Another beautiful day for walking, this time in the town of Speyer (pronounced “Shpeyer”. What was our little “Leisure” group is growing – the word is spreading that you don’t necessarily have to hoof it through the tours. A little bus/van took us directly to the heart of the town, saving us all about a mile walk.
Most of the focus for the day was on the cathedral. We were all able to find seats on benches in the park next to the building. The guide went through the now familiar-sounding history – started hundreds of years ago, modified through the ages, destroyed pieces here and there, followed by rebuilding after WWII.
The cathedral is beautifully simple and elegant both inside and out. It holds the tombs of emperors and German kings (not mentioned on the tour!)
Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses in Wittenberg, but the nobles followed up by publishing their “protestation” of some of the Catholic Church’s policies in support of Luther in April 1529 – this is the origin of the term “Protestant”.
Meanwhile, while our guide was providing all this info, one of our group members announced rather loudly that the Leisure group was not for her (“I wasn’t planning on sitting all day…”), and she took off. Have a nice day!
After our visit inside the Cathedral, we walked further into the town.
Out of nowhere, the “I don’t want to sit” woman reappears, and asks us where her husband is. Most of us struggled to even remember what he looked like. None of us had a clue as to where her husband was, and we were all pretty sure it wasn’t our responsibility to keep track of him. Noticing that we were no help at all, she once again wandered off.
We stopped at the Protestant Church – simple on the outside and elegant on the inside:
The guide mentioned that there had been a Jewish quarter – the Bishop of Speyer had invited Jews to live in the town, mostly to provide money-lending services, a practice prohibited to Christians. Tom visited the ruins of the synagogue and Mikva:
This was the end of the tour, and we had some free time to wander until the appointed time to meet at the bus. As we were boarding, the “I don’t want to sit” woman reappears – with the missing husband! Apparently she may not have wanted to sit, but she also didn’t want to walk back to the ship.
Tomorrow – Strasbourg! And our luck with the weather runs out.
Maryland Meshugas 