Luther and Tigers and Bach, Oh My!

It’s been an eventful past few days. My last few days in Berlin consisted of a personal tour of the Turkish district (where according to my guide/friend, you can basically find the best/cheapest food of any kind), a band advertised as a pirate band blast psychedelic sea shanties (they turned out to be 45 years old and didn’t look like pirates at all…), and dance at a reggae club until the wee hours of the morning. I have to reiterate, I love Berlin!

Upon leaving Berlin, I took my first real Eurail ride to Lutherstadt Wittenberg, which is the town famous for…you guessed it! Martin Luther. Unfortunately, I was not meant to make a timely entrance into the city as I missed my stop and then had to take a slower train back the other way…I finally got to LW and walked to the pension that I had booked. They were full. I was not happy. Long story short, I ended up paying more than I wanted for a room. Luckily it was only one night.

I woke up bright and early on a Sunday morning and went to a service at the City Church of St. Marien, the church were Martin Luther preached. There was even special music by the children’s choir. I felt very at home. After the service I visited the only two other things open in the whole town, the Castle Church (Luther nailed the theses here as well as the site of his grave) and the Lutherhouse museum. Apparently Sunday in the middle of winter is not the best time to do things in Wittenberg as not even the grocery store is open.

That brings us to my current place of residence, Leipzig. Leipzig, although few people seem to have ever heard of it, is important for many reasons. It was the home of Bach as well as being home to the sight of the peaceful prayer gatherings at St. Nikolas’s Church that are many attribute to a being an important influence in the fall of the Berlin wall (you can read more about this yourself if you want). After visiting St. Nikolas’s Church, I made my way to St. Thomas’s Church in which Bach acted as Cantor for the last 25 years or so of his life and in which his body was laid to rest.

After a few days of visiting churches, what would be the obvious place to go next, you ask? Well, the Leipzig Zoo of course! I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the zoo and getting some pretty cool pictures of animal. Nothing like a frozen savana or elephants enclosed in an building with and Indian Temple theme!

How is my couch surfing host in Leipzig? David is pretty awesome. He is fluent in Arabic and headed to Morocco in a few weeks to do work on his PhD study nomadic tribes. Our evenings have consisted of my learning a German card game called Skat. Let’s just say I went out and bought my own deck.

Tschuss!