Day 1 - We just picked up our boys this morning to travel through Europe!!
Their flight came in at 5 something. Our ticket for the shuttle from our hotel was at 6:30. At the airport we asked a security officer how to find the train place the boys were at. As a thank you I gave the officer our business card for Arnall.org and when he saw the boys on the picture he recognized them and said, “Oh! Are you looking for two boys? I saw them go up this escalator!” We were able to connect with the boys on Wi-Fi calling and tell them to come back the same way they had come, where they had talked to the security officer at the escalator - because it was the direction we needed to go to get on the train from Frankfurt to Mainz. I really had to go to the bathroom, but didn’t see a bathroom at all. So we caught the train and while at the cathedral a lady asked if we needed a “toilette”… I gratefully said “Yes!!!” When she unlocked it we saw it required money. We had no cash yet in Euros so we said no, that we didn’t have money, but thanked her anyway. We went into the church and I began to be seriously worried about a bathroom as I was hurting by now and seriously uncomfortable. So I sat in a pew in the back of the church while they walked around. The lady came up to me and motioned that I could use the toilette and not pay!!! I was so grateful!!!!!!! We went to the “Gutenberg museum” and thought it was closed for the summer so we left for Worms. The people in Mainz were so very friendly!! As we were walking a fellow pedestrian pointed out a fountain and she said it was special... only in Mainz. So we took pictures of it.... Jeremy stopped people and asked how to take the train to Worms... Jeremy always thanked them with “Gracias!” Which we all laughed at... “Danke” I believe, is “Thank you”, in German. We are now on the train to Worms. Jason is wide awake and happier than I can remember!!! He is SO excited to be traveling!!! Jordan is exhausted!!! Poor thing is trying to sleep presently. His plane seat hardly reclined at all and he was in an aisle seat with no place to put his legs... said he finally had fallen asleep and had his head hanging in the aisle and the stewardess hit his head with a cart. Said a little girl and her mother were throwing up in the seat behind them.
We showed the boys some of what we saw yesterday with the GCC tour group in Worms. We showed them the Cathedral with the Dashound/Datson (?) wiener dog next to the window. As the story goes…It was there in memorial of the dog who came there with the man who was there to inspect every crack in the cathedral to determine repairs... I believe there were 5 men there in the cathedral inspecting it, when the man’s dog came rushing into the cathedral barking like made and nipping at their heals until he routed them out of the cathedral. The man who owned the dog was totally embarrassed and the other men were furious... until... they came out of the church and immediately the roof collapsed... the dog was now a hero deserving his own statue.
We also saw the hotel where Luther would have stayed when he came to the Diet of Worms. We also saw the street he would have come down when he entered the city. We got to stand in the shoes representing his statement… “Here I stand I can do no other”. The Bishop’s palace is gone that used to stand beside the church where this history actually took place. We decided to go back to Mainz after all… to see the Gutenberg press museum. We had to walk/run to it... because we were pressed for time to fit this back into our schedule and catch the train. We saw super old Bibles. How ink was made, and what they think the press looked like back then (it was burned up so they no longer have the original). We were only there about 35 minutes. Jason was starting to feel weak and dizzy so we stopped and got him a bottle of water. He felt better very quickly. It was raining lightly on the way there and back but we just put on our rain coats and Jordan pulled off his socks and just wore the Chacos without socks. We ate a peanut butter/honey sandwich (Granna had packed the boys) while we rode on the train to Speyers.
While we waited for a late train we met a 20 year old boy from Ukraine named Yuten (name was much longer, but he said we could call him Yuten). He is studying languages at the university here in Germany. We were able to give him our card which links to our website where we told him about the English videos he can watch. He said watching English videos really helps him to learn English!
We walked about 18 minutes to get to the old Protestant church (Trinity?). Jason was walking funny because his shoes were causing him to get blisters (he shaved his callouses off recently before coming on our trip 😆) so I put bandages on them. We continued on to the Catholic Church where King Henry 4th is buried in the Crypt under the church. He is the one who crossed the Alps in the snow in Winter and waited barefoot in the snow for days to make amends with the pope.
We then went to see the ancient Jewish ceremonial cleansing bath spot we saw yesterday with the GCC tour. Jason’s feet were still really bothering him, so we decided we should get him some flip-flops at a huge shoe store I had seen on the Main Street when we were there yesterday. So we stopped in and found him some… not what I would have chosen especially, but we didn’t want his feet to continue to get worse. He seemed to like them quite well. They just don’t have any arch support, so I hope they at least form to his feet and thus develop some arch support. We walked down to the Protestant church at the end of that street and went in. It has purple lights on the ceiling and some real neat art depicting some of the great men of Protestantism. Then we ran to the bus stop… only to wait for about an hour and a half. (We had waited about 30 minutes for a late train only to then realize we would have to pay $80 extra to ride it -in addition to the monthly Euro-rail pass we already have- to ride during rush hour. Rather than do that, we ate supper… which turned out to be Subway Veggie Delight sandwiches… I know… pretty boring for a first day in Germany… but we all enjoyed it. We waited on a bench waiting for the train… caught that train, then had to wait about 30 minutes for our next train to Strasburg. This I believe is our last train then we have about a 15 min walk to the Air BnB. God is good and we sense His protecting care. A strange man got on the last train and scared me enough to pray… seemed drunk or drugged… talking and laughing to himself it seemed. Thankfully he settled down and fell asleep. I think we’ve walked about 12 miles today.
I took pictures of some metal plaques embedded in the sidewalk. These were in front of apartments where Jews had lived during World War 2 as memorials to them… it says on the tag what happened to them… several we saw went to Auschwitz… some to different countries. So sad!!! To see their homes and imagine what it must have been like!!!
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