Four Day Weekend

This was a 4 day weekend for Ben, he had Friday and Monday off. We had planned on taking a USO tour of the town of Ladenberg, but the boys were not feeling well the day before. Maddox had the stomach flu and Carson caught a cold. We canceled the trip, there will be another one next month and it's close by, so we could even drive down ourselves if we want.

The weekend wasn't a waste though. Friday we took care of odds and ends, I finished my online teacher application for DoDDS and made a trip to some schools to drop off a resume. Saturday we took Maddox bowling for the very first time. He absolutely loved it! He was cranky when we walked from the car to the building because it was sunny and hurting his eyes, but as soon as we walked in and he found out he got to wear new shoes he was in a much better mood.

They didn't have bumpers, but they gave him this ramp that they put the ball on and then pushed it down. He would push it down, move to the side to watch it go down the lane, then jump up and down when it hit the pins (I think he just liked the sound his shoes made.)






It didn't take him long to learn that he wasn't supposed to chase the ball down the lane or run up behind daddy while he was in the middle of a roll, he rarely ended up with a gutter ball and bowled a higher score than me on both games.


After the first game we got some beer and pizza.




Sunday we ran more errands and lounged around the house:


Maddox is obsessed with airplanes and anything else that flies:



Monday we took a trip to the Altstadt - Old Town - which is just below the castle.


There is a statue of the Modonna in the Kornmarkt (Corn Market) built in 1718 by the Jesuits, to try to motivate the people of Heidelberg to switch to Catholicism.


This is Marktplazt (Market Square). The Church of the Holy Ghost is in the background and the Herculese Fountain is crowded by tourists (including one looney old man talking loudly and looking lost). The fountain was built between 1706 and 1709 to commemorate how hard it was to rebuild after the destruction of the Thirty Years War.

Since the Middle Ages, this square has been used for public proceedings. But these were not just limited to markets. Witches and heretics were burned at the stake here, and citizens charged with petty crimes served their time hanging in a cage, for all to see and torment.


One of the few buildings to survive the many wars of Germany's past is the Church of the Holy Ghost. And even though the foundation was laid in 1398, it took until 1544 to finish the tower.



The church has been home to Catholics and Protestants throughout the centuries. In 1706 a divider separating the two denominations was put in when both wanted to have services there, and it remained until the 1930’s. The church also has the tombs of the prince and princess elector.





We decided to pay 3 euro to climb to the top of the tower, 204 steps up. That didn't sound like much of a feet at first, but carrying a baby, toddler, and very heavy diaper bag up winding stone staircases turned out to be quite a challege.
This is the little door we had to go through. The ceiling was quite low at times.


There was a landing halfway up that had many sculptures of gargoyles and a beautiful view of the inside.




The view from the top, finally!!


I was way out of breath, dizzy, but releived that the feelings of claustraphobia had finally subsided.


Long way down...

Zum Ritter St. Georg (Ritter Hotel)was built in 1592, and is one of the very few buildings in Heidelberg to have survived the War of the Palatinate Succession


Going down was much easier, even though I was worried about missing a step and falling all the way down while holding Carson. I don't think I'll be climbing any more towers any time soon....

Next we went to the Alte Bruke (Old Bridge - The Carl Theodore Bridge)


Prince Elector Carl Theodor built the bridge in 1786. The twin towers on the city side of the river were once part of the city wall, and contain dungeons used for housing criminals. In the center of these, hanging above the portcullis, is a plaque giving acknowledgment to Austrian troops who helped defend the bridge against a French attack in 1799.


One of the most notable items on the bridge is the statue of a monkey holding a mirror. The legend surrounding this curious statue tells us that it symbolizes the fact that neither the city-dwellers nor the people who lived outside the city were better than the other, and that they should look over their shoulder as they cross the bridge to remember this.



This pilar holds the high water marks from flooding.


On the bridge is a statue of the goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athena:


And also a statue of Carl Theodore, himself:


We stopped at this restaurant to eat. It wasn't busy and they had a menu in English.


Maddox was a pain at first, but once his french fries were served he was a little angel. He is now too sophisticated to eat his french fries with his fingers, he must use a fork. Wait...two forks.

The Cathedral of St. Peter in Worms

We traveled out to Beurdstat today to pick up some bikes we bought off of the Mannheim bookoo website. This turned into a bit of an ordeal because the bikes were old, therefore they were shaped differently and didn't want ot fit on the bike rack. Ben improvised and made them fit.



The girl who we bought them off of was young, a college student, and friendly. She came out to chat while Ben was loading the bikes and told us that Worms was just a few minutes down the road. Since we were so close we decided to stop and see the Cathedral of Saint Peter.


