We've Become Lame

Dear readers, we have a confession to make. We've become lame. Sara is in the end of finals, working frantically on her blog (a review of books and other materials for young adults) until the early hours of the morning, while I'm feeling particularly swamped with work, topped by preparing a presentation for a group of art historians, lawyers, and journalists about the science I do and how we are using it in an investigation of forged paintings (one of which was sold to Steve Martin). Luckily, both of us will finish this week, Sara on Thursday at 9 am and I on Saturday at noon, and then we will celebrate in style.

You are probably wondering how Germans (or wannabe Germans, or at least those of us living among Germans) celebrate in style. In our case, we travel. On Monday, December 19, my brother Jaren will be flying into Paris, where we will meet him for a 30 hour stay in the city of love. Then we'll take the fast train approximately ninety minutes to Brussels for an equally long visit. We'll then come back to Aachen for Christmas proper and to visit some sights in the Rhineland before Jaren leaves 10 days after his arrival.

That's still not enough for us at the Meldrumhaus, though. Taking advantage of Sara's time off of classes, we'll hop on a fast train to London on December 31 (the total trip is 3.5 hours) to spend New Year's Eve watching fireworks over the Thames and a few days more in the city. We then get home just in time to catch one more work-related trip (one on which Sara gets to join) to Munich, where we'll meet up with Franz, a friend and colleague of mine whom I met in Berkeley, and spend a weekend seeing the city and the Alps. I'll have some work to do during the weekdays so, just as in Berlin, Sara will do the sightseeing and museum-seeing and report all about it.

This post boils down to an apology and an invitation. The apology is for not keeping you all up-to-date on our happenings. Primarily because there haven't been any, but also because the few that have been (like the party we threw for two members of Sara's Sunday School class for young adults) have been short on photos and we've been short on time. The invitation is to come back to the Meldrumhaus after the holidays. If our travel itinerary is any indication, we'll have PLENTY to talk about.

With that, perhaps we can leave you the best (and most affordable) Christmas card we could manage. It summarizes our six months in Europe and, hopefully, gives some indication for the months to come.

Frohe Weihnachten! or, in other words, Merry Christmas!

P.S. After reading this post, Sara told me, "We could also just tag it 'bragging.'" Which is mostly true.

Aachener Rathaus

You may have gathered from our pictures and posts thus far that Aachen has two truly spectacular (and extremely old) buildings: the Dom (cathedral) and the Rathaus (town hall).* We walk by these buildings almost every day, and can see the roof lines from many places in the city.

On Tuesday Tyler didn't have to go into work until late afternoon, so we finally toured the Rathaus, as we've been wanting to do since we got to Aachen. I took a LOT of pictures. We took the audio tour (available in English, woohoo!), which lasted about 90 minutes, so we got a LOT of information. I am not sure how to translate all this into a blog post of reasonable length, but I shall try.

For centuries the Rathaus was the site of the coronation of German kings as well as the center of civic life in Aachen. Aachen eventually lost the coronation ceremony, apparently because the building fell into disrepair, but the city council still meets in the council chamber:



In addition to a portrait of Charlemagne,** this room holds portraits of Napoleon and Empress Josephine. Napoleon and Charlemagne are placed in such a way that they're locked in an eternal staring contest across the chamber. We got the impression from the audio guide, though, the Aachen has positive feelings toward Napoleon--he liked the city, so he made Öchers full French citizens and gave them back their trade rights and stuff. (I think. I'm a little fuzzy on this point.)

This is the Golden Book. It contains inscriptions from important visitors to the city over the centuries. And it looks like it came straight out of a young adult fantasy novel.



Here's the room where the book is displayed. It used to be the meeting place for the city's cloth merchants' guild. The export of fancy cloth was the cornerstone of Aachen's economy for several centuries. After the cloth guild went away the room was used as the mayor's office (up until just a few years ago). Nice office, huh?



I'm a terrible photographer, but I'm pleased with the way this picture turned out:



Now we come to the colored rooms, White and Red. They both have tons of history, too, but I don't remember enough to explain it in a way that will actually be interesting. The way they look is plenty interesting, anyway.







