The best moments are unplanned

We got used to having instant and free internet our first week over here in Europe, so now that it’s harder to sign on, we’re having to compose our e-mails and blogs on my Word Processor and then cutting and pasting them on to e-mail and such. So they may be a day (or three) late, we apologize :). But we still have food for every meal and a shower every day, so nothing to complain about in the end, really!
Wednesday, we spent the day in Erfurt, Germany. Aside from John’s sister, Stephanie, and ourselves, we didn’t hear a word of English spoken all day! This is certainly a popular destination for German tourists, judging by the number of buses, but apparently not for the English-speaking tourist contingent and that was fine with us.
John’s sister, Stephanie, is married to a German and living in Erfurt (not for long though, they’re moving to Sudan!) She met us at our hostel this morning and we walked up to their apartment a few blocks away and had a lovely breakfast together. She made fruit salad and we had fresh brotchen (rolls), cheese, salami and tea. We also had really some great conversation, and received some really great advice on what to see in town, complete with drawing a walking route on our map! Armed with Stephanie’s annotated map, we set out to see Erfurt. It came through the war largely unscathed and is quite a beautiful and picturesque little town with a meandering river, narrow twisting streets, and classically “European-looking” houses. The highlights of Erfurt were…(drum roll please)

1)the Domplatz--a huge plaza lorded over by two Catholic churches at the top of a long flight of steps. The larger church, the Mariendom, was notable for having taken down all their stained glass when the war started, packing it away and then replacing it after the war, so most of the glass there is still original. While Erfurt wasn’t heavily bombed, the percussions of the bombs that did fall broke most of the other stained glass in the city….

2) Zitadelle Petersberg--to be honest I don’t know the history of the citadel, but it was impressively built and had a great view of the entire city of Erfurt. We ate an al fresco lunch up there, leftovers from Stephanie from breakfast, taking shelter from the drizzly morning rain under a viewing platform.

Koffee and Kuchen
3) Augustinerkirche and kloster--This is the church and monastery where Luther took his vows and lived for a time. There wasn’t a whole lot to see there, but we highly enjoyed getting koffee and kuchen (coffee and cake) from the little shop that the Lutheran nuns run there and there was a really cool guesthouse and lovely grounds.

4) Kramerbrucke--a bridge of houses over the river in town. The inside of the bridge was lined with cute little shops.

5) Angerplatz--a huge shopping area, but all the modern stores are in old buildings surrounding a great plaza. We bought a German phrase book in a bookstore, an umbrella in a discount-type store, beer at McDonalds (!) and then found a Dollar store. Yep, it was called Euroshop and we had to go in there. Had to. No choice. I’m not telling you what we bought there, because it might be your souvenir :).
By far my favorite part of the day was completely unplanned…as we walked through the narrow backstreets towards Augustinerkirche, we heard strains of organ music. We followed the music to a tiny little Lutheran church where the organist was playing and we let ourselves in and enjoyed the music and rested for a bit.
So that about sums up Erfurt. We made our reservations to head to Munich tomorrow (through a major language barrier!) and ate dinner (Doner sandwiches--my favorite from the AppleBlossom food court…yep, they’re German) in a great little park near our hostel. Well, time to pack up…we’re going to be incredibly efficient at this by the time we’re done.Yma made friends with a statue in the park :)