Our first "reading week" was last week which I spent in Trier, Germany. The Rhineland is beautiful with its rolling hills and beautiful rivers. The bonus was that the sun actually came out! Seeing the blue sky was so novel.
On Monday there was a parade for Fasching. The best way I could describe Fasching would be to have you picture a Mardi Gras and Halloween hybrid. The parade had all kinds of crazy floats, and when you shout "helau!" they threw candy at you. The bummer was that it snowed the entire time, but after that first snowy day we had some consistent nicer weather.
On Tuesday we decided to play tourist and go see some of the sites. Trier is the oldest city in Germany, and has its roots in being occupied by the Romans. We went to see "Porta Negra" [The Black Gate] which was the original entrance into Trier, a Roman Colosseum, the Roman Baths, and Pauline's Kirche. That night we went to Chris Jenkins' great-aunt's house. Her and her husband live in this beautiful house on the river that has been in the family for hundreds of years. I realized that night just how much I appreciate communication...especially the being able to do it part. There were about ten people at dinner with us and they all obviously spoke German. Sometimes I would pick up on things with the words I knew and then use their non-verbal communication to fill in the blanks, but many times I sat completely dumbfounded. They were all very sweet though, using what English they knew to try to include me whenever they could.
Currently we're all in Wittenberg on our Reformation study tour for Reformation History with Dr. Cleaver from Liberty University. We're gone this entire week. Saturday we were in Dresden, yesterday we stopped in Berlin for 4 hours and then headed to Wittenberg where we are today and tomorrow. We depart for Eisenach tomorrow for 2 days and then Heidelberg until Sunday. .
No comments:
Post a Comment