I love the headdresses on these guys.





The staircase afforded a great view of the Dom:



In an old city like this one reminders abound that humans (even Germans!) used to be much shorter than they are today.



This is the coronation hall:



Here are replicas of the imperial regalia. The originals used to reside in Aachen, but now they're in Nuremberg. (In the South! Oh, the shame!)



Finally, here is the front door of the Rathaus. Oddly enough, the otherwise exhaustive audio tour had no comment to make on the funny faces, but I love them.



If you come to Aachen, you too can tour the Rathaus! We'll take you there! And a Dom tour is next on our list!

*Both were originally constructed in the late 8th century as part of Charlemagne's palace--they were actually connected for a few hundred years. In each building part of the 8th-century structure is preserved.

**There is a portrait of Charlemagne in almost every room in the Rathaus. The audio guide has a 3-5 minute description of each one. I found this a bit odd (and excessive).

A Fancy and AUTHENTIC Castle

This is Burg Eltz. Pretty cool, huh?

Okay, I admit it, this is actually a picture I took of the front of the brochure I picked up at the castle. Lame, I know. But I had to show you what the castle is supposed to look like. This is what the castle actually looked like when we visited on Saturday:



Not quite so picturesque. The construction is supposed to be finished before next summer, so perhaps we can go again with visitors and see it in its newly-renovated glory. We each got a commemorative coin for our support of Burg Eltz and our patience with the renovation, though.

Now, to begin at the beginning: we met our friends Tim and Kimberly (formerly of Oakland, now of Frankfurt) in Koblenz on Saturday morning, where we caught a train to Moselkern, a tiny town on the Mosel River. From the Moselkern train station we walked for about 90 minutes through very pretty countryside to get to Burg Eltz. Here's a picture of us on the trail. (Hooray for friends who take pictures of us AND speak much better German than we do!)



And here's a view from the bridge leading to the castle:



Burg Eltz is a serious castle. It was built between the 12th and 17th centuries by the Eltz family, one branch of which still lives in the castle. There used to be three branches of the Eltz family in the castle. One died off (they only had daughters) and one sold their part of the castle to the third branch. The castle has never been destroyed, which makes it something of an anomaly. It's also furnished and decorated primarily with its original contents (collected by the family over several centuries). We saw 15th-century beds, 14th-century tapestries, 12th-century chests, etc, etc. Here's a tapestry I loved. Pictured are the nine muses plus a god-goddess pair; I'm not sure which. (Julia, any guesses? They're brother and sister AND husband and wife. Does that narrow it down at all?)



(Yes, this is also a picture of a picture. Photography is not allowed inside the castle.)

This is a view from inside the courtyard where our tour began. (It was in English. Hooray.) The glass in the windows was made by blowing balls of glass and then smashing them into discs. This glass is in almost every window in each of the castle's 100+ rooms. On a side note, this is perhaps the first original window glass we've seen in a significant pre-1945 building since we've been here. One is reminded of the devastation of World War II every time one enters a church in Germany.



We also got to see the castle's treasury/armory. It was most impressive. Here is a selection of cool items. (There are more on our Flickr.)

There were dozens of these intricate gold and silver objets d'art (some of which were supposedly complicated drinking vessels or candelabra). This is one of a series of three Greek guys holding spheres.



There was lots of beautiful china.



This guy has a different expression on each of his four sides, and each eye is shared between two sides. Pretty clever.



The list of cool things we can show you if you come visit us continues to grow!

P.S. This picture is on a sign near the Moselkern train station pointing the way to Burg Eltz. We were afraid they might not let us into the castle because we hadn't gotten the memo on proper German hiking and castle-visiting apparel. Kimberly and I left our skirts and pointy bras at home, and Tyler (and as far as I know, Tim) doesn't own a Peter Pan hat.



P.P.S. Tyler would like me to mention that he took his new toy for a spin the other day along the Rhine, and he liked it very much.