Day 70: Erfurt and Weimar from Bad Berka

Disclaimer: All voyages in this blog are being taken safely in the comfort of our imaginations - based on our plans and intentions for travel in 2020. What is reality after all? 

Our friends Garry and his brother Lawrie arrived today (from wherever they've been elsewhere in Germany) ... not arriving in Bad Berka, but where we'd arranged to meet them - in Erfurt, about a 30 minute drive away. We went there relatively early (for us) in the morning, and met them at the station:

checking, of course, to see that we had the right place:

Erfurt is the capital and largest city in the state of Thuringia, in central Germany.   It's known because Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, was ordained in the Cathedral of St Mary, whose origins date to the 8th century, and as a monk, he lived in the Augustinerkloster monastery here.  We'll see these places shortly.

We had parked near the station, but didn't want to leave their (light) luggage in the car unattended, so found the luggage lockers at the station:

This allowed us to walk the kilometre or so into the centre of the old town and have a look at the Krämerbrücke. This is the Merchants' Bridge over the Gera River. It's the longest series of inhabited buildings on any bridge in Europe. It was initially built in wood but rebuilt in stone in 1325. Originally there were 62 narrow buildings along its 120-metre length, but subsequent redevelopment left just 32 buildings. At each end, there was originally a church, but only the Church of St Aegidius remains at the eastern end of the bridge today. The Bridge is lined with galleries, cafés and boutiques offering traditional crafts.

From there, it was a short walk to the Domplatz:

with the Cathedral of St Mary, whose origins date to the 8th century, and, next to the cathedral, the Gothic Church of St Severus:

At that point, we noticed that we could save ourselves a bit of aimless wandering around a town that we didn't know well, so persuaded Garry and Lawrie, who had just got off one train, to get on another, and indulge us in our simple pleasures.

This took us first to the nearby Petersberg Citadel (though not into it for the tour):

and then to the Augustinian Monastery (now a hotel):

which has a nice cloister (modest in Lutheran ways):

From there, our little train took us on to a couple of squares. The Wenigemarkt is on the eastern end of the Krämerbrücke (we have a habit of revisiting places on these trains):

At the other end of the bridge is the Fischmarkt:

Finally, on our introductory tour, we went past (but not into) the Old Synagogue:

This is is one of the best preserved medieval synagogues in Europe, with its oldest parts dating back to the late 11th century. Since 2009 it has been used as a museum of local Jewish history, housing the Erfurt Treasure, a hoard of medieval coins, goldsmiths' work and jewellery found in 1998.

But we need to keep going, as lunchtime was upon us. For that, we had to drive to another city: Weimar. We collected luggage and car and drove the 30 minutes to another railway station, where we'd met Garry (and Frank that time) in 2018:

We parked there, stowed their luggage in yet another locker, and hurried across town to a restaurant we'd remembered. On our first visit here, we'd stumbled into this at random; the next time (in Weimar to buy camping stools), we'd come across it again; this time, we quite intentionally knew it:

It's an Italian restaurant in a shaded private park, called (strangely) Giardino:

The food was as pleasant as we remembered it:

and some dessert could almost have passed for being a banana split:

We had time that afternoon for a wander around the city. We tried to persuade Garry and Lawrie to join us on another tourist train, but they weren't at all keen on the idea:

Nor were we attracted by a tour by horse and buggy:

But we followed the sedate pace of this from the Marktplatz to the Platz der Demokratie:

where we found the Duchess Anna Amalia Library:

This is a large building, sited on the edge of a park:

The attraction in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library is the Rococo Library, where we could queue to catch a quick glimpse (luckily there were few people today; normally you have to book months ahead for a timed ticket):

Here's some information we found out on the guided tour:

"The library houses a major collection of German literature and historical documents and is part of the UN designated Classical Weimar (World Heritage Site). In 2004 a fire destroyed the main wing and a substantial part of the collection; restoration of salvaged volumes lasted until 2015.

"It has borne this name only since 1991, when, in the year of the 300th anniversary of the Ducal library, it was decided to rename it.  It was originally moved to this building in 1691 and the Duchess's son, Duke Karl August, invited Goethe and Voigt to keep an eye on it. Goethe worked here until his death making it one of the best book collections in Europe. 

"The fire on September 2, 2004 destroyed the entire third floor, the attic and 50,000 books. However, most of the valuable collection, including medieval autographs, incunabula (early printed books dating back to 1500), globes and maps, was saved. The world's largest collection of Faust and Nietzsche's private library is preserved here. 

"At this time, the interiors were restored, but the number of visitors was sharply reduced. So the Rococo Hall can only be visited at fixed time intervals. Approximately 50 tickets are reserved for individual visitors who wish to purchase tickets on the day of their visit.  Two halls are located in the library: the Renaissance Hall and the Rococo Hall." 

Someone commented in our hearing:

"I must say that this is not a visit to the library. I visit the library when I can pick up a book, look through it, read it, smell it at the end. Here you will only look at the shelves, walls, candelabra. And the spines of books. Everything is very beautiful. Stunning, but it's more about design, not about books."

There is also a more modern reading room for the research collection with a million books, 2000 medieval and early modern manuscripts, 600 ancestral registers, 10000 maps and 4000 musical scores. The emphasis is on German literature., but there's also an important Shakespeare collection of approximately 10000 volumes, as well as a 16th-century Bible connected to Martin Luther. The fire destroyed tens of thousands of volumes (as we noted), including first editions of the works of Schiller and William Shakespeare.

That all took a bit of time, so we made a hurried visit to a small museum set in old houses - the Kirms Krackow House, but had only time to look at the courtyard and garden:

We wandered back through the old town:

past another strange dribbling statue (we seem to find these):

to the station to retrieve the luggage and car. What a busy day!  We think Garry and Lawrie were starting to snooze in the back seat as we drove back to Bad Berka: