If it's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium - 8/12/08

Eisenach and Warburg Castle 

Did you see the Perseid meteor showers? August 12th (that would be today in most places) is usually the peak.  Take a quick look and then come back to this week's edition of If It's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium.

A couple of weeks ago I showed you painted bears that were on exhibit in Stuttgart, Germany.  Well that was one stop on a whirlwind train tour that took me to 10 cities in 3 days.  I would take the train to a city that looked promising, get out and roam around from as little as 45 minutes in one place to 6 hours in another.  Just enough time to visit the city centers and check out any castles they may have.  And it seemed they all had castles.

My first real stop was Eisenach, Germany.  Eisenach has a population somewhere around 50,000 people and its claims to fame include being the birthplace to Johann Sebastian Bach and having Wartburg Castle overlooking the city.  Martin Luther went into hiding here under the assumed name of Junker Jorg after being excommunicated by the Pope.  The city is a short train run east and slightly north of Frankfurt.

About a 15 minute walk from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) is the center of the old city with its requisite stone gate and tower.

Another short walk takes you down Karlstrasse, a street open only to pedestrians and lined with various shops.  Like most old cities this takes you into the old city square.

But the main attraction in Eisenach is actually out of the city...Warburg Castle.  Being the totally impatient person that I am, I opted not to wait for the bus and hiked the 2 km to the castle (which, unfortunately, in my zeal to get some exercise neglected to remember that the castle would be on the hill overlooking the city, thereby making the hike pretty darn steep).  In any case, the castle was pretty cool.

Several separate buildings comprised the castle, behind the requisite wall of course.  That tower looks pretty interesting.

The tower gave a great view of the surrounding area, but on the way down I just liked the look of this well.

At the base there was a stark reminder that being in the tower wasn't always such a good thing.  There were a series of macabre sculptures showing people in pain and undergoing torture.  I especially liked this one.

At this point I joined a tour inside the castle and listened to the tour guides perfect German (luckily they supplied a brochure in English or I would have been totally clueless).  In stark contrast to the tower and sculptures, much of the inside of Wartburg Castle was opulent.  This was from a room called Elizabeth's Bower, which was most likely the women's quarters in medieval times.  The mosaic work covers the entire interior of the room and is truly amazing.

Here's a shot from another room.

Needless to say the castle hosted many events and dinners.  The main banquet hall is now used for concerts.  The marble-like columns are actually polished calcareous sediment, a material forming in the ancient Roman water pipes in the Eifel mountains and considered a precious building material at the time.  I was particularly struck by the ceilings.

From there I wandered through a museum and at one point could look into one of the bedrooms (not a bad view).

And finally, through the narrow Lutherstube to where Martin Luther worked in his tiny room.

Martin Luther stayed at Wartburg for 11 months from May 1521 to March 1522, and during that time he translated the New Testament from Greek into German, among many other writings.

By the way, the whale vertebra is apparently the only thing that remains from the original furnishings of the room.

Well, that's it for Eisenach and Warburg Castle.  I hope you enjoyed my little peak.  I'll be returning to Germany periodically in this weekly column (I did say I did 10 cities, right?) [Okay, one of them was in France, but just barely.]

Please come back next week and travel along with me wherever I may be.  Perhaps we'll do all of Europe in one fell swoop. Hmmmm. :)