Oy vey, it is hard to keep up with the blogging at our new travel pace! I really hate to leave out any details or interesting photos from each of the places we visit, but it seems I am going to have to resign myself to becoming increasingly brief. On the bright side, we finally have good wireless internet at our current hotel, so at least I can catch up from the comfort of a desk in our own room.
Monday: Worlitz
I last left off with a mention of our day trip from Wittenberg to Worlitz. That was not terribly exciting but it was an interesting experience. There was a nice palace surrounded by lakes and landscaped gardens...
On a bridge over the lake we had a brief conversation with a friendly old man who wanted to tell us about the fish. He didn't speak a word of English and we were pretty proud that we were able to communicate with him a little bit in German. We conveyed that we didn't speak much German and he asked if we were Polish. That was interesting. We said no, we speak English, which he seemed to take to mean we were from England. He looked pleased and interested about that. He asked us if it was our first time in Worlitz, we said yes, and he told us in the spring it is even prettier with the flowers and trees in bloom. We caught all that from maybe two or three words we recognized, plus his gestures. But it was way fun and he was so nice.
Another highlight was a really unusual castle-like thing that looked like something out of a fairy tale. It had a little moat and a rowboat pulled up to a door under stone arches. It looks modern and Disney-fakey in some ways, yet when we looked inside the upper windows it seemed it had a chance of being older. In any case, it was really interesting.
The thing that struck us the most about the town itself was just how empty and closed-up it seemed. It was in good condition, but it was like everyone had left. I think it's mainly to do with its smallness to begin with, combined with it being the off-season. There was this one intersection that reminded me so much of a town in the Old West. It was even windy, but there were no tumbleweeds.
We had the hardest time finding a place to stop for lunch, and finally ended up at the town's only hotel, which was rather fancy. But they were welcoming to our casually-dressed, windblown selves and we had a really delicious meal.
Back in Wittenberg that evening, we mostly took it easy and did some packing, then had a late, small dinner of wiener schnitzel (for David) and potato soup (for me) in the Luther Hotel. It turned out to be one of the best schnitzels we've had yet, and it came with a fantastic German potato salad that tasted like sauerkraut and I just couldn't get enough of it.
Tuesday: Luther's House
Tuesday morning we packed everything into the car and checked out, then headed to the Luther House. It was very cloudy, a bit rainy, and ridiculously windy, so it was the perfect activity for the morning. It was super cool for me to see and David was even pretty impressed.
Luther's house is very large, because it was originally a monastery. The monastery was closed in 1522 and half the living quarters were given to Luther and his family. The other half became a residence for students of the University of Wittenberg, which is next door.
The house is now a really impressive museum dedicated to Luther and the history of the Reformation in Germany. It spreads over three floors, with one spacious room after another, all with pleasingly creaky wooden floors.
Some rooms are restored to their general appearance in Luther's time, while others are filled with artifacts like original portraits of Luther, original manuscript editions, Luther's robe, and other great stuff. The displays are chronological, with excellent signs in German and English introducing the events of each period.
By far the coolest room in the house is the Lutherstube, one of the smallest rooms in the house:
It has a really nice Renaissance stove and prettily painted walls, but its real attraction is that it was the site of countless conversations between Luther and his students and his friends. Many of these were recorded and published in a book called "Table Talk," which I read in college and really enjoyed. It shows Luther in all his lovable and unlovable fullness of personality, talking about everything from beer to the devil. Most of it is seriously funny. So it was very cool for me to see the place where it all happened, and I look forward to reading it again someday with that background in my mind.
After the Luther House, David walked back to the hotel to pick up the car while I quickly visited the Melancthon House, just down the street. Philipp Melancthon was Luther's right-hand man, friend and fellow professor. He was a quiet, scholarly type, but made important contributions to the Reformation including writing most of the Augsburg Confession (still the creed of Lutherans today).
His house was not nearly as interesting as Luther's, but I'm glad I stopped by. And when I came out, David was waiting right outside on the cobblestone street with the car! That was pretty fabulous.
That's the Melanchthon House on the far left.
Then we set off for Erfurt, where we are staying for four nights. I'll catch up on the rest tomorrow (hopefully)!