An Unexpected Journey

Pr. Kallensee's church in Gotha

Because there's only one way to make Lutherans sit in the front pews

Don't I look attentive here?

Going to Europe I suppose had a lot of unexpected bits to it.  Like not finding a taxi when we first arrived in Rome, being literally in the mountains while staying in Reutte, doing archery in the Alps, and many other things.  But I think the most unexpected journey we had was not trying to win back our gold from a dragon (oh yes you knew what I was going to do from the moment you read the title) but was touring Muhlhausen and Gotha with Pastor Kallensee.  Neither of these towns are familiar to American ears, and that meant that we were probably the only non-Germans walking around town that day.  Our original plan for May 21st was to tour Eisenach and the Wartburg.  But Pr. Kallensee asked us to stop by Gotha on the way so he could show us around.  He serves a triple parish and his biggest church is in this city.  We enjoyed a nice one-to-one walking tour of the town and saw a hospital started by Saint Elisabeth and a church where Luther preached.  We also met his wife who was very kind and served us coffee and treats.  Then we piled back into the van and headed off to Eisenach.  

The Wartburg

I think this shield looks pretty cool

One of the rooms in the Wartburg

An ancient painting in the fortress, but I can't remember how old they said it was

Guarding the stairs

Saint Elisabeth

The New Music Hall which inspired the decorations in Neuschwanstein castle.  This gives you a feel for how many of the rooms in Neuschwanstein look.

Where Luther stayed while in hiding and pretending to be Sir George

The Bach House

The Luther House

The church where Bach was baptized

The organ in the church

The Wartburg castle was very neat.  It is built, like every other fortress we saw, at the top of a very high hill/almost a mountain and it was a long tiring trek to the top.  The tour was fun and thankfully for you readers, we were allowed to take photos so you can actually see what we saw.  Most of the reason we went to the Wartburg is because Martin Luther lived there while he was in hiding, and at the end of the tour we saw the room where he stayed for those months.  After the Wartburg we drove into Eisenach and toured both the Luther House and the Bach House.  The Luther House was some what of a disappointment, because there wasn't much in it and very little of anything in English.  The Luther House is where both Luther and Bach went to school.  The Bach House, on the other hand, was extremely interesting.  We got to see instruments from his time period, learn about his settings of Luther hymns, and see some of the books from his huge theological library.  There was a lot of good information and paintings and artifacts and we even got to go to a live music performance of his works. All in all, I think that the Bach House was my favorite part of the day, and I'm so glad we went through it.  We walked through the church where Bach was baptized, but it had been renovated and made modern and looked nothing like what it would have in Bach's day.  So that was rather disappointing as well.  But I guess that's just one more unexpected thing that happened to us in Europe, isn't it?