latter of which I had not noticed last night.
The town really is lovely and nice to walk. Even the drainage canals are pretty.
At 11, we were at the Schloßkirche, where we'd gone last night and the tour was over. Matthias made lunch suggestions and we gave him a 2 Euro tip, because he'd been so good. After taking photos of my husband and the two of us at the famous door, we headed back to St. Marien to buy postcards. My husband found the location of the Catholic St. Marien and considerately suggested we go there.
It's a very lovely church and rather small by European standards. I noticed signs all around and upon reading them, noticed they were all in German with no translation and were explanations of whatever they were near. I realized that they were meant to explain a Catholic church to a non-Catholic, such as the many tourists coming through this year. A woman came up to us and said that there would be a reading at noon in German, but to keep looking around. We each decided independently to sit and listen to the reading, which was a letter from St. John XXIII. I really liked this place!
When we came out at 12:08, it was overcast and there were a few drops of rain. The needle crafts store across the street had closed and we decided to enter the Arsenal Mall, as an entrance was right there. We found a Drogerie and went in to find large bandages, as I'd run through the few large ones I'd brought after cutting myself badly the first night while shaving. We also found coffee for my husband to bring home, which would save us from looking for it later. That sweet man stopped at the flower stand to buy me a rose as a one-day-early commemoration of our anniversary tomorrow. It came in a water tube, which was great.
When we left the mall at 12:20, it was sunnier. We headed for one of Matthias' recommendations the Wittenberger Kartoffelhaus, which we reached in 8 minutes. It is really charming inside, with lots of wood. We found a table inside and commenced to reading the large menu that was printed on the placemats. 77 items from appetizers to desserts, and even a few of those had potatoes in them. So many choices! My husband chose a local dish, Sächsischer Karoffelauflauf, which was only 11, 60 and had pork filet strips and apples in addition to the potatoes. I thought I'd go for something small, since we were splitting them. My Himmel und Erde was only 8,70 and turned out to also have pork and lots of cheese. We both ordered beer. I got a 0,3 liter Radeberger for 3, 10 and he got the same, but a 0,5 liter for 4,10. The beers were quite good. When the food came, we were astonished by how huge they both were. We should have just ordered one dish to split. They were both delicious, but we simply could not finish them.
To reach the restroom, I had to go all the way through the restaurant and upstairs. At the top, there paintings on the wall of Luther and Melanchthon, naturally.
When we left at 1:30, we didn't have a lot of time, but we wanted to find the Christmas ornament shop that we had seen on the tour. We managed to find it and the prices were quite reasonable. Among other things, I got a plain wooden ornament with the Luther rose for our travel garland.
We were back a the meeting point at the Schloßkirche by 1:58 and had to wait. So, my husband ducked in the info center to get me a Diet Coke for 2 Euros. We had to walk through a park outside of the town gate to get on the bus at 1:10. It was cloudy again.
The Coke did not keep me awake, of course. So, it seemed like no time before we were in Leipzig, another new city for me. The bus pulled up to the back of the St. Thomaskirche at 3:40 and we got out with our whispers on. Luckily, there were toilets downstairs next to the church. It was 0,70 and well-spent. I ducked into the shop and got a rose pin and a couple of other things.
We couldn't go into the church due to a program of some ilk. So, Brane led us to the St. Nicolaikirche. I was able to take some photos along the way.
The sky was threatening the whole way, but it didn't rain as we walked along. When we got to the church at 4:11, it was locked. Brane let us loose on our own for a bit. My husband had seen a good exhibit at the city museum the last time he was there and wanted to check it out. It was too expensive to go in for a short time. However, there was a gift shop and I found some Reutter Porzellan dishes, which I expected to be the only miniatures on the whole trip.
We came out of that arcade only to see another, as well as statue of Goethe.
While we were in a shop, where I bought stickers for the trip album cover and a pin, it rained. It was stopped by the time we headed back to the St. Thomas church, which we reached at 4:40. It was open and crowded. There was poor Bach's grave at the front of the church, where he'd been Kapellmeister. I call him "poor", because that body had been moved at least 3 times. Hopefully, he's at peace now.
I'd bought a pin at the shop earlier that turned out to be the rafters of this tall, narrow church.
At 4:58, we went out to the bus in the rain. It 5:03, we left for the hotel. At 5:10, we arrived at the Westin. In the very modern lobby, we waited once again, while Brane tried to read the room cards.
Our room looked just as modern as the lobby and I really liked it. The view downward was of a construction site, but if you looked out more, you could even see the churches we just visited. It was very pretty at that moment and tough to photograph without reflection.
Within minutes the rain was back and it looked like a cloud settling over the city.
When the luggage arrived, we discovered that the top handle of my husband's suitcase was gone. Now, neither suitcase had a regular top handle. Good grief!
At 7, we met the others for a dinner that was served to us. It was quite fancy and the dessert was actually the best part. The Creole Pumpkin Soup would have been fine, had they left off the coconut foam. It was served as bowl of vegetable strudel and then they poured in the pumpkin.
The main course was a filled supreme of corn-fed chicken with mashed potatoes with Dijon mustard and slow-cooked cherry tomatoes and Barolojus, which seems to be the gravy, which didn't work at all, we both felt.
The dessert was creme brulee with pickled apricots, yogurt ice cream, peanut crumble and sweet cress. It was pretty good.
The rest of the table was populated by the pastor and his family and a woman who was from Oregon, but accompanying her 87-year-old father, who was with the Wyoming group. He was not at dinner, but asleep upstairs. She arranged for a tray to be taken up to him at the end of dinner. She talked to us the entire dinner. The others did not. She was really very friendly.
When we went back up to our room at 8:40, we immediately headed for the window. What a beautiful sky!
After a shower in that nice bathroom, it was time to relax and cruise the tv channels before bed. I was hoping for a better night's sleep, now that we had air conditioning and more substantial pillows.
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