Lutherland II

One day in Eisenach was really not enough, but it was all I had.

My main reason for going there was to see Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther was whisked to after his little tiff with the Pope and other top brass at the Diet of Worms. He lived there for about a year, praying, studying, and translating the Bible into German!

It was a nice walk up, up, up the hill to the castle. The only way you can see the inside of the castle is to take a guided tour, and I missed the one English language tour for the day. So unfortunately there was a lot of aural explanation that I was not able to follow. And a lot of other castle history that I, frankly, wasn’t that interested in. But I saw the sites and read the English that was on some of the plaques.

At the last minute I learned that there is also a large, wonderful Bach museum in Eisenach (another tip-of-the-hat to my brother for this information). So of course I had to squeeze that in.

J.S. Bach was born in Eisenach and the Bach Society there in 1905 purchased the home where Bach was born. They have built around it a stellar museum and tribute to this music master. Once each hour there is a live music performance. The keyboardist not only played pieces on five different period instruments, but spoke about each one, in German AND English. Of course the music itself needs no translation!

And to cap it all off, my most wonderful Couchsurfing hosts, Veronika and Manuel, invited me to have breakfast with them the next morning before I had to catch the train to Berlin. They are both social workers and super interesting folks. We had good conversation about the state of our countries and the world and they gave me some pointers on how to find peanut butter in grocery stores here.