Ralph again. Anticipating a long day, we packed up and left Berlin early. We had some difficulties getting out of the city. First off, we drove onto the main beltway around Berlin right during rush hour, so we hit quite a bit of traffic on our way out of the city. Secondly, we saw very few gas stations within Berlin and soon after we hit the traffic, the low-fuel indicator light came on. [Gas is easy to find on the autobahn. Rest stops have restaurants, fast food, bathrooms, convenience stores and gas stations.] After sighting a “gas station this exit” sign, we went on a highly convoluted route to a truck stop where despite the store clerk’s inability to speak English and my inability to speak German, we managed to fill the tank, charge my credit card, and get back on the road.
Our first stop was about 15 miles off the Autobahn in Wittenberg, a place of great significance within Protestant Christianity as the site where Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the church, thus ensuring generations of Lutherans to visit on pilgrimage. Wittenberg is a modern city of 50,000 people, but the historic district feels like Lutheran Epcot. [Historical Wittenberg is much the same as it was. I think the reason it didn’t feel “real” was because we didn’t really get a sense that people currently lived in the area.]
[This is also the place where Ralph experienced his very first pay toilet.]
We stopped into the information center, across from famous Castle Church, to get a map. We came in to find a film crew working on we assumed to be a commercial. While she seems happy and helpful pointing at the tourist handouts for an eager visitor, immediately after this take the blond woman sighed and hung her head low.
We went across the street and took photos like mad.
[In Luther’s time, this was a Catholic church. It has since become a Lutheran church, which is quite evident from the doors where the 95 Theses have been inscribed to the interior which is full of Lutheran symbolism and statuary. It was very neat to be there.]
(location of the door where Luther nailed the Theses, with the Theses inscribed into the metal door. Luther and Philip Melanchthon, both buried inside the church, are worshiping at the cross in the mural)
I had felt sick for a couple days so I stopped in the Lucas Cranach Apotheke (apotheke = drugstore) and bought some Ricola cough drops, which are cheaper than Halls here. We then went to the City Church where Luther preached on Sundays and to the tiny chancel where he made his appeal to the pope. [The organist was practicing while we were there. He was quite good.]
(Luther at the Last Supper, Luther preaching the risen Christ)
After lunch we said goodbye to Beatbox Brother Martin and continued on to Nuremburg.
Lynnae here now – Our goal was to spend a couple of hours in Nuremburg, just to see the Palace of Justice, where the Nuremburg Trials were held after WWII. However, we had very bad luck. We had made Wittenberg in good time despite our rocky start but then our luck changed. We drove through several intense thunderstorms and some road construction. (More praise for the Audi, it handled well on the wet roads and the automatic lights and wipers were awesome.) Just when things were beginning to look up, traffic halted abruptly.
We were completely stopped on the Autobahn. After five minutes or so of no movement by any cars, we got out as did many others. We couldn’t see what the problem was but obviously there was one. So we relaxed for a while. I sat down on the autobahn. It felt very strange and unnatural.
Fortunately we were only just past an exit (we were about level with where the road actually broke from the freeway), unfortunately we were in the left lane. Due to the large spaces the Germans leave between cars, we were able to snake our way through and exit the freeway. We were confident that we could drive a little ways, turn parallel to the freeway and the GPS would redirect us where we needed to go.
Freedom!
It was great decision. We could see traffic standing still for miles when we crossed the autobahn, with a only a slight detour before reentering the autobahn, we were on our way. We’d only lost about 20-30 minutes. We knew it’d be a gamble to try for Nuremburg but as it was on our way we decided to go for it.
Despite the plentiful gas station on the autobahn, when we needed one there were none to be found. We were low on gas when we finally entered Nuremburg. We parked and walked towards the Palace of Justice … only to discover that we were about 15 minutes too late.
We were concerned that if we went back to the car, we’d run out of gas while looking for a station. So instead we continued down the street in search of a gas station or an internet café [so we could look up the nearest gas station]. Eventually we found a station, so we walked back to the car and drove there. There was a mall with a grocery store across the street so I walked over to get some provisions.
The grocery store was really more like a Target but organized in a very confusing way. For example the first few aisles were produce, the next few were beauty products, and the next couple were bread. It took a little more wandering around then I was anticipating. I was still done in pretty short order and walked back to the gas station.
Ralph informed me that he hadn’t been able to pump gas because we were not members of the organization that ran the station. We couldn’t acquire a membership because it was closed. However, a trucker had informed him that there was another station only a kilometer or so down the road. Fortunately, the trucker was right. We purchased our gas, marveled at a McGym next door to a McDonald’s and set off for Munich.
We arrived in Munich around 10pm in the worst rain we’d seen while traveling. Very poor visibility. We checked into the Hotel Orly, took our luggage up in the insanely tiny elevator, parked the car up the street and turned in for the night.
Our Random Travels 