Münster

After a week of working from home at Kathy and Carsten's apartment, we were ready for a half day Friday. The guys suggested that we go to Münster, a posh town about 100km from Schwelm that has a lot of history to it. We liked the idea and head to Münster for Friday night and stayed in a charming hotel in the town center (thanks to Carsten's connections!).

Like many German towns, there is a lot of history behind Münster. The town has to mega churches, both Catholic, in the town center. What makes them historic though, is that it's the site of many many persecutions by Catholics of non-Catholics, especially Anabaptists. This was particularly chilling for me, since my entire extended family is Mennonite, and would have fallen into this category.

The main church is beautiful and haunting. We only saw the outside, but you could tell that the building was used not just to celebrate a particular vein of faith, but to intimidate and wipe out those that did not agree with the Catholics at the time. If you look closely at the picture below, you can see cages dangling from side of the spire. This is where they would put criminals and those they did not agree with. Some dark stuff!

The town square. The church on the left is so big it doesn't even fit into pictures well!

Here is the church up close. The cages might be more visible in this one. They are the three silver metal looking things hanging from the right window just below the gargoyles at the very base of the steeple.

The town center was really charming. It appeared to be straight out of the 14th century. We happened to arrive during their town fest or stadfest, which is an annual celebration with local food vendors and other merchants. We had some really good currywurst and kartofflepuffen (Kathy if you are reading this please send me the real name of the dutch food we had!)

The town had some impressive architecture! You could just picture the balls and galas thrown at some of the old estates like this one.

The architecture at every turn was impressive. I don't know what half the buildings were, but i know they were beautiful!

More of the town center

Münster by night. We went bar hopping after all the food eating, of course. 

Here is the dom, a term for the most important church in any of the German towns. Oddly, this dom is not the primary church from the town square, but another one just down the street. At the base of the dom we saw a concert by the Disco Boys and a new German artist named Lena as part of the stadfest. It was actually really fun. Lena won Eurovision - a silly European song writing/singing competition (we have them to thank for bands like ABBA). Apparently it was the first time a German has ever won! She was good and covered some thing that I knew, and sang nearly all her songs in English.

In the town we rendezvoused with some friends from Kathy and Carsten's wedding. From left to right is Ben, Carsten, Katharina, Jordan, Anna, and me. We are missing Henning and Tim who we love, but went home just before this picture. This photo sums up our time in Germany - hanging out with dear friends and enjoying life's spoils. I can't wait to come back! But for now, it's on to Italy.