Speyer was really interesting, the day in general was rather interesting in several ways but never the less great.
The day started off alright. I woke up, showered, ate, and had planned out how to get to the train station the night before so I wouldn't be late. I would have to leave at 8:15 and walk to Dalbergstrasse and take the tram to the hauptbahnhof. I arrived on time, looked at the schedule hanging on the wall for the number two and was a little earlier than I was expecting. The number three shows up, which I didn't take of course. I realized after it left, that was the one I was supposed to take. I looked at the time board only to realize I was looking at the wrong day for times, and that the number 3 tram wasn't even listed! I pulled out a map and scrambled to get myself oriented and towards the Hbf. I made it to the Paradeplatz, only to see that there weren't any trams there for a while either. I ended up walking all the way to the Hbf, passing only a handful of souls in those 35 minutes. Luckily, I was just a few minutes late and not the last one to arrive.
(Cool architecture - I must have family here! - some one's lawn decor)
From the Mannheim Hbf to the Speyer Hbf was about 25 minutes, and from that Hbf it was another 25 to the Kaiserdom, where we were going to meet our English/Deutsch tour guides. We ended up taking a little longer because some people wanted to buy breakfast and some of us were taking pictures of various things along the way. There were a lot of cool things to see, and I hope that you all out there enjoy them too!
(Altpörtel, one of the entrances through the old city wall, and one of the tallest - one of the many churches, they accepted many denominations and religions here - one of the streets with the Kaiserdom at the very back)
(The "new" front of the church - once upon a time had holy water, another time was filled with wine (haha) - and the facade & rose window )
(This is a picture of men and animals [and a snake] roaming freely and happily. It's facing east towards "the holy land" and where paradise was. - Northern side. If you look you can see where the addition to the building was by the different color of bricks on the tower. - You can see where it was destroyed, the darker brown and white bricks were the original, then it was rebuild with a light red, then the white on the very right)
We then ventured a bit through the town to an old traditional synagogue and a ritual bath. There were pictures of what things used to look like before they were destroyed, but it was still hard to visualize it. Our guide also explained that the small windows that are still there were for the woman to see the worship. And that men were to go to this bath once a week and women once a month.
(Jewish Yard, museum, ritual bath, middle ages synagogue - what's left of the synagogue - the bath that's several meters under the ground and rather cold.)
After the museum, we made our way to the
Altpörtel, which we got to go into! It was interesting to see where the wall used to be attached and the view that people had/ we had while up at the top. I think this might have been my favorite part aside from the inside of the Kaiserdom.
(People can marry in the Altpörtel, this is the room they use - A view of the Kaiserdom from the Altpörtel - I think that's Mannheim out on the horizon)
(I really liked the view of looking down from there - In the distance was an active (Kernkraft) nuclear power plant - An old Cathedral)
(Part of the old city wall near the Kaiserdom - A protestant church - Another cool view from the Altpörtel)
After the Altpörtel, he took us to the oldest protestant church. This might have been one of the first in existence, I don't recall exactly.
(Another protestant church, the paintings were very nice, but were getting old and will be restored soon.)
After this church, our tour was over. We wandered back to the Kaiserdom to go inside, curious what it would look like. My first thoughts upon entering were "This place is huge!" and "They really over did the Frankincense..." However, as we were wandering around, a nun stood up and said that there was going to be a story or offering, I can't remember exactly. Another woman stood up and started playing what I thought was a flute, but looked like a big recorder. It was amazing. With the stone walls and speakers everywhere, it echoed and made the experience even more pleasant. Especially since this large church felt more bare than most other churches I had visited here in Germany.
(Before we entered, there were a lot of statues - the entrance to the Dom [I should have realized by the size of the door that it was going to be large] - The massive organ in the back of the church. I was probably 700 feet away when I took this picture. You can see the previous door beneath it.)
Within the church was a small area that had relics and bones from saints long gone. They were adorned with gold and other colors that made them really beautiful. After we had seen everything, we decided it was time to head home and to go our separate ways. I ended up going home and trying to figure out what classes I could and couldn't take, and of course blogging some. Somewhere in there, I made myself a new rendition of Eggplant Parmesan. It was until earlier that evening, that I realized I didn't actually have an oven. I ended up cutting up the eggplant, cutting up the leftover tomatoes, cooking that all together, added cheese and dolloped that onto a piece of bread. It was pretty good, but I think the tomatoes were a little old...
(A relic from Edith Stein [from the cross blessed] - Selicer Paul Hose Nardini, a priest - unrelated, all black pigeon. Who knew?)
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