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Published: June 24th 2008
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Vierzehnheiligen
the outside, rear I met Karin Engelhardt by accident in Hofbrauhaus a couple of weeks ago, and found out that she was the first Fachhochschule Coburg student to come to K-State. That was three years ago now, but she’s still around, finishing up her last semester in school. She goes home almost every weekend to her town of
Himmelkron and she invited me to with her anytime I liked, so I called her up for this past weekend of the 17th-19th of June. (June? Already?)
Karin picked me up Friday afternoon, and we hit the road. The first stop was supposed to be a visit to Karin’s godmother, who was in the hospital with minor pains, but a few wrong turns later happenstance put us at the foot of a hill with a well-known
Pilgramige Church atop. I’d known Vierzehn Heiligen was close, but I didn’t realize how close, and I’m really glad we wandered that way! We got there about 15 minutes before an organ concert began - this is the first time I have ever seen “one of those big, important European churches” with pews that were actually populated. We got kicked out for the concert (we had no tickets…) but got to
listen to a little through the closed door. After all, stone churches reverberate sounds awfully well!
We did finally make it to the hospital to pay Karin’s godmother a visit, then drove the rest of the way to Himmelkron. When we pulled up to Karin’s house, I asked to make sure we were really at her house - I’d had no idea she lived on a working farm! It’s a small one, but as you can see, it is nonetheless in use. 6 or so cows, chickens, ducks, hares, a dog, a cat, 2 hired hands and a pond out back. Also, right next door is a small lumber mill (that area of Germany is heavily wooded). A brief pause to put our stuff down, and we were back out the door to a celebration of Karin’s soccer team. We went to the Rathaus (town hall), where the team was officially congratulated by the Burgermeister (mayor), and then we (me and team) went to celebrate the way Germans like to... by eating heavy meat dishes and drinking lots of beer, with Karin’s boyfriend, Tomas, joining us halfway through dinner.
Saturday was a busy schedule; Karin had promised an elderly friend
Vierzehnheiligen
full pews... no way to help out with moving, so we trucked up to
Bad Steben to break a sweat moving boxes. After we’d assembled some shelves in the storage unit and stocked them well, lunch was on the day’s menu, then Karin and I skipped over to a friend’s house. The friend (whose name I forget) and her boyfriend (whose name I also forget) had just bought this 150-year-old house and when I saw it it was *completely* ripped apart. They’re not actually living there right now, so renovations are going at a perfectionist’s pace, but it looks like the end result will be really neat. We weren’t there for long because Karin had to get back home to help her mother with something. Tomas volunteered to keep me busy while Karin and here mom did their thing, and he picked me up from Karin’s mid afternoon, to head to Bayreuth. Bayreuth is an absolutely lovely city, and of course it was a perfect almost-summer day, where the light hits the window panes just right and refracts to light up the whole city. We drove first to an exhibit the German Army was holding, which was essentially every effort to enlist new recruits for
Engelhardt home
Here's the farm house. No joke. an army career, but they had some pretty cool demonstrations of their sky diving squadron and the various kinds of tanks employed. I cannot imagine a more apt paradise for the testosterone-charged; Star Wars theme music playing while the various kinds of tanks were demonstrated in a most Evel Knievel manner by reckless youths in uniform. I think every man present wished he’d had the opportunity to be driving! We continued on to the center of town to see the opera house, built 1746-1750 by the
Margraves of Bayreuth. Bayreuth is a really cool place, because it had some extremely rich nobles and society figures living there during the
late Baroque and Rococo periods of design, and as a result they have a lot of good examples of the frivolous architecture of the periods. Tomas had originally intended for us to see the laser light show they put on inside the opera house a few times daily, but it turns out that the day we showed up there was a performance that evening, and the orchestra was practicing. The guy at the front desk was extremely nice and let us sit in and listen to them playing, and I think that was a much bigger and
Engelhardt home
See? Here's the tractor... better treat than any laser show could have been. Afterwards we wandered the streets a bit, before hoping back in the car to go visit another Margravial treasure,
the Ermitage. The Ermitage is the gardens of one of the Margravial residences, and it is much like any grand formal garden except for one thing - it has awesome sculpture. Truly, totally original. Pretty frivolous and selfish, yeah, but cool looking. The best part of the gardens was the Sun Temple, it reminded me of being in a costal town, all the colors were so light and vibrant and shiny! It was simply a beautiful day to go and see all these places, because it was days like that which they were made for!
We two skedaddled out of Bayreuth and back to Himmelkron to eat some dinner at the Engelhardt’s home, then spent an uneventful evening babysitting Karin’s nieces and nephews while the parents (Karin’s sister and brother-in-law) were at a wedding. It was actually a welcome event to be able to sit down, we three were all blasted!
Sunday we all slept until way late, so I pretty much woke up, ate and drove back with Karin. But I did
Engelhardt home
...and here are the cows! encounter one unique thing on the way back: I experienced the magic of an Autobahnkirche. A highway church. A church that is placed along the highway and meant for no permanent congregation, only for travelers wishing to come on in and praise the lord. Oy vey. The Himmelkron Autobahnkirche is particularly new, and actually a very nice design, but the concept of it just blew me away - I’m living in the German bible belt!
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The mom in question
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...if red oaks are still alive...