Wednesday, March 31, 2010: Roots of our Faith: Eisenach and Wartburg

Wednesday, March 31, 2010: Sandra.
Thanks to our GPS (it doesn't 'do' the scenic route'), we travelled much longer and saw many dorfs. Our hunger needs were satisfied with delicious 'doner kabobs' and a mozzarella pizza. We will be incorporating this food as one of our staples now and in the future. We arrived at the Wartburg castle where Martin Luther secretly stayed as a 'knight' for 10 months and translated the New Testament from Greek into German. We learned many other facts about this castle: Many structures are 850+ years old; The grand hall where the famous minstrel competition, Nurnbergermeistersanger took place - the loser would loose his head. Wagner created an opera with this story theme. Princess Elizabeth was made into a saint since she devoted many years of her life as a widow to the poor, sick, and dying; The Lutherstube contained only one original item - a whale vertabrae used as a foot stool; The wall where he threw his ink bottle against, thinking that he had seen the devil. It was special to be in the place where the roots of our faith began. This 'beginning' was more 'messy' than what the textbooks mention. Changing the thinking of the roman Catholic leaders was (maybe still is) similar to changing the direction of a moving iceberg. In the souvenir shop we purchased a number of reader-friendly biographies of Martin Luther and Princess Elizabeth. Alexander also bought a teufel (devil) monkey - a symbol of the devil which Martin Luther saw. Karannina tried on a princess crown which we plan to replicate at home. Within the town of Eisenach, we enjoyed some schaufensterbummeling, taking care of our hunger with a poppy seed roll, cherry cheese crumble slice, and a cheese bun. On the way back to Kassel, we came across the border crossing of the former eastern German DDR . Karannina did a cartwheel from the west to the east for her friend Anna on video and Alexander 'watered' the fence. Continuing our return, we saw an amazing 'donner and blitzen show in the sky. We crashed in our beds.