Eating Ice Cream on the Steps

Our last day in Rothenburg was spent touring the Crime and Punishment museum, which was much too disturbing to be enjoyable.  Abby and Nate spent some time in the stocks (see above), we saw the Childcatcher's cart from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (okay, it just looked like it), and Dad bought us strawberries.  So those berries made up for the museum.  And then we moved on to Erfurt.

The door Luther walked through in order to become a monk

The monastery in Erfurt

The library in the monastery

Luther's Bible with his own handwriting in the margins

Where they would eat

Where they would sleep and how they would dress

A bridge of houses!

Such pretty houses!

Mom and her favorite crucifix

The town square

The Erfurt Cathedral

Today would have been our second day in Erfurt if the year was still 2012.  Erfurt was a lovely little city.  Everyday we stopped by our favorite brat stand, halfway up the stairs to the two cathedrals.  By the end of our stay there, the owners recognized us, as did the owners of the ice cream shop where we ate every day.  We would each choose our favorite flavors and then go and sit on the stone stairs and enjoy people watching and resting our weary legs and licking down the delicious frozen goodness.  You can enjoy the view from the stairs here, and while you're over there go ahead and click around other views of Erfurt.  

Anyway, we toured the monastery where Luther was a monk.  But the only tour being given was in German and our tour guide was a rather rude woman who didn't try to tell us anything and made fun of us because she knew we didn't speak German.  Regardless, we got to see the monastery and some of the others on the tour were very kind and tried to tell us some of the information.  One of the things a particularly nice woman told me was that all the monks ate on the same side of the table so that they couldn't talk to each other or try to communicate through looks and expressions.  Every monk had his own spoon and carried it with him always until it was taken away at his death.  So if someone said that your spoon was taken away, it meant you had died.  Mom and Dad were also able to explain some things to us because they had taken the tour before in 2007 and my dad knows just a little bit about Luther. :) 

Erfurt was the beginning of our Lands of Luther tour, and none of us expected it to be the delightful little city that it was.  We all loved the time we spent there.