Survivors in Germany...

My Advice for Today: Whenever you have the opportunity to start out the day with a visit to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, do it.  We began this morning with a visit to the great cathedral in Speyer, Germany. Founded in 1030, the official name in English is the Imperial Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption and St. Stephen. Besides being one of the oldest and largest cathedrals in Europe, it’s history reads like a Ken Follett novel. I had bicycled over to the cathedral late yesterday when I got the picture of Pat and Ed with the organ above the west nave.  When Margaret and I went back this morning, the organist was playing and the sound was celestial.  Anyone who is depressed and is considering checking out because of what careless people and time are doing to beautiful things should take a visit to Speyer Cathedral. It is surviving beautifully after a thousand years of constant use.   This is the place to go to celebrate resilience and determination.

In the middle of the day we went on up the river to Worms for a visit to another great Romanesque jewel, the Cathedral of St. Peter (consecrated in 1110) , and to a beautiful little synagogue and a Jewish cemetery before going still farther up the river yet to Mainz where we compared what we had seen already in the day to yet another 1000-year-old cathedral.  It is also mostly Romanesque. You can hear good stories about heroism of a few good people who managed to protect the synagogue and the cemetery in Worms from complete destruction during the Nazi period. The best efforts of a few good people couldn’t hold back the tide of terror Hitler inflicted on the country. 

After going to church three times, the highlight of the day for me was a visit to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz where I wallowed for awhile in the history of the printed word. It doesn’t get much better than that for an old teacher. 

This old sycamore tree in Mainz is also a survivor.