Europe trip day 9: Wittenberg

Sunday morning we packed up, checked out of our hotel, and found the Berlin church building-- a nondescript, yet recognizably LDS building.

After church we headed out of town, south toward Wittenberg, home of Martin Luther.
Wittenberg was a great place to visit.  Lutherhaus was originally part of the University of Wittenberg, and was Luther's home for most of his adult life.  He wrote his 95 Theses here. It contains many original objects from Luther's life, including his pulpit from the Stadtkirche, his monk's habit, many paintings and numerous bibles, pamphlets, and manuscripts.

Luther's pulpit

 Living/dining room in Lutherhaus

The Ten Commandments painting

A copy of Luther's 95 Theses

Ben standing next to actual robes that Luther wore.  He was a small guy!

After touring Lutherhaus, we walked through the historic city center of Wittenberg, toward the Stadtkirche (on upper right of the picture below), where Martin Luther actually preached.  It was the location of the first mass preached in German rather than Latin.

We weren't supposed to take any pictures inside the Stadtkirche, but I snuck in this picture of the organ pipes (not original to Luther's time, but still beautiful), in honor of my dad.  One of his favorite hymns is "A Mighty Fortress" by Martin Luther.  Maybe Luther sang that hymn right here!

Here's a picture of the interior, thanks to Google Images.

Then we were on our way to see Castle Church, the place where Luther nailed his 95 Theses.

Unfortunately the church is closed due to renovations.  But here is Ben pretending to knock on the famous doors.

I managed to sneak in some pictures of the boys as well.

Joseph and I waited near Castle Church while Ben and the other boys went back to get our car.  Therefore he was the lucky one to be the subject of my camera for a while.

And then we were off again, towards Dresden! I would have loved to take a quick trip over to Leipzig, location of the Monday Demonstrations that led to the reunification of East and West Germany, but it was already getting late in the afternoon.

We stayed that night, and the next, in the Wyndham Garden Dresden.

It looks a little nicer in pictures than it was in real life.  There was no air conditioning, for one thing!  We'd had such nice cool weather for the first week of our trip, but summer was back, for sure, and we ended up sleeping with the windows all open.