A Whole Day In Berlin!

Less than 50 days to go...I am getting really excited! This week I got a map of Germany and put it up in the church hallway. Complete with itinerary, I marked each city we will visit with a pushpin and a corresponding number. It looks great!

I also received a letter from the group leaders. Located in Arizona, the retired Lutheran pastor-and-wife team have led tours to Germany for 30 years. I feel blessed to be hooking up with such experienced tour leaders. I know we will have a great time!

How exciting to have a whole day in Berlin! This city has a both a rich and a very painful history. Throughout the ages, Berlin has served as an important city in German history. It has served as the capital of Prussia, the capital of The German Empire (or Second Reich) under Otto von Bismarck, the capital of The Weimar Republic (between WWI and WWII), and The Third Reich under Adolf Hitler.

When Germany was divided into East and West, East Berlin served as the capital of East Germany and was surrounded by The Berlin Wall. The Wall came down November 9, 1989. There are sections of the wall located in museums all over the world today (including the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS), and I understand there is a section remaining there in Berlin as a memorial to these dark days in Germany's history. The infamous "Check Point Charlie" has been removed, but a replica is nearby.

Several US Presidents have spoken in front of the Brandenburg Gate, including Barak Obama, Ronald Reagan, and John F. Kennedy. It was here that JFK gave his famous "ich bin ein Berliner" exclamation. While I understand this is now considered to be grammatically correct, at the time what he really said was "I am a jelly doughnut!" Yet another one of those "funny" things one remembers from German class.

Berlin was heavily bombed during WWI and WWII. On the downtown stretch of the Kuhrfurstendamm is where we will find the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. I really hope we get to see this. I remember discussing this part of Berlin in high school German class, too. There are 2 buildings near it, affectionately called The Lipstick (tall, skinny, and cylindrical building) and The Powderbox (short, squat, and round building).

Eisleben & Wittenberg

Well, the flu/food poisoning mystery has been solved. My not feeling well was neither of these things but was instead a series of gall bladder attacks. The gall bladder was removed on Monday, 3/15, and I am still recovering but overall feeling much, much better.

At least all of this happened a) before Easter and b) before leaving the States. It would have been AWFUL to have had to deal with this while on this trip to Germany!

So...after Erfurt we are on to Luther's birth and death place, as well as where he spent much of his childhood. Luther was born November 10, 1483 in Eisleben. The church where he was baptized still stands today, as well as the font in which he was baptized. It so happened that he was in town giving a sermon when he became quite ill and died in 1546. They think it was kidney stones, but no one really knows for sure. He was only 62, but considering he was living during the time of the Plague and without "modern medicine," this was a ripe old age.

Luther's father, Hans, was a copper miner, and his mother, Margarethe, was a homemaker. The Luthers moved to Mansfield and then to Wittenberg when Luther was quite young, and he spent most of his childhood in Wittenberg. After attending the Augustinian Monastery in Erfurt, Luther was sent to the University at Wittenberg to study and earn his Doctorate of Ministry. He of course graduated and went on to be a professor at this university as well. It is also here in Wittenberg where he was serving as a parish priest when he nailed the 95 Theses to the church door on October 31, 1517 in protest of the sale of indulgences (little slip of paper that guaranteed salvation). Luther's main argument came from St. Paul's letter to the Romans, namely that we are saved by grace through faith, and certainly not by anything we do or purchase. It is this singular event that historians pinpoint as the "official" start of the Protestant Reformation. Of course, there were several others along with Luther who were starting to question, if not rebel, against Rome, but it seems that Luther's actions that day in 1517 was the trigger. And, as they say, the rest is history.

Flights

I booked Ken's flights to Germany yesterday. He'll be leaving Kansas City on Saturday afternoon, May 22, changing planes in Detroit, and arriving in Frankfurt on Sunday morning around 9:30am. That should be about the time the others on the tour will be heading back to the States, so I figure I'll just catch a ride to the airport with all of them and then go looking for Ken. We'll be heading back on Sunday, May 30, not only on the same flight, but the very kind woman at the airline also fixed it so we already know we are sitting next to each other. We arrive in KC sometime in the late afternoon. The flight time each way is somewhere around 12-14 hours, which is a long time, but not as bad as going to Israel. That was 18+ hours, and I thought we'd NEVER get there!

It feels so good knowing this part of the trip is all taken care of!

Next Stop - Eisenach and Erfurt

The next day we are off to Eisenach and Erfurt. Eisenach is a large city (43,000+ residents in 2006) and should be well-known to Lutherans for two very important reasons: 1) it is the home of Wartburg Castle (where Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German while in hiding) and 2) it is also the birthplace of none other than our favorite Lutheran composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. His house is now a museum. Also in Eisenach is the Luther House, where Luther is said to have lived as a young boy. This should be fascinating! There are also two very large statues in the main square - I'm sure we'll be seeing those for a great photo op!

Erfurt (population 200,000+) was minimally damaged during WWII and after being captured by Patton's Army on April 12, 1945, it became part of the Soviet Zone of Occupation. It is now the capital of Thuringia. Erfurt is famous for Lutherans because this is where Martin Luther attended the university, earning both his Bachelor's Degree as well as his Master's of Theology. He lived there as a student from 1501 to 1505, and then continued on as a monk from 1505 to 1511. The old university still stands today (picture). Interestingly, Bach's parents were married there in Erfurt in 1668.