We are having a really nice time in Erfurt, where we are based for two more nights. The two-hour drive from Wittenberg, on two excellent high-speed Autobahnen, was efficient as always. Erfurt is in the dead center of Germany, in the province of Thuringia (known for its forests and sausages). The landscape became almost immediately more beautiful as we entered Thuringia, with rolling hills and thick forests replacing the flatter landscape and industry further north.
Erfurt is much larger than Wittenberg and a very thriving city, but it still has a small town feel and a fantastic medieval Old Town, full of winding cobblestone streets and half-timber buildings. There are several interesting sights but a whole day could be happily spent just wandering around. And the tram system is frequent, efficient, and easy to understand: the six lines are actually numbered 1 to 6. Berlin could learn from this.
Next stop: Anger. This is the name of one of the main squares in Erfurt, which of course is pronounced differently and has a different meaning in German.
We are staying in the InterCity Hotel, which is right next to the train station and in fact seems to be owned by Deutsche Bahn. Based on the interior, I thought for sure the building was a Communist relic but apparently it's only around 15 years old.
The InterCity Hotel, with train station just visible on the right.
A more certain Communist relic: a Trabant in the hotel's parking garage.
Our room is oddly shaped but very clean and comfortable and we have a nice view over the square and train station. Most importantly, we have wireless internet in our room and a nice desk for the laptop, which has allowed me to get caught up the blogging and some website work.
View from our room yesterday morning.
The dramatic skies and sunlight shown above exemplify the kind of weather we have had here. It is incredibly windy, which means the clouds move across the sky at high speed and the weather constantly changes. For photographers dependent on good light for good photos, this has meant a lot of standing around and waiting for the sun to come out and dropping everything and getting on the tram when the sky clears! But we are grateful to have sunshine at all and we have managed to get sunny shots at most of the main sights.
The main historical attraction of Erfurt is the Domberg, a hill in the middle of the Old Town topped with a cathedral and a parish church. It's a very unique sight, with the cathedral propped up on multiple levels of arches and a huge stairway leading up to the top of the hill between the churches.
The first time we visited, a young man was running up and down the stairs, then hopping on one foot up them! Based on the logos on his sweats, he seemed to be a professional football (soccer) player. We were seriously impressed.
The crypt occupies one of the levels beneath the cathedral, and is entered from a high platform along the north side. An old door opens into an incredibly steep stone stairway, which was more like the entrance to a dungeon than a crypt. But the crypt was very nice, and a service was due to start there shortly.
Side of the cathedral at the top of the hill. Unusually, there are two great portals right next to each other, which meet to form a triangle.
More unusual shapes on the west end of the cathedral
The interior of Erfurt Cathedral has been renovated a lot over the centuries and is not spectacular in general, but there is a lot of excellent medieval art scattered about:
Lots of colorful stained glass from the 1300s
Romanesque sculpture from the 1100s
Golden reliquary from the 1100s
We spent most of our time on the fantastic choir stalls, which date from the 1300s. They have no misericords (which are not common in Germany), but are instead carved with a wide range of biblical subjects, saints, Green Men, musicians, animals and funny faces. It was fantastic. But as always, it presented a major challenge for photography, because the choir is dimly lit and the wood is quite dark. So today we returned armed with a small flashlight, which we diffused with a tissue. It mostly worked!
I was especially pleased to capture this one, another example of the footwarming in February as part of the Labors of the Months.
Musician
A tiny depiction of Jonah emerging from the sea monster
Yesterday turned out to be sunny most of the afternoon, so we wandered all over the city and visited the main churches listed on my website. Here are some quick highlights:
Church of St. Aegidius overlooking a nice little square
Path along the river
Water mill and waterfall, populated with lots of fish, with a Dominican church in the background.
The wonderful Barfusserkirche, named for the barefoot Blackfriars that once used it. It is now mostly in ruins after a World War II bomb, but the intact east end houses a medieval art museum (sadly it was closed).
Another view of the Barfusserkirche
Rathaus (Town Hall)
One of several lovely houses along a narrow alley leading to the Augustinian Monastery
Some corners of the Old Town could use a little love, but they are still picturesque.
Finally, although I don't have any pictures to go with it, for posterity I must record the excellent meals we've enjoyed here. They have all been inexpensive but delicious. Our first night here we had a filling dinner of chicken doner kebabs, in hot wraps made before our eyes, for a total of €5.80. We have visited the Subway in the train station twice for sandwiches to bring back up to the room, and yesterday for lunch we picked up delicious pizzas from a pizzeria right by our hotel. Tonight it was just too cold and windy to go out, so we had dinner in our hotel. I had a Thuringian sausage and lentil soup with potato cakes and applesauce and David had wiener schnitzel and fries. De-lish.
Tomorrow our plans are to tour the Augustinian Monastery in the morning (where Luther was a monk for awhile), then drive 45 minutes to the Wartburg Castle.
