Wittenberg and Katharina...

So, does Katharina von Bora sound familiar? No, eh?












Well, how about this guy? He's Katharina's husband...oh yeah, his name is Martin Luther. ;) I thought I'd mix that up a bit - Katharina sounds like she was a great lady...













This is St. Mary's parish church where Luther taught in Wittenberg.







On the corner of the church is a statue of the 'Judensau' (which apparently was popular and put on other churches) or 'Jewish pig', yeah, I know. It has the name of God from a Kabbalist text and shows Jews suckling a pig. Hmm....yeah....and apparently Luther wasn't against having this up there...in fact, he was VERY anti-Jewish - he was disappointed that they hadn't rapidly converted to Christianity.





This is the 'Castle Church' where Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door...

Around the tower in VERY LARGE LETTERS it says 'A Mighty Fortress is our God' - love that hymn!












And ye famous door...way. The actual door was destroyed years ago, but that is the doorway where 'the party started' as an American student said inside the church.










The inside of the Castle Church where Martin Luther and his fellow Reformer, Philipp Melanchton are buried. (I had never heard much about Melanchton, but he was apparently brilliant!)











Melanchton's grave marker...




















Martin Luther's grave marker...














Wittenberg town square. The two-spired church in the background is St. Mary's where Luther preached....














This was an old monastery that the Elector of Saxony gave Martin Luther and Katharina as a home - they often had 40+ to dinner at night and had six children and raised four orphans.


Today their home is a museum...
















Even though many other things were 'at work' with the Reformation, this is partly to blame: this is an indulgence payment box. The people paid their money for an 'indulgence' (piece of paper largely saying 'time served' for sins and no need to go to Purgatory/Hell/etc.) - Luther grew concerned with the practice as a whole, but especially when he started noticing people stopped coming to confession - 'no need', right? ;)







This is Luther's pulpit that he preached from....






Obviously not the original (but from Luther's time) but a copy of the Papal Bull against him...

















This is 'the Community Chest'. Luther tried to put in motion several 'reforms', in education, banking, etc. This was a kind of 'common money pot' which paid for the pastors' salaries and cared for the poor....










Over the years Luther's house had many visitors and here is the signature of one of them - how's your Russian? That's pi for 'P' and ETR. Yes, it's true, Peter the Great was in Wittenberg years after Luther's death and visited his house. Graffiti hoodlum! ;)









So we said 'toodles' to Wittenberg and Katharina von Bora and enjoyed the countryside on our way back to Berlin.

Here are the 'Spargel' fields - it's a white Asparagus that the Germans just go nuts over! I mean, it's fine, but....let's just say they REALLY like it...







Germany is SO beautiful!! This is the country road back to Berlin...

Hakuna Matata = Sans souci = without cares

Elder and Sister Kirkham are ending their missions here in Berlin, so a group of us took them to Sanssouci Park. This is a park full of palaces! Here is the ‘Peace Church’ on the grounds where a Prussian king and queen are buried. And…

It has in the courtyard a copy of the ‘Christus’ statue in the Salt Lake Temple Visitors’ Center!

And here we all are....

And there is Sanssouci (San -soo-see), oh how loverly. Frederick the Great built this palace and loved to be there...in between fighting everyone and everybody he could....

Frederick the Great had these built - they were specially made to keep fig trees warm, so he could grow figs in Prussia's cold, northern climate.

This is Frederick the Great's grave. He wanted to be buried here, but his nephew had him buried in a military church by his father. In 1991(?) he was returned and buried here with his greyhound dogs (the burial markers to the left) which is what he wanted.

Part of the gardens of Sanssouci park.

This is the 'Orangerie' or a huge, fancy greenhouse with palms, banana trees, etc.

This is the back of the Neues Palais (New Palace). Frederick had this built when he was fighting the whole world (Russia, Austria, Sweden and France) in order to show that he wasn't 'bothered' and not worried - even though he was broke and his people were starving!

The front....wonder how many people died so he could build this...I was really bothered when I heard that....

Bundeskanzlersamt Visit, March 2007

My Studentenwohnheim (dorm) sets up trips/activities for us and in March we went and visited the Bundeskanzlersamt (Federal Chancellor's Office), or in other words this is where the Prime Minister works.





So this is Aaron acting 'cool, calm' and trying to seem as non-dangerous as he can...for some reason I wasn't on the list to enter, but Frau Ebel (one of the women who runs our dorm) got me in - Thanks Frau Ebel! ;)





Our tour guide had actually given a presentation at our Studentenwohnheim before - he grew up in East Germany and was imprisoned for a number of months in solitary confinment because he tried to flee to the West.





He knows a lot and gave us a tour of the entire building...



















We all got to pose at the 'temporary' permanent news conference area. Our tour guide pointed out the danger of hiring 'star architects' - very little in the building is functional. The real news conference room isn't big enough - the hallways are 'too acoustically good' to the point that regular noise is too loud for all the office workers in the area....etc.!!






This is a hall with portraits of all prime ministers/Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany (what we used to call West Germany...). I don't know if you can notice, but everything is in this mint green color (the railings, etc.) - that's because the archtiect when he was a poor student really wanted a Porsche that was this green mint color! Funny, eh?









This is where the power-power types eat their lunch....hmm....our tour guide explained that even if the government wanted to replace all the light bulbs (like they're doing in Australia) they couldn't - the architect holds the copyright to the whole building and it can't be changed without his consent! (This is what our tour guide meant by 'star architects' ;)




And here are the stairs where the foreign dignitaries climb up to the 'temporary' permanent news conference area. I like the photo!