Today is Reformation Day, 31st October, and we are in the heart of Reformation territory, slightly to the East of Erfurt, South of Wittenburg, and also East of Wartburg Castle where Luther translated most of the Bible. This is also the former GDR (German Democratic Republic), although it was never democratic! It's so exciting to be in this once forbidden place, where we could once only imagine what life was like here. Nearby is the city of Weimar which gave it's name to another German empire, the Weimar Republic, which was formed here after the First World War. We visited a medium sized church today that our friend Ute attends. Folks there were very friendly and the elder and his wife kindly invited us to lunch. We ate Flamkuchen again; it must be popular! He is a laser engineer. His company design lasers to inspect lenses and it seems to be an extremely high-tech business.
In the last three days we have been staying with Ute in the town of Stadtroda (this means town of tree cutters). It is a beautifully preserved town with quite different architecture from anything we've seen before. There is a local black slate in this Thuringen state of Germany and it can be seen at its best covering some of the church steeples. The houses in the old town are terraced and of about 5 stories each, including the basement. Often they have ornate decoration and fancy roof-lines. We saw the large, stand-alone home where Ute had lived as a girl, growing up in the GDR. She said life during that time was fine as long as you were content with a simple life and not many luxuries. Her dad was in the secret police and needless to say, not well liked. She showed us the garden plot that her mum maintains which is quite a distance from where she lives. Other housing in the town is of the Cold War type; huge unimaginative blocks, rows and rows of them. Ute rents in one that has been renovated recently and it is now a rather pleasant one bedroom apartment. To enter the apartment you use a shared entrance, eight other flats use the same front door; your key opens that one and your flat door too. The flat itself is on the third floor and is quite spacious with a good view but has no lift. When you take a flat like this it has no fitted kitchen whatsoever. Peter has been working on our car, fixing the dent that came with it when we bought it, quite a dusty job and no really suitable place to work.
Now we are staying with Stefan (Schtefan) who has a flat on the second floor of a large house near the centre of Jena, a city 14km from Stadtroda. This city is where Ute works and fellowships. It's really beautiful here, especially as it's autumn and there are huge trees full of yellow/golden leaves everywhere. The buildings nearby are huge seven or so storied houses; often terraced but each one individually designed. They are quite ornate and come in a range of colours. This is a university city so I think many of them are divided into flats. The town streets are cobbled.
Our time at their church was encouraging. There were 60 or 70 people and it was a really friendly environment. And when the elder invited us to his home for lunch I was glad that I had a few bars of NZ chocolate on hand in the car. Both Dirk and Stefan are in high tech industries; Stefan designs ultra small cameras and Dirk is also in optics and designs machines to scan lenses searching for imperfections; well I think that was it. I managed to persuade Peter to buy a pair of good German shoes, which was no easy task, and so will 'not be afraid of the snow' for him. Of course I was much more easily persuaded!
On our way to the town of Huttenburg three hours west of Jena we stopped in at Eisenach, an extremely picturesque town overshadowed by the Wartburg, a huge castle on the hill above the town. This particular castle attracts large numbers of visitors because this is where Martin Luther translated most of the Bible into German when he was a captive there for over a year. It really is quite a special place but we didn't have much time to spend there.
There is a small Reformed Baptist church in Huttenburg. The pastor, Andre Bay, is originally from South Africa but has worked in St. Petersburg and met his wife there. They held a camp there last weekend for German youth and had 60 young people, which is quite amazing for a church with just a handful of families. He was also in NZ a few years ago for the Don Carson meetings.
Further west we visited the old capital of former West Germany, Bonn and also Koln, (Cologne). Here we ,et someone who works at the Max Plank Institute; a Scientific organisation that specialises in Radio-astronomy and I had a brief visit there.
This next leg of our journey has brought us to The Netherlands. It is really special to finally see it after hoping to for so long. I have to say that it is VERY flat. But it's flat in a very picturesque way and well laid out in regular rectangles, with trees in neat rows or groups. There are large farm houses and out buildings with huge dark roofs; often with large areas of photo-voltaic cells. And then there were the canals, amazing to see them at last and different architecture from what we had seen in Germany. We are here now in Bodegraven in central Netherlands near Utrecht. We are with the widow and 4 children of pastor Chong. They have been in Europe 20 months and are living in a nice 3 storied home near a canal. This morning we met in a big church, which was full, and the preaching was faithful. We had some gingerbread at breakfast as is common here. And now after coming home from church, coffee and cake of course.
