4. July: Wittenberg

Monday, July 4:

We caught the 6:30 city train from Hösel to Essen and then the ICE bahn (fast train) from Essen to Berlin. The Essen train station has good pretzels.In Berlin we took an S-Bahn (stadtbahn=city train) to our hotel only a very short walk from the Ostbahnhof (East Train Station) in the former eastern zone. We stayed at Ostel, the DDR Hotel. A Trabi, the notoriously unreliable East German car, was parked outside. The place is a hostel but it also has private rooms. Our room is fairly large for a hotel and is clean and comfortable. We even have a sofa and a table. The furniture style is similar to the furniture in the House on the Embankment (huge apartment complex we toured across from the Kremlin in Moscow.) The building from the outside looks like the typical Russian apartment other than the bright colors and not being run down.The hostel takes up only a small area; the rest contains apartments and shops. In the middle is a huge courtyard with a sitting area and a playground.

The signal for walking across the intersection in East Berlin is the Ampelmann, green and beckoning when it is safe; red with arms outstretched when it isn’t safe.

As soon as we dropped our stuff off, we took the s-bahn back to the main train station and then hopped on a train to Wittenberg, the city where Luther lived. It was cold and rainy, but wasn’t raining hard enough to use the umbrella. We walked from the main train station to Lutherhaus, where Luther had taught when he was a monk.The university gave the house to him when the church separated. He lived here when he married. The living room was left as it was in Luther’s day.This is where the talks around the dinner table took place. Peter the Great had signed his name over the door. On display was a copy of Tetzel's coffer. We saw originals of the books when Luther had written and the bible he had translated. The famous painter Cranach the Elder had also lived in Eisenach and had illustrated many of Luther’s pamphlets and the bible he had translated. (Shown here are the book of Jonah and a scene from the Apocalypse.)

After that we walked to the Schosskirche—the castle church where Luther had posted his 95 theses which in on the western end of the main street. Inside are the tombs of Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, and Frederick the Wise. The wooden door he had nailed them to burned down in 1760, later replaced with an iron door with the theses sculpted in.We walked back to the center of the city past the Rathaus, the town hall on the main square with the statues of Luther and Melanchthon. It also contained a well built in 1559 which carried water downstream to 19 houses in the vicinity using hollowed tree trunks connected with iron.Behind that was a knit shop with some very nice woolen yarn. A bit further east was the Stadtkirche (city church) where Luther preached and where he was married to Katharine von Bora.After that we walked back to the train station past the grove of trees, the area where various papers including the papal bull denouncing Luther had been burned beneath an oak tree. We took the train back to Berlin Ostbahnhof (East Train Station) and went to bed early.

3. Juli: Zons, Dusseldorf

Sunday, July 3:

We had a leisurely breakfast, typically Germany with muesli, rolls with meat and cheese, and yoghurt. Then we drove past Kaiserwerth, past a car show, and across the Rhine River by ferry to Zons, a walled city on the Rhine river. Zons was a customs town which had received permission from the bishop to levy fines on the traffic on the Rhine beginning in the 1300s. We parked across the street from a bunch of goats.Then we walked to the town, past the windmill. We walked along the wall, looking at the towers and the buildings on the other side.Then we took the ferry across the Rhine again, drove to a market past Schloss Benrath, a pink castle with a large golden ball in the pond in front. We bought lunch at a stand. I had curry wurst, and Kristen had a vegetable sandwich. Then we went back to the house to rest and in the evening after a dinner of spatzle with cheese and sausage, we went to the old city of Dusseldorf. On the way we stopped by the main train station to validate our train pass since the train station by the Ho House would not be able to do that. We drove across the Rhine to look at the old city from the other side. Then we parked and walked around, seeing many beautiful old buildings. We were greeted by the four Muses as we walked into the city. Some kids had rented a six person pedal car and were pedaling around the parking lot in front of the river.Dusseldorf makes its own beer, a special dark beer. Apparently Dusseldorfers like to drink standing up, so most of the places along the street and in front of the river had stand up tables. After we had ice cream cones, we walked along the Rhinedrove back to Ratingen to get ready for the next morning.

2. July: Ratingen (near Dusseldorf)

The flight went smoothly; we landed at 7 in the morning local time. My cousin Billy was waiting for us. As usual, Kristen stayed awake the entire trip; I slept most of the time.

On the way to Billy and Uschi's house, we stopped at the bakery and picked up fresh buns for breakfast. I had forgotten just how good the bread is here. :)

Billy and Uschi have a very nice house in a suburb near Dusseldorf. They bought the land and built the house, a nice combination of Chinese and German culture. The back of the house which overlooks a valley has large windows, unusual for Germany which prizes privacy.

Uschi was part of a choir tour of Ratingen, the medieval town where they live, so after a quick hunt for a cell phone, we joined the tour.

First we saw an old well probably from Roman times. The owners had found it while they were remodeling.

Next was the ice cream store. I had Mozart Gelato--chocolate with marzipan; Kristen had raspberry.

Then we walked past a bunch of old buildings, many built in the 17th and 18th centuries. We also saw part of the old city wall and several towers or places

which used to have towers. Along one of the walls was a bronze sculpture of a story about a swineherd whose pigs found a church bell from St. Peter and Paul Cathedral which had been hidden in the forest during a war and then lost until the pigs snouted it out.

Finally we stopped by St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church where we had a private tour.

The choir was given permission to use the organ, so we all stood around and sang while the choir director played the pipe organ.

Finally we climbed up to the attic and then crawled into the bell tower. To get to the bell tower, we had to climb steep stone stairs,

circular stone steps, and steeper wooden stairs and climb under a metal support beam about 3 feet off the ground.

Seven bells hung in the belfry.

Formerly they had been rung by hand; now electric motors moved the bells over the clapper.

Next we walked past an old castle complete with a moat which had been turned into an upscale restaurant to a park where we were surprised with tables of food: wurst, little sandwiches, kuchen and torten. We ate, played games,talked and sang.

After that we walked to the first industrial factory in Germany which stole the technology for spinning cotton by machine from England soon after England came up with the technology. We also toured the house of the boss who lived next to the factory. The central room was circular with large windows and walls with paintings of mountains.

We walked back through town, past the center of the city which was quiet now that the shops were all closed, and past restaurant famous for making its own beer. In the evening we picked berries--raspberries, strawberries, black currants,and gooseberries. Then we sat and talked. For supper we had steamed vegetable dumplings.