Thüringen

Erfurt – Weimar, 12/8/2020 –In one of the pogroms of the 14th century a Jewish merchant buried all his silverware and a vast number of coins in his house in the Michaelisstraße. This treasure was discovered in 1998 and is now on display as ‘The Erfurter Schatz’ in the medieval synagogue. 1.341 silver coins, 14 silver bars and 700 gold and silver objects. We leave Erfurt and in front of our hotel we cycle past the Kaisersaal, where Napoleon met Tsar Alexander in 1808. In Erfurt Napoleon also met Goethe. As a history fetishist I have to contain myself and focus on our next destination… Weimar is also brimming with history but also very ambiguous as it produced the best and the worst in German history. A hotspot of unlimited creativity, home of Goethe and Schiller, and the cradle of Bauhaus. But exactly Weimar, where the young German democracy took root in 1919, the Nazi’s celebrated their first majority. We cycle through Niederzimmern and Hopfgarten and have to climb a steep cobblestone...

  Erfurt, 11/8/2020 – The capital of Thuringia is a lively city with over 500 000 inhabitants and a university dating back to 1379. You feel the young vibe when you walk around the town. Covid-19 does not stop the youth from sitting outside on the terraces, joking and looking ahead with confidence. How different from Gotha yesterday. We arrived late, the ride was hot, and we have a late lunch at Pavarotti’s, Italians are working 24/7. In the courtyard we have a salad, Italian finesse, German portion. There is beer to wash it down. The restaurant is a tribute to the Italian tenor, paintings and pictures decorate the walls, the master himself delicately fills the room and courtyard through the audio system. We walk towards the Cathedral, where Luther was ordained as a priest and admire the vast, almost empty building. The late afternoon sun throws interesting shadows on the floor. We stay inside longer than we want to avoid the downpour, soaked people seek refuge in the church. The s...

Gotha, 10/8/2020 – Gotha once was rich, very rich. When we cycle around, the town is one big building site. The Neumarkt and Hauptmarkt are full of bulldozers and diggers. Thüringen prepares to present itself to tourists in all its splendour. I hope COVID-19 does not put a spanner in the works. We climb the Schloßberg and crisscross through Schloß Friedenstein, the Orangery and the Park. Friedenstein was the center of power of the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, of which the descendants found comfortable positions in royal houses around Europe. Albert married Victoria, later Queen Victoria and Leopold married Louise-Marie, the daughter of the French king Louis Philippe. This marriage of convenience served to put a king on the throne of the newly created Belgium. In the 18th century Luisa Dorothea von Saxe Coburg Altena gave a cultural flair to the town, she counted Voltaire and Frederick the Great amongst her friends. In the leaflet of the Schloßmuseum it says she was ‘voller Esprit un...

Gotha, 10/8/2020 – Cycling in Thüringen is an adventure. The Thüringer Radweg is well indicated, but finding the first sign with the green cyclist can be a pain. So it is when I leave Gotha, where I parked the car for our next night. The receptionist admires my bike and says: ‘Mein Mann hat einen Cowboy gekauft!’. I reply that I know the brand and proudly say it is made by a Belgian start-up. ‘Mit seiner Batterie fährt er bald schneller als ich!’  The Russian heritage is everywhere here and I cycle on the Juri Gagarin Straße and the Pushkinallee towards my wife and friends, who left Eisenach for Gotha. In town, I see an old movie theater: die Weisse Wand. I miss the cycle path with the green cyclist and get on the A4, a busy provincial road. It is pouring with rain and my cycling jacket is not waterproof at all, whatever the label inside says. Trucks, busses, cars, they all spray some extra rain on me. The chain of my bike glistens in the headlights of the cars, a sign that all the...

Eisenach, 9/8/2020 -  Eisenach has a long tradition in automotive. In 1896 the Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach (FFE) was founded. This became Dixi and in the twenties BMW took over the company. Being in the Soviet zone, the East-Germans kept the name BMW after WW2 and no one in Munich dared to claim the rights. In 1953 the GDR decided to change the name to EMW, Eisenacher Motorenwerke  and eventually in VEB (Volkseigener Betrieb) Automobilwerk Eisenach. Want to know something?  Between 1945 and 1951 all BMWs were built in Eisenach. Today Opel manufactures here in a new plant opened in 1992 by Helmut Kohl. The museum Automobile Welt Eisenach is on the old premises. During our visit we see only Germans. With some eavesdropping we find out they are former workers of the plant. They talk with pride about the models they worked on. The car most of us know from the post-war communist era is the Wartburg, sold in the West with moderate success until the centrally planned economy le...

Eisenach, 9/8/2020 - Eisenach rhymes with Bach. The house where the famous German composer was born in 1685 is now part of the Bachhaus. The creaky floorboards in the old house make visitors tiptoe through the rooms, as if they do not want to wake up baby Bach. There is a modern extension with a collection of rare instruments, I am impressed with the tiny travel violin and the collection of old bibles. Before leaving the museum, we get a concert on different organs, a spinet and a clavichord. We social distance with other visitors, and we all wear face masks, including the musician. Who says Eisenach, says Luther, who translated the bible into German in the nearby Wartburg. Religion and music were very connected in those days. 'Bei einer andächtigen Musique ist allezeit Gott mit seinem Gnaden gegenwart,' Bach wrote. Music, religion and also politics. Eisenach is also the cradle of the Social Democratic Workers' Party and a stronghold of communism in the GDR. The cobbleston...