This post is a day late.  Sorry.

Yesterday we visited Erfurt and Buchenwald.  Erfurt has a long history of trading, and it is where Martin Luther attended college and began his life as a monk.

Buchenwald was different from what I had always thought of with the concentration camps.  It was not built as an extermination camp, although it was responsible for the deaths of more than 56,000 people.  It was called a "protective custody camp," and used as a work force.  Many of the inmates had to build guns for the Nazis, and others had to build a railway which took the guns out and brought new prisoners in.  When the Allied forces liberated the camp built for 8,000 people, they found 21,000, including 900 children under 18.
While there, we saw the cell of the prison within the prison where the well known pastor Paul Schneider was held for fifteen months, the longest any prisoner stayed in this prison area.  The memorial, heated to the temperature of the human body, in the old canteen was especially eerie for me.  It made it very easy to imagine the people commemorated as being there as we learned about them.  We will remember.

Hello from Germany!

I'm Jacqueline Schutte from Wartburg College.  We visited the Wartburg Castle today!  One of the most exciting things about the visit to Wartburg was that myself and two other students rode up to the castle on donkeys.  Mine's name was Moni and one other's name was Leisel.

Being at the castle was very exciting too.  Some students and I went to the top of the castle tower and looked around from the top of the mountain.  It was a very beautiful view.

I also enjoyed seeing the room where Luther translated the New Testament into German.  The room was very small and crude compared to how ornate and extravagant the rest of the castle was.  His room was in the far corner of the castle past where the donkey drivers lived.  Dr. Kleinhas pointed out the footrest that was Martin Luther's (which was the only authentic piece of furniture in the room) was a whale vertebra.

St. Elizabeth also lived in the Wartburg Castle.  Her room was decorated with a beautiful sparkling glass mosaic which was made with 4 million pieces of glass.

Another highlight of the trip for all of us has been the food, it is all so very tasty here!  We are all trying new things and everything has been delicious.

-Jacque

There we stood

A group of weary Wartburgers arrived in Frankfurt Tuesday morning, then boarded a bus immediately for Worms.  Worms was a Roman settlement already in the first few centuries, but its significance for Lutherans is Martin Luther's appearance before Emperor Charles V at the imperial diet held there in 1521.  It's where Luther made his famous speech that he would not recant his teachings unless convinced of his errors by the Scriptures or clear reason.  He may or may not have said "Here I stand," but he DID stand in Worms before empire and church -- and yesterday we stood there, too.

SIXTEEN HOURS TILL FRANKFURT - Krista

.....but still in the airport for now :)  -Jacque

Stay tuned ...

On April 29, 2013, seven Wartburg College students and a handful of other travelers will depart for Frankfurt, Germany, to begin a three-week adventure, a Wartburg College May Term course titled Reformation Then and Now.  After exploring the roots of the Reformation in Germany, we'll continue on to Eastern Europe, visiting the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.  Midway through our journey, in Prague, we'll be joined by another group of seven travelers from the Northeastern Iowa Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  The Northeastern Iowa Synod has recently established a "companion synod" relationship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hungary.  This trip is an opportunity to deepen that relationship.  This blog is an opportunity to follow both adventures.  Stay tuned ...