Veterans Day travels to Thuringia

We decided to take advantage of the American Veterans Day holiday and do some traveling around Germany. Our focus for this weekend was what we decided to call our Martin Luther tour, Phase I. We started out on Thursday and headed south from Berlin to the state of Thuringia. Our first stop was the Wartburg Castle. This is a fortress which overlooks the town of Eisenach. This fortress was established long before Martin Luther. During his lifetime he went there as a retreat and it was there he translated the Bible into German. This was all his part of the separation of the Protestant church from the Catholic church and an effort to make the Bible available to the population. He was definitely a father of the Christian Reformation movement. It was a substantial walk up to the entrance, which had us short of breath, but well worth the visit. We stayed until nearly dark and then found our hotel accommodations in Eisenach. We then had a unique dining opportunity at Lutherstuben. It provided the atmosphere of Luthers era complete with hay on the floor, thick wooden tables and staff dressed in period costume. We couldn't understand the German chants and entertainment, but were entertained anyway. The drinking vessels were pottery with pointed bases which fit into holes in the tables. I enjoyed a delightful dinner of chicken curry and spaetzle noodles!

Friday morning we scouted out the town of Eisenach and visited Lutherhaus and Bachhaus. Both men attended the Latin school there 200 years apart. Luther lived in Eisenach at a teenager before going to University at Erfurt. Johann Sebastian Bach was born also at Eisenach and lived there for 10 years before moving to live with his brother following his parents death. There is a wonderful museum of the family home and even a music presentation is part of the tour. Eisenach is a lovely East German town which has progressed well since the Reunification of German. It appears a modern Opel plant provides a financial base for this town. It is humbling to realized that due to the reunification we are able to visit this fascinating area and Germany has done a good job of reunifying this country. We then drove over to Erfurt where Martin Luther attended University. Erfurt has a modern and beautiful downtown shopping area complete with many of the stores we see in Berlin. We stayed Friday night in Erfurt.

Saturday morning we drove out to visit the sight of the Nazi Concentration Camp of Buchenwald located between Eisenach and Weimar. Of course visiting such a camp is very humbling and sad, however this is displayed as a memorial to those who were incarcerated and died there. It is a reminder to each one of us to never let such events happen again. I picked up a copy of "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights", which was adopted by the United Nations 10 December 1948. Stephane Hessel was detained at Buchenwald as part of the French Resistance movement. He later participated in the drafting of the human rights charter as a U.N. Diplomat. I love his quote which says "There are differences between cultures, but not between civilizations. When we live in societies, it means that every individual has the same fundamental rights. At the same time, those rights mean that people can live together, that they respect one another, that they bear responsibility for one another - that is Civilization."

Now on to the photos...