Monday, June 4, 2007

Erfurt and the rest of Thuringia...well mostly...



















I stayed in Re4Hostel in Erfurt, which was this lovely little city of around 200,000...I think I might have been the only tourist there, besides a few random German tourist I saw around. If I could make a perfect city...it would look a lot like this, it had an amazing parks all over the city, one that went along a small river (Grünanlage), and another that I went to that was right behind the Dom that overlooked the entire city. Every person that I passed by was smiling, and with my pretzles in hand, I couldn't have been happier. I've never seen a town as social as Erfurt...I think that Europe in general lends itself more to relaxation in public spaces and an overall better ability to enjoy everyday life...but this was something else, it seemed like all 200,000 of them were in their central plaza with family and friends having a beer.

If Erfurt wasn't enough, I managed to venture through a park and pop out in the next town over, which must have only been a few thousand...if that, it was called Hochheim, and had this great tiny church with a nice little courtyard that I took the opportunity to relax in for a while...
On my second day, I actually made it to two other cities. First on the list was Weimar, just as beautiful as Erfurt, but a little smaller. The most famous people to be associated with the town are Goethe and Liszt. I wandered through one of what I now consider my favorite parks in Europe, Park an der Ilm, and went up to Goethe's Gardenhouse, and around to Liszt's statue, and then to Liszt's house. What made this park so great though, was that it was amayingly open with wide paths...groomed, but still giving you the sense of being all out there in nature.

After buying a pint of strawberries to hold me over, I hopped on the train to Eisenach, the birthplace of Bach, and visited his house...which was really cute, although halfway destroyed from the War. They turned it into a halfway restored vision of the house, with the other half being this really modern and informative museum with fun little listening stations. I even got a little performance on some of his old clavichords and organs.

And that's what I have to say about Thuringia.

No comments: