Good Morning Erfurt

I love travelling by train. It's so peaceful and relaxing (as opposed to flying anywhere). On Monday morning in Prague we got up, had breakfast and caught the tram to the train station. It was raining, but, since we were going to be on the train, it didn't matter. 

All morning, and into the afternoon, we sat in comfortable, roomy seats, drinking sodas, eating sandwiches, and reading or just watching the world go by. Train travel is truly civilized. We got into Erfurt Germany (where Martin Luther was a student and later a monk) about 4:00 PM and quickly caught a tram to the center of town. 

Kathy got her German SIM card re-inserted and found she had plenty of credit. Once we could use Google Maps, we walked the three blocks to the Pension Altstatperle. We were very happy with our room, which had a refrigerator and stove.

Since it was now dinner time, we walked into the center of town where a large Octoberfest carnival had been set up on the Cathedral square, with a huge Ferris wheel, the tilt-o-whirl and a variety of other rides and attractions, all with a European flair that was just different enough to let us know we weren't in Orange County any more.

We had dinner at the Schnitzler, a restaurant that sells nothing but Schnitzel (about 30 different kinds), right on the square. We should have listened to our guidebook which mentioned that the portions where "huge and eminently splittable". I ate enough schnitzel for three people and subsequently slept like a log.

On Wednesday, our first full day in Erfurt, we had breakfast at the hotel, which turned out to be great. Then, we set out on the walking tour from our guidebook. It's listed as a one hour walk, but it took us until about 3:00 PM. We started by just walking out our back door to the banks of the Gera River (more like a creek). The original name of the Gera River was the Erphes River (Latin for brown, muddy water), which survived in the name of Erfurt coming from “ford at Erphes River”.

Then, we walked back to the main square named Anger and saw the statue of Martin Luther.

A little further on, we walked across The Krämerbrücke (Shopkeepers' or Merchant's Bridge) where houses and shops are built along both sides of the bridge, similar to Ponte Vecchio in Italy. This was on the main East-West (from Kiev to Frankfurt) trade route named the Via Regio, and was first built in 1117 of wood. The bridge burned down several times, and the current stone structure, and the houses on it were built in 1293-1325. In other words, these are old houses.

One of the shops is a puppet shop Theatrum Munti that is the work of puppeteer Martin Gobsch. He creates "mechanical puppet" stories like this one of Snow White which you can activate for a Euro.

On the other side of the bridge, in Benedictplatz, where the old church tower originally stood, we stuck our heads into Backstube and watched them make bread the traditional way.  

In the next square over, called Fischmarkt, there is a large statue of Bernd das Brot (Bernie the Bread), a character from the Erfurt-based children's television show named KI.KA (which is short for "Kinder Kanal"). Bernd was kidnapped by Anarchists in 2009, but we found his statue safely returned when we visited the square, as well as the statues of Maus and Elefant in the Anger square. Of course we had to get our pictures with them. Bernd doesn't look to happy, but that's just his personality.

The Fischmart Square also had several beautiful buildings as well as statues of a more conventional sort, but by now, I was famished. (This is sort of a running disagreement between Kathy and I. She thinks we should eat two or three times a day, while I think it's dangerous for aged folks like me to go more than two hours without nutrition.) 

I finally talked her into heading over to Faust Food (in the City Hall we saw a painting that claimed that Dr. Faustus had resided for a time in Erfurt).  Despite the name, the food was heavenly.

The traditional way to eat an "original Thuringer bratwurst" is to pick up a roll before you order and bring it to the grill to be filled. Then you put on the mustard. Delicious.

After lunch we had several errands to complete. I had baggies full of left over Czech and Polish money that I needed to convert to Euros, we wanted to pick up some sodas and snacks for our room, and Kathy wanted to buy a scarf to match her linen slacks. She found just the thing.

To get back to our room, we hopped a tram to the Augustinian Monastery where Luther was a monk from 1505 to 1511. Apparently you are allowed to see the cell that he lived in as well as other Luther memorabilia. When we got there, though, the ticket office was unmanned, so we just poked our head into the church.

In the front of the church (where the tour group is now) is the tomb of Johannes Zacharias, a prominent priest. When Luther was there, the monks would spend the whole night in meditation and prayer over his tomb. This was the leader who had had Jan Hus burned in 1415. Just before his execution, Hus had said, "you can burn me, I'm just a little goose (which is the meaning of his name in Czech), but in one century a white swan will come and defeat your thinking.". 

And, of course, a century later, Martin Luther, laboring in prayer all night over the tomb of Johannes Zacharias, began to do just that.

On our way back to the hotel, we also walked by the Haus zum Sonnenbaum which is a popular venue for weddings, build around the time of the discovery of America.