Jogging around the neighborhood
View from the platz in front of Dom St Marien
Originally uploaded by Greenery. So, this weekend I did a little exploring. On Saturday, I boarded the train at about midday, and I went to Erfurt. About 50 minutes (by train) to the west, Erfurt is a nice collection of 400, 300, 200, 100 year old buildings (with a few modern day buildings tossed in to the mix.) I wandered a little, and then I wandered into Mrs. Hippy. Cool clothes! How fun! (Raleigh is the dregs. There's no sense of adventure in the clothes there.)
My glee upon finding this store is embarrassing. And they were playing some great, moody music. Too bad it was all british or american pop. If it had been something dark in german, that would have been even better. (Though this shop was NOT goth.)
Anyway, once I rode that to its climax (two new shirts, but I had to put the hoodie that looked like it belonged to a crusader back because it was too expensive...), I went on my merry meandering way. Lots of these old timey, halftimbered houses span the river Gera in a charming way. And there was a glorious cathedral, Dom St. Marien. It was so cold inside, I could see my breath! There was an old painting of Mary (or somebody) cradling a unicorn in her lap. Weird! And a big candelabra shaped like a man. Cool!
I wandered for hours and hours on end. There's a deeper cultural context that I missed out on since I speak the equivalent of ZERO german. I did have a delicious dinner of couscous with leeks, red and yellow pepper, etc and a nice cafe au lait. I had a gross sandwich for lunch with zuchini and a yucky sauce on it. see, you can get by without speaking the language, but you must be prepared for surprises (of both the pleasant and unpleasant varieties).
The trip back was a really nice, unanticipated way to end the day. The ticket office at the train station had closed. So, I tried monkeying with a machine that I did not understand. I asked for help from a young man, and he did his best to get me on the right track. I needed change to run the machine (it said that it accepted bills, but that was a lie.) When I came back, two fussy old men were having even more trouble with the machine than I had. I wound up missing my train (and I had some bad feelings about the old men.) When I got to the platform, the young fellow was there, and he asked me whether I had successfully purchased a ticket. We wound up talking on the train to Weimar. It was nice to have company, and I really liked something about his manner. He was a good, chill guy, not out to blow his own horn but really interesting all the same. He told me that I should visit the concentration camp at Buchenwald (near Weimar). I had read that a communist prison was also located near Buchenwald. (I also read that mass graves of political dissidents/former nazis were located at this prison after the fall of the wall. Crazy how humanity never seems to exhaust its capacity to commit atrocities.) He responded, "oh prisons, they were everywhere. I was in a prison." He said there was a law against not working. There was a time when he wasn't working, so they put him in a cell with 14 other people and made him work in a steel factory. Wow. Yet another experience that I can only dimly imagine.
So, this fellow was kind and helped me when I needed it. He was good company. He suggested a show to see at bar in Jena. He shared some stories about his life. After all of this, I never learned his name. Oh well. Strangers on a train.
(Different from the plot of the Hitchcock movie in that we did not exchange plans plans to murder anybody.)