Back to Lutherstadt Wittenberg

We pulled into the Lutherstadt Wittenberg Hbf at 8:50 and following about a 15 minute walk arrived at the Best Western.  It's a nice hotel, and our room is spacious and comfortable.  Given the late hour, we weren't very picky about dinner, and simply walked across the street to a pizzeria.  I was expecting tolerable at best, but it was the best pizza I've had since Dan and Leah took us to a place in Brooklyn... which pretty much makes it the 2nd best pizza I've ever had.  

We turned in around 11:00 and took our time getting out this morning.  The day was overcast but quite comfortable - Wittenberg is actually further north than Juneau, Alaska.  The temperature was expected to get close to 70 degrees F during the afternoon.

Breakfast is included in our hotel bill, and I was delighted to see bacon, sausage and eggs along with the more traditional breads and cold meat slices.  Actually, I'm pretty sure I haven't gone more than a day without eating some pork product since getting here, but not good ol' bacon.

I went back to the room to finish some grading while Judy walked around.  There was an organ concert at the Schlosskirche (castle church) at noon, so we headed down there.

Schlosskirche

We arrived about 15 minutes into the concert but remarkably, there were still seats in the pews.  This is one of two important churches in town: this is where Martin Luther posted his 95 theses.  The last time we were here (4 years ago), the interior of the Schlosskirche was under renovation in preparation for the festivities this year, so this was the first time we'd seen it.

Interior of Schlosskirche as concert attendees are leaving

Looking toward the rear of the church, at the organ.

There are, of course, statues of Martin Luther and his right-hand man, Philip Melanchthon.

Martin Luther

Philip Melanchthon

We also returned to the other important church in town, St. Mary's.  This was Martin Luther's parish church, and where most of his prodigious body of sermons were preached.

St Mary's, Luther's "preaching church"

There is a rather remarkable (and beautiful) set of paintings above the altar in St. Mary's seen below.  The left panel is devoted to baptism, and shows Philip Melanchthon baptizing an infant.  The center panel focuses on communion, while the right panel shows a scene of granting absolution.

Paintings above the altar in St. Mary's

Afterwards, we walked around for awhile, and I remembered a local restaurant/brewery called (originally enough) Brauhaus Wittenberg.  Their beer is unpasteurized and unfiltered (another Kellerbier), and the Dunkel Bier (dark beer) is pretty fantastic, and their Spargelcremesuppe has huge chunks of fresh white asparagus - the best soup I've had here yet.

Kellerbier and Spargelsuppe.  It doesn't get much better than this.

Afterwards, we headed back to the room for a break.  I went up to the train station to get our tickets to Munich (we don't have a secure online connection in the hotel).  Later, we went shopping (Judy found some fake Birkenstocks for about 1/4th of the price of the real thing), then walked around some more.  We came across this mural on a building.

I tried to look this up on Google Translate.  If I got it right, it translates as "they are called patience and fairth, and their fate lies in my hands."

Around 7:00, we went out to look for dinner.  We'd seen a small restaurant that I wanted to check out, but it was so smoke-filled that we left and we were too tired to look around, so we headed back to the Brauhaus again.  It didn't disappoint.  We had the best meal I've had since coming to Europe.  While there, we were seated next to a couple from Kansas City that we'd bumped into on the street the night that we came in.  They're on a church tour that will be hitting all of the high points of the Protestant Reformation.  They're actually staying at the hotel associated with the Brauhaus, and it appears to be really charming.

Now back to the hotel, with about 20,000 steps each on our fitbits!  I expect a lot more walking tomorrow.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  Earlier in the day, we ran into Martin Luther and his wife, Katharina von Bora.  Nice couple.