Erfurt

Erfurt was a very nice city. When we arrived there, by train of course, we were immediately greeted by a tour guide. He went directly into the tour of the city, by starting with the train station and its' history. To tell you the truth, we did so much walking and he did so much talking that, at some point, I just stopped paying attention what he was saying. Me, being the American tourist, I just snapped shot after shot of the beautiful landscape and the architecture. I definitely noticed the differences between the baroque, renaissance, and gothic styles of the buildings. They melded together well, along with the more sleek and modern styles of architecture. The things that I keep noticing, as we go from city to city, are the great amount of detail that went into the construction of each and every building. From time to time, I would have to ask Frau Page what exactly the guide waws talking about. The man just talked to damn fast for me to follow what was going on. Another thing that stood out about the Erfurt trip was when Thomas (the tour guide) explained the very distastful process of making blue dye. I don't think I'll go into that. I don't want stomachs to turn. The highlight of the trip for me was going into the Kirchschloss ( that's Church Castle). I'm sure that there are more monumental and magnificent churches around Europe, but this is my first trip, and I've never seen anything like that in my life. I can't even fathom how people, especially in the middle ages, built things that big. It blows my mind (again). Once again, I digress to the detail that went into building these things. If you know anything about the Bible, you can clearly see that the church, itself, tells of some of the storys; The 6 Foolish Virgins and The 6 Wise Virgins, and The story of Gabriel (the angel of vengence) plunging his sword into the chest of Satan are among a few that I recollect.

After all of the walking and the sightseeing, I think it's safe to say that the majority of us were spent. So we did the tourist thing and cooled off on an outside patio with some drinks and people watching. And later that night, I had the best lasagna that I've had in a long time. The trip back seemed long and it was nice to lay my head on my pillow at the end of that day. All in all it was a good trip and Germany continues to pique my intrigue. I wonder what the rest of Europe is like.