Wittenbrg & Erfurt... Following Martin Luther!

Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Last night this was my view…Looking at St. Mary’s church out our hostel window at the light illuminating the towers whilst rain is pouring down all around and lighting paints the sky behind it. Yesterday didn’t quite go as planned, it was great none the less. Let me start at the beginning…
We packed up at Kristen’s and ate a wonderful breakfast w/ her and Johnny. Said goodbye to Kristen @ the train station and boarded our train at the (Hauptbahnhof) to head to Wittenberg. I did not have high hopes for Luther’s little town but we’ll get to that happy mistake later. It was a pleasant train ride in 1st class! Wed had to get 1st class with our EuroRail Passes and we are soooooooooooo glad we did!!! We had our own birth with plenty of room and comfortable seats!!! It was pretty amazing! We arrived in Wittenberg, stowed our bags and made our way to Collegienstrasse an adorable little street with picturesque buildings and cobblestones! We ate lunch at a little café run by some Vietnamese people. Can you imagine trying to learn German and knowing Vietnamese? Sounds hard to me. The information center provided us with maps and a guide pamphlet. We saw Castle Church wehre Martin Luther nailed his infamous 95 theses to the door. The church and attached castle actually burned down in 1760 so they are not the original doors or interior. Now the doors are overlaid with black iron & the theses translated into latin. Weird huh? The church is simple yet elegant. It had cool notes on all the stuff in the church so you could do a self guided tour. The building attached is still in use as a theological seminary. There are tributes to the reformation all over the church. Crests of the Germanic territories that helped with the reformation, above the princes chairs their family crests carved into the stalls to attribute their assistance in the reformation and in the stained glass windows pictures of the other reformers that assisted in their own countries with the reformation, like Calvin and Knox!!!!!!!!!!!!! Both Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon (Luther’s good friend and co-reformer) are buried there. Also buried there are Electors Frederick the Wise & John the Steadfast (brothers). The church had a beautiful pipe organ! Upon leaving we strolled up the Coswiger strasse to the Town Church (where Martin Luther actually preached) also called St. Mary’s. It still has a practicing Lutheran Congregation that meets weekly to celebrate Sabbath. The art work in the church was the highlight! Lucas Cranach (the Elder) did most the work but the younger did some of the paintings too! Our favorite was the painting of the Vineyard depicting Martin Luther and the other reformers rebuilding a destroyed vineyard while Christ holds back the Pope among other key Catholic leaders of the day. The guide booklet we got in the church posed the question to today’s Christian community…”Nowadays-in the era of ecumenical dialogue- we must aks ourselves: What is in our midst that is destroying the Church (the vineyard) and what is building it up? What tasks lie before us on the way to unity in Christ?” We LOVED this question because that is some much of what we’ve been talking about in our small group Bible study! It didn’t let Christians off the hook seeing history, it challenged us and the rest of the Christian community to take an evaluation of are we hindering or building up the Church of Christ! Important stuff to think on! Another thing that constantly amazes me is that this ONE man changed the course of history, faith, language for the German people, and art! Wow. Martian Luther was just a man and later at the Luther Has we saw that is anti-Semitic writings later in life were used by the likes of Hitler to justify horrible acts against our fellow man. Speaking of anti-Semitism…the Town Church has a cornerstone has a portrayal of Jews wollowing with pigs and the slanderous version of holy name of God, not to be said by Jews spelled out. In 1983 a bronze plaque was set into the ground by that corner of the church depicting the cross as 4 doors closing over the evil of the world. Not completely closing it out but shutting most of it out and around the outside of the square it says The true Name of God, The malignes “Schem Ha Mphoras,” Which Jews even before the dawn of Christianity Reguarded as almost inexpressibly holy-this name died with in six million Jews Under the symbol of a cross. (Written in Hebrew the beginning of Psalm 130) “Out of the depths I cry, O Lord, to you.” Really moving and interesting that this was done while Wittenberg was still a part of the Communist block. Then we went to the Luther Has, an amazing museum and a steal for only 5 Euro! It’s difficult to process all the amazing information that is there. Luther was a spit fire that’s for darn sure! We spent almost 2 hours there! We treated ourselves to a little gelato and headed back to the station. We unfortunately missed the train we intended to take and waited for the next two hours for the next train to Erfurt. Our hostel seemed like a long ways from the train station as we hefted our packs but I think we just took the long way.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
This morning we had an awesome breakfast with John Koeshall’s sister Stephanie! She picked us up at the hostel this morning and we walked to her apartment to have a lovely German breakfast. She helped us stake out a route for the day and encouraged us to see a few thing we hadn’t even thought of. We left her apartment and headed to see the DomPlatz to see St. Mary’s church Marienkierke (another one) and St. Severus Kierke immediately next door. Marienkierke was the Bishop’s seat and St. Severus a regular church (both catholic and very gothic. We hiked to the top of a little hill thru Citidel Petersberg to look over a wall and get awesome pictures of the city. We ate our sandwiches Stephanie let us pack at her place and walked to the AugustinerKloister where Martin Luther became a monk and lived for a number of years. Today there is a contingency of Lutheran Nuns living there and making yummy cakes and serving coffee. We tried to stay in their guest quarters but were unable to get a reservation. The Kaffee and Kuken (not sure if I spelled that right but it’s German for cake) were next on our list and recommended by Kristen! We are just taking things slow and enjoying a cute German town today. We have nothing else on the list so we visited Anger Platz (recommended by Stephanie) and saw some cool old buildings with fun shopping in the ground floor flats. We got treaties at McDonalds, Amy a McCaffe in a fancy cup with a chocolate and me a bier in a paper cup. I was just laughing that they serve beir in McDonalds. Weird! They drink it like pop here! We found a Euro Store…the German answer to the dollar store. Yeah, Mom! Who’s you’re girl!! If anyone could find a Dollar Store it would be your girl! I’m not going to tell you if we bought any of you gifts from there! He he! We walked back to our hostel and now we’re trying to keep up with the bogging. It’s a big responsibility we have to you our public!
Until tomorrow or the next day depending on if we get a place with internet or not. Pictures then too!