Erfurt

Just as our cabin fever broke over Easter weekend, Brian and I got ready for a train trip east to the state of Thüringen.

We started in Erfurt, which we chose almost at random. Erfurt is old, pretty, not too far away. This is one of the luxuries of living in Europe - to hop on a train and find unique places, historical places, strange places in the same amount of time it would take to drive through Chicago in rush hour traffic.

Erfurt is a city of steeples. They point strong and straight to heaven, in case you'd forgotten that's where you should be looking. Beneath the steeples are old houses and bridges, and tucked in at a modest height is the oldest synagogue in Europe. Built in 1100, it escaped destruction over centuries. So did Erfurt - it stayed intact during World War 2.

This is the medieval synagogue

The most striking steeples are up on a hill. St. Mary's Cathedral and the Church of St. Severus stand side by side at the top of a dramatic staircase. I don't know why they were built next to each other, but it looks very impressive. At the foot of the cathedral hill, Erfurt's Frühlingsfest carnival was running, with its distant sounds of music and the rhythmic screams of people on rides.

Cathedral and St Severus

During our little trip through Thüringen, we were on the Martin Luther trail. He studied at the university in Erfurt and lived as a monk in the town monastery. At a biergarten by the river, a sign claims he once drank beer there too. You can see how Luther might have objected to the gold and gradeur of the two "bad-ass churches" up on the hill. Brian actually came up with that phrase, but I wish I had.

Mixed in with the medieval buildings are modern ones, and playgrounds and kebab stands and mobile phone shops. They are reminders that Erfurt is still a living, working city. It's easy to forget that this was part of East Germany, since you have to look pretty hard to find the same crumbling houses or abandoned warehouses we saw in Wittenberge.

We got to most of the sights in Erfurt, but unfortunately did not make it to the mustard museum. We did have some mustard, and a sausage, at the biergarten beneath the cathedral. It was museum-worthy mustard. You could even call it bad-ass.