A day of mostly driving, 525 km in all.
After breakfast, loading luggage into the car, and checking out of the hotel, we headed south on the Autobahn A7, in drizzle, with the odd heavy shower, punctuated by short periods of no rain. Traffic was heavy, but the usual German lane discipline – keep right unless you are passing someone, and if you happen to be in the left-most lane and someone faster than you comes up behind, get out of the way – kept things moving, even through the odd road construction.
We were on A7 for almost three hours, to just south of Goettingen when we turned eastward on a very new autobahn, the A38 to Leipzig. Almost immediately, one goes through a 1500 m tunnel, the Deutsche Einigskeit Tunnel – the German Unity Tunnel, which connects the state of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) with the state of Thueringen (Thuringia), the latter of which was part of East Germany. The new highway is just one way the West integrated the East into the re-unified Germany. (There is another new autobahn, A71, which connects the central part of Germany to the A4, and makes getting to Dresden a lot faster than previously.) We eventually turned south on the old Bundesstrasse B247, which winds its way through a lot of villages, very few of which have bypasses. It also goes through the Thueringer Wald (Thuringian Forest) which is a protected area of quite high hills covered in tall, and dark, pine trees, and while driving through in rain was a challenge, snow might be an entirely different proposition.
Thueringen is an integral part of the scenery of the German reformation, and as one drives along there are signs pointing to familiar names, Eisenach and the Wartburg, and Schmalkalten. Wittenberg in Sachsen-Anhalt (Saxony-Anhalt) is about 200 km further east, but much of the developing reformation thought happened in Thueringen, where Luther found refuge in the Wartburg and in the fortress at Coburg, and developed his theology and translated the Bible into German. Also, in Mühlhausen and elsewhere, Anabaptists found many adherents. Thomas Munzer, a leader of some non-peaceful groups of this sect, was active in this city. Sadly, we did not have time for either Eisenach nor Schmalkalten, but thought that another German trip might be to spend some days in or around Gotha or Erfurt, and visit some of these historical places, and then carry on east to Wittenberg, but also visit Dresden, Leipzig, Potsdam, and the re-unified Berlin.
Eventually after the long, slow drive we arrived in Coburg, and drove up to the Veste Coburg, the fortress that overlooks the city. I’d been last here more than 30 years ago, and while the exterior has remained much the same, the interior has become a very fine museum, much of it of religious art, but also of later items such as cutlery through the ages, and the development of tournament armour. There is also a considerable collection of “Lutheriana” including the famous Cranach the Elder paintings of Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora, his wife. It turns out that there are many copies of these paintings around, as many newly Lutheran churches wanted pictures of the founder and his famous/notorious wife, and as this was before the days of colour copiers, the solution was to copy paintings, usually by students in the studio of the master. But there are other quite valuable articles in this museum, which is well worth a visit.
We had our supper at the Veste, in a very nice Stube outside the wall. Friendly service, excellent food, what more could you want – well, in my case I had hoped for local beer, but on draft was Hofbrau from Munich! Ah, globalization!
Then the quick, half hour drive via the A73 to the B505 which goes by Pommersfelden, and then checking into the Hotel Gruener Baum, 555 years old and in the same family, and counting. (Scott and I stayed here last year.) We are staying in one of their new “apartments” with a large sitting room with dining nook, and a kitchen in a cupboard, should we want to cook; but also a little fridge to keep water cold, and perhaps other fluids. A large bath, and separate toilet, a large bedroom with double bed and closets, and a balcony to overlook the village. All this for the princely sum of 80 Euro/day!
Tomorrow the weather is supposed to improve, and the temperature to go to near 20; we shall see. The plan is to take a leisurely tour through the Steigerwald wine villages, along the Main river, going in the direction toward Wuerzburg. A visit to Sulzfeld, the town of the meter bratwurst is in the schedule, and perhaps stops in the afternoon elsewhere to sample the product of last Fall’s harvest, the harvest we missed by cancelling our trip.
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