Sunday 18 January 2015

Worms!

While friends were visiting we took a day trip to Worms, which is a great little city to visit. It is most famous as being the location of the trial of Martin Luther where he was declared a heretic. It has a beautiful Romanesque cathedral, a Jewish cemetery that survived the war, and a rebuilt synagogue and museum of Jewish life. One can also visit a museum to the Nibelungenlied, which left me a bit baffled.
Cathedral from Jewish cemetery

Jewish cemetery

Luther Monument

Some of my favorite traveling companions!

Thursday 8 January 2015

Lorch, Freiburg, Lörrach, and Baden Baden

Just after Christmas we took a short trip to the Black Forest area of Germany. We stopped first in Lorch to see the 8th century Abbey (a World Heritage site) and, oddly enough, the largest tobacco museum in Germany. Who knew?
8th Century Abbey at Lorch
 From there we went to Freiburg, where we spent several days.Our first evening we ate in a bar/restaurant with great bathrooms.
Stall door in the toilet at a restaurant
 The highlight of Freiburg is the cathedral. Gail swears it's a federal law that every cathedral in Germany must have scaffolding on it.
Freiburg Cathedral
Inside it's beautiful. In different sections of the church one can see the different architectural styles of the periods in which it was built. This is the high altar, decorated for Christmas.
Altar at Freiburg Cathedral
 Where there's a tower we'll climb the tower, even in the snow!


The stained glass in the cathedral is beautiful. Many of the windows were sponsored by various professional guilds many centuries ago.
Freiburg Cathedral stained glass (sponsored by the bakers' guild, as shown by the pretzels!)
15th Century stained glass from the Freiburg Cathedral (now at the Augustiner Museum)
Gargoyle
 There are lots of beautiful buildings in Freiburg!
Freiburg Historisches Kaufhaus

And we also found this disturbing stained glass in a small church. Never seen anything quite like it.


The sidewalks in Freiburg are all made of river stone. Tradition dictates that a symbol of the business be incorporated into the sidewalk in front of the building. 


Our friends Fabienne and Michel and their kids met us in Lörrach for lunch and we also visited the Vitra design museum, which was really fun (and a better choice on a very snowy day than the hike we'd planned!) 

One of the goals was to go sledding in the Black Forest. Ironically, there was too much snow and we couldn't safely drive to any of the areas where there's good sledding. So we did a little in town and a little on the way back with our friends in Neuthard. We also stopped at the Baden Baden Christmas Market.
At the Baden Baden Christmas Market