| Current mood: |  happy |
Sunday in Bad Godesberg, Saturday in Frankfurt
I am not at all sure I'll have time to say everything I want to today; I signed up for two hours of internet time, but spent most of it typing and correcting my Referat, which I need to give orally in class tomorrow. I'm not at all sure I've been able to successfully print it off, but if not I will first thing tomorrow at school.
Yesterday we went mit dem Zug (via train) to Frankfurt am Main. We went by slow train, along the banks of the Rhine both ways. On the way I amazed my seatmates by correctly predicting and knowing the names of all the castles we passed between about Boppard and Bingen. It was slow but fun.
Frankfurt is an interesting town, but what strikes me is that the most prominent piece of public art is this HUGE Euro symbol. It kind of sums up the city. We had a great tour leader, with whom I made fast friends and talked one on one all day. This guy, definitely German, lives in Frankfurt, is an American Baseball Fan (Perhaps I should say that he is the German baseball fan, as I cannot imagine there are many others.) Not only does he understand how the game is played, but he also came to America this summer and attended a Nationals game. And he remembers who they played (Atlanta) and that they lost. When I said I was from the DC area, he was very animated and we talked while we walked. It is also true that we walked faster than everyone else.
An interesting phenomenon here, is that when you are following someone in Germany, they just take off, and don't usually look back. They just trust that you're actually competent enough to follow. The guide's name was Michel Hess, and I got virtually all of his words on videotape, so I have over an hour of videotape from Frankfurt alone.
Anyway, we went to the top of the Main Tower, (Named after the river, this is not the same as English Main), walked through a park with statues of Goethe and Schiller, visited the Old Town, passed the Dom (which is actually NOT a cathedral, but was where the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation cast their votes) and the church which was the site of the first parlement ever in Germany, back during the Enlightenment. We topped it all off with an hour long visit to Goethe's birth house, which was really quite nice. Goethe is an interesting person, he's been called the German Shakespeare, but that probably isn't fair to Goethe, who produced more work with more diversity and was far more politically involved than Shakespeare. Of coure, Bill had to work for a living, while Goethe was born to a well to do family.
At the end of all this , we had about an hour to our own. We had not eaten, or not since we'd met at the Goethe Institute at 8:30, so most of us decided that a meal was in order. I stopped at a Weinstube and had a glass of Reisling and a cheese sandwich. Then I visited the Dom and Dommuseum, which were less impressive than others I've seen, but had quite a number of very old wooden altars. The Dom survived firebombing in WW II, and it is very quiet and beautiful inside.
We met at the Bahnhof again at 5:15 (only 5.5 hours in Frankfurt, over 6 hours of travel to get there an back) and we headed back to town, where we returned too late for the bus, so I walked home. Lots of walking.
This morning I slept late, almost until 9, then headed down to the Marienforster Evangelical church. Turns out there was no service there, since they rotate the service between 3 churches. I was quite lucky in that they transport folks with no car between the churches, and at 10:15 a man came in a car and picked me and two other women, both older, up. We were taken to Immanuel Evangelical Church, which is a very modern church, with great big huge clear windows that look out into trees. That made me feel at home.
There were two celebrants, the Pfarrer and the Pfarrerin, and they both spoke very clearly. In addition, despite there not being a service bulletin, there was an order of worship in the front of the Gesangbuch, and the Pfarrer announced where it was at the beginning. I was pleased to have a pretty high level of understanding this Sunday. This was Ewigkeitsonntag, which means, that like Little River, they were remembering the dead from this last year. They ended up listing over 100 names, ordered by the month they had died in, and how old they were and their last address. For women they also gave their family name at birth. They had a small votive candle in a glass candleholder on the table for each of these people, and at the end invited people who had lost loved ones in the last year to take a candle. This church is very old, a good 60% of the members appear to be elderly, so there were a number.
There was also communion which I almost completely have the hang of now. Communion here is almost always by intinction, or you can drink directly from the chalice. The latter seems to me a good way to pick up germs that I'm not particularly adapted to, so I refrained, but did dip my host in. Here we went up to the front of the church all together in groups, much like Little River does on Maundy Thursday. And afterwards, we joined hands and prayed for peace.
After the service, one of the women I had ridden with asked if I wanted to ride back or to walk back with her. Well, a choice between a quick trip back to my homework or the chance to spend the next fourty minutes walking through the rollling hills and cow pastures and talking with a German Woman, Gisela, who actually invites my broken German Converstaion? No real choice here. About 20 minutes into our walk, the rain started slightly, and I managed to miss my turn, as we were so deep in conversation. It was great, and she was very warm.
Then, and till about now, I've been working on my presentation for tomorrow. I'm getting ready to give it one last grammar check, and then take it home and sleep on it. Or not. The church down the road from where I am staying has a presentation this evening of Mozart's Requiem that I think I may attend.
Tschüss!
(Read comments)
|
