The Left-Overs

We got out of our rhythm of recapping our travels, but we will try to retrace our steps.

What seems a lifetime ago, but only a little over 6 months ago (in mid November) we headed back to Germany for the duration of the 2019 year.  

We escaped the retirement home cocoon for the next step in our life cycle- Worms.  Worms, Germany. We tried to catch Worms earlier in the year but we got off track and missed the train connection in Mainz.  To get to Worms you have to change in Mainz, so we gave Mainz a second chance as our last visit was rather unremarkable despite solid recommendations about the town.  We thought maybe we missed the Mainz attractions, we didn't.  

Although, this time through was opening day for Christmas Market season, which was apparent based on the number of train travelers wearing Santa hats and drinking bottles of Sekt (sparkling wine) for breakfast.
The draw for Mainz was that it was the home of Johannes Gutenburg, the inventor of the moveable printing press, but we thought it was nothing to write home about.
Note: After spending 3 months at the retirement home, we forgot how to use our cell phone, so not as many of our own pictures.

Fastnachtsbrunnen or Carnival Fountain

Mainz-Christmas Market 

From our home base in Saabrucken in the Southwest corner of Germany, we were neighbors to the home of pivotal movements in modern religious history.  We figured it was worth a day trip, so we finally made it to Worms.
The City of Worms is considered along with Cologne and Mainz,  as one the oldest cities in Germany, after Trier, the oldest (https://thechosenfugue.blogspot.com/2018/09/day-trippin.html)
Worms has the  oldest surviving in situ Jewish cemetery dating back almost 1000 years to 1058, relatively still intact.

The "ShUM", the cities of  Worms, Speyer and Mainz were where ashkenazi Judaism kind of took off in the 10th century. https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5975/.  Like most German towns, not much is left  to identify the medieval Jewish ghetto but in Worms there was a tiny little synagogue, home of the famous scholar, Rashi. Although we skipped Speyer and skimmed Mainz we did enjoy the deeper dig in  Worms.

Holy Sands-oldest Jewish Cemetery

Worms: Rashi Synagogue

Stolpesteine in Worms https://thechosenfugue.blogspot.com/2019/01/they-do-make-you-stumble.html

The next religiously significant event in the history of Worms occurred on the goyish side of town, half a millennium later, in 1521 Worms was the site of the tribunal of Martin Luther when he appeared before the Diet (assembly) of the Holy Roman Empire in what was called the Diet of Worms and Luther was declared a heretic-the Edict of Worms.

Martin Luther in Worms

But Worms like most of Southern Germany remains decidedly Catholic with the old, traditional churches with also some interesting  modern touches (Freedom for Kurds).

Finally the other big cultural draw is that Worms is one of the geographic stars of the Nibelungenlied, the German epic poem from the 1200s celebrated in Richard Wagner's Der Ring.

Niebelungenlied Dragon

Worms integrated the very, very old with the new as with most of the Rhine and Mozelle valleys, the cities were heavily damaged in the war. (confession did not take the pic of the medieval gate but we did see it.)

After our religious history field trip, we cut bait, and returned to Saarbrücken and planned our next get-away.

The Grund Area (lower Luxembourg)

LUXEMBOURG CITY
Luxembourg was another city/country that kept eluding us having passed through it by bus, train and plane, and, even after spending 2 days there it still eluded us.  It was lovely, but if you threw Dutch, French, German and Flemish cultures against a wall, and nothing sticks, but the mark left  would be Luxembourg.  A pleasant mark, but ill defined.  Luxembourg City was the Zelig of cities,  eight blocks of feeling you were placed in a witness protection program due to mistaken identity.  

 And, Luxembourg historically is well protected with the Bock Casements (17 km's of tunnels and cannon perches).  We were only able to view from outside as it was closed to tours. They are better explained here: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bock-casemates 

Bock Casements (picture from Atlas Obscura)

The city itself was a layer cake with essentially three parts- the ramparts, upper city, the lower city and within the lower city the Grund. Each a different flavor, attractive but incongruent.

The City layers seen by Wikipedia

We did find an answer though to this enigma of a city in the National Historic and Art Museum.

Consistent with the city, the museum combined a variety of architectural genre-  the modern front looks out over the traditional "Fish Market" square and the back is attached to three old houses repurposed as exhibit space.  Again, consistent with the city, the space was disorienting- we have experienced switchbacks going up mountains but never before in the interior of a museum.  Stairs that somehow, brought you back to where you just were.
The bottom floor housed Roman ruins, middle floors a collection of coins, tools and weapons, top floors special exhibits- all very pan-European.  Crossing a glass bridge you enter the three connected houses. These were a warren of rooms filled with various styles of "arts and crafts", furniture- most NOT from Luxembourg, and then finally a room of interesting Luxembourg artists (3 of them), who all oddly died young.  But the answer to our quandary of what is Luxembourg came in a museum education card describing their country's style- they don't have one as most of their royalty and noble class did not live there and everyone else was too busy working.   

Ramparts above the lower city

But Luxembourg was a beautiful city and we did feel pretty accomplished that we finally made it there.

Christmas Market

A Forest just kind of in the middle of everything. 

Also an oddity of Luxembourg is they vote with their butts.

A fitting end as our bus passed by the home of the master planner of our trip, the city of  Schengen, where the agreement that dictated non-EU citizen visa requirements.   See the link for more info  https://thechosenfugue.blogspot.com/2018/10/schengen.html

Schengen!