When you drive across the bridge you can see the cathedral's towers on the skyline. As we keep driving, we go around a curve, and there it is, in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of the city.



I am glad we decided to visit on Saturday because on Sundays it is closed to tourists for services. There was a wedding today and they were having a photo session on the east end. What a beautiful place to have a wedding, and with so much history to it makes it that much more amazing.




This is supposed to be one of the most important cathedrals in Germany and it holds the ancesters of the Salain royal family which can still be seen in the crypt. Strange to think that you can go visit close to 1,000 year old bodies on a daily basis if you want to. In 1184 it was made one of the three imperial cathedrals in Germany by emperor Fredrich I Barbarossa. The buidling is called many things: Dom, Wormser Dom, Kaiserdom, and Dom St. Peter. I go by the latter because the plaque at the entrance of the cathedral used that name.


The entrance is on the south side of the buidling and was changed from Romanesque style to Gothic style in 1300. The following is something I read but am unsure of how factual it is. The southern entrance is called the southern portal. There are women statues decorating it. These statues are carved in the back with demons that someone just passing by can't see. This is a sign of the low place women held in medieval Europe and in the church. I didn't know about this until we got home, so I didn't look very closely. There are also lions and sculptures of frightening faces to ward off the devil and evil spirits.





Inside, on the north side are five late gothic tympana. They picture the tree of Jesus and four scenes from the life of Jesus. Here is one of the birth of Christ.




There is a model of the cathedral outside and it gives you a good overview of the structure of the buidling. It was built to resemble a cross. There are four towers, two on the west and two on the east, and then small structures that jut out from the north and south, exaclty opposite each other.


The original structure was built as an early christian cathedral around 625 A.D. but it was much smaller and none of it remains now. It was all rebuilt around 1000A.D., but two years after it was dedicated a big portion of it collapsed and had to be rebuilt. The base of the east choir and the base of the two east towers are still from that era.



The east choir area is the oldest, but the part Maddox an I are standing in front of is the high alter. It was redone in a Baroque style in the 18th century by Balthasar Neumann after the city was damaged in wars with the french. In all the glitz and glamour of gold accents there is St. Peter and Paul with two angels pointing at the Madonna and Child who are supposed to look like they are coming right out towards you.
It is a breathtaking sight, very extravagent.



Here are Ben, Maddox, and Carson in an older section of the east side of the cathedral. I'm not sure what year this section is from, I think 1132, but it leads to the crypt where you can see centuries old bodies.



Enscribings as you enter the crypt.



The stained glass windows are the most recent additions to the Cathedral. They were blown out from bombings in WWII. I read somewhere in my research that there are almost 2,000 window panes and they are almost all used to tell stories. The windows of the Mary Chapel tell the life story of Mary.
The history of Worms is also depicted in the windows, from the earliest mentioned Bishop Victor at 345A.D. up to the destruction of the city at the end of World War II in 1945.


Here is Maddox in the West choir section. This is still very much Romanesque as you can tell by the Rose Windows.





I don't know what this was, I'm thinking a dedication of some kind, but the date said 1025A.D. so I took a picture.




From the west end looking down to the east end.


This is a baroque style pulpit in the middle of the nave right across from the organ.



The organ high above the congregation. The oldest recorded organ was installed here in 1259A.D.


A tomb with a giant crest over it.



This is a sculpture in the building from 200 A.D - almost 2,000 years old.


The plaque says "Small alter displaying Neptune, Roman god of the sea, from the ancient temple district in today's cathedral area (200 A.D.)

We weren't allowed to go in the room, but I snuck a picture of the St. Nicholas Chapel, Niklauskapelle. The original was small and Roman, but it was rebuilt between 1280 and 1315 in the Gothic style. It is used for baptisms and holds relics of St Nicholas, who died in 351A.D., which empress Theophano of Byzantium donated to the Cathedral in 972 when she got married to emperor Otto II.




Here are some more pictures from the outside on the west side.




There is a garden on the gronds, called the Heylsof Garden. Maddox tripped and fell on the way in and an old German lady stopped to talk to us. We tried to tell her we couldn't speak German, but she kept going on and on. She was saying something about Maddox and Ben, so we just smiled and nodded.



In this garden is where Martin Luther appeared before emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms (April 1521), in the bishop's palace, and had to answer for his new teachings. He refused to recall his writings, and this led to the Reformation. There is a plaque to mark this spot, but the palace was burned down by the french in 1689. There is an Art House here too, but we didn't go in.





An old wall that runs along part of the garden.


A statue, I tried to find information on this but couldn't.


And in this garden we see the promising signs that spring is here!!