Kramer Textilpflege

This past weekend I traveled around Germany seeing some sights.

The rails... they beckon to me.

On Saturday I and four other CTC colleagues went to Worms for the day. It's a small town (pretty much doable from a tourist's perspective in a few hours). Worms is famous for being the site of Martin Luther's trial after having essentially started the protestant movement from the Catholic Church. There are memorials to him all around.

Martin Luther - total badass.

We also saw some extremely large churches around the center of town. One of the two churches was bombed out in WWII and was rebuilt in a really modern style. When we went in to see the church there was an organ concert going on and it was very nice.

Not too many people were there to enjoy it, but it was a good sermon.

Also not too many people there to enjoy the organ concert, but it was really good!

Then we ate thai food in the central square and went to a GREAT ice cream place right next to that organ-concert church. Seriously it was really great ice cream...

My view from the Thai restaurant

Oh, Devin...

Mary and Becca choosing which flavor they want.

After walking along the river a tiny bit (and seeing a statue of an ancestor of the HR professional here at CTC who plundered the people of Worms of their gold so much that to memorialize him they built a statue of him throwing a lot of gold into the river), we walked back to the old town.

You know who might need this gold? The Rhein River...

Finally we saw the couple of Jewish sites in the city. The Synagogue in Worms is the oldest in Europe (because its foundations are so old - in actuality it was rebuilt in the sixties or something). Rashi studied here before moving back to Troyes and they make a big deal about it with the museum. I was surprised to find out that the Synagogue has a regular service (every other Shabbat, according to the docent).

We also stopped by the Jewish cemetery which had graves dating back almost a thousand years.

Part of the Jewish Cemetery. It's surprisingly well preserved, for 1000 years old...

That night me and another CTC trainee went to see Harry Potter 7 part 2 in Mannheim (it was my second time seeing it). As in Israel, there are assigned seats as though you are going to any other theater performance, but there was no intermission. We had to find a special showing in English because dubbing is really popular here. If the roles were reversed, and German/Czech/whatever language television was really in-demand back in the states, I would prefer subtitles. I like to be able to hear how it's meant to sound... but who cares what I think anyway?

Look at this:

You didn't know that the Kramer family has had a dry cleaners in northern Mannheim since 1851???

The following day, me and the same guy I went to HP with (henceforth to be referred to as Jordan) had a whole long day planned out. We left the Hotel at 7 AM, and took almost 4 hours (because local trains are super cheap) to get to Stuttgart where the Mercedes-Benz and Porche Museums are. I liked the Mercedes museum better because it was bigger and had a lot more history and a lot more cars to see. I'm sure my Dad will be jealous when he sees the pictures because he loves antique cars.

Tell him without ME, there wouldn't BE any Paramount Studio!!!

What was really interesting was that the Mercedes Museum didn't gloss over the WWII period as many  similar museums in Germany do. They are very open (and apologetic) about their involvement with the Nazi regime and use of forced labor. I liked that they were up-front about it.

After seeing those two museums we took a train to Ludwigsberg. This is a tiny little town.... with the LARGEST CASTLE IN ALL OF GERMANY!

Note that I'm as far as the courtyard will permit, but the palace still extends outside the edges of the picture.

Holy crap was it big! We didn't go in. A tour of this place could take all day. We just enjoyed the grounds and the courtyard. They were having some sort of festival so that was enough for us.

He's singing "That's Amore". Weird, right?

I was very enthralled.

Then we took a sort of hike/path through this park on the way to a smaller palace with its own private lake and what seemed to be a private chapel.

It seemed like it was out of a movie. A private chapel on an island in a small lake in the woods.

Finally we took the train/tram back to the hotel and arrived after 11pm. It was a long day.