A Medieval Village

Friday May 20^th

Today Luzie and Vrenni went off to school and Katie, Karin and I went to the nearby town of Speyer. Speyer is the home to a magnificent cathedral that was built in beginning in 1030 (and we think our colonial buildings are old). It is built out of yellow and red sandstone in a striped pattern that is carried out both outside and inside the cathedral.  The walls are up to 24 feet thick in places (7 meters) to support the high walls and arches.  It is laid out in the pattern of a Latin cross, and has a very interesting crypt with 8 former kings of the German area: Conrad II (1039), Henry III (1056), Henry IV (1106), Henry V (1125) Philip of Swabia (1208), Frederick Barbarossa (the Red Beard – 1190), Albert of Austria (1308) and Adolph of Nassau (1298).  The church and the crypt are perfectly symmetrical in every aspect, and there were a lot of not only Christian, but also what looked like Celtic influences in the grave markings.

After touring the cathedral (Dom du Speyer), we walked through the town which was a medieval walled village. You could still see the influence of the walls in the curving layout of the old roads as the traced the path of the walls!  We were able to climb on old watchtower/city gate and see the layout of the roads very easily.  The city gate was heavily fortified with windows for marksmen, and interestingly, on the side of the gate was an iron rod which served as the official unit of measure for tradesmen wanting to do business in the city. This was long before units of measure were standardized and each city had its own unit.  Speyer is the seat of one of the German states, and we saw the Stadthous and the Rathaus, which both still looked very medieval in architecture.

After finishing in Speyer, we stopped at farmers market and picked up cherries from France and the first of the local German strawberries.  At a second stand we picked up white asparagus, which is very particular to this region of Germany.  The asparagus (called spargel) is sorted by diameter, and you can get spears in classification that range from very thin to over an inch in diameter. This type of asparagus needs to be peeled and there was a peeling machine right on-site.   Evidently it is hard work to peel it, and Karin said that their family has bought a lot more local asparagus since the farmer’s stand put in the peeling machine.  You insert each stalk one at a time into a machine which feeds the spears through a water-cooled set of wheels which strip off the peel.  The peeled stalk then shoots out with energy into a pool of water on the other side. The entire system is about 3 feet across and has a clear front so you can see the stalk being peeled.

We headed home with our peeled asparagus and other fruits to meet Luzie and have lunch.  Luzie got off today at 1pm and came home while Vrenni went to a friend’s house and then to tennis, followed by music lesson.  The remaining four of us had German pancakes for lunch which were very similar to Swedish pancakes and are the size of a dinner plate and very thin.  You coat it thinly with jam, roll it up an then cut it to eat.  Katie and Luzie played a game of Monopoly on the iPad and then went into town alone to pick up Luzie’s bike and have ice cream.  When they returned they played with the ripstick and then the iPad again. 

Karin and I spent the afternoon talking politics, and comparing the health systems in Germany and the US. In actuality the systems sound very similar, both financed by employers with employee contributions.  There are different levels of care here too, and different plans and systems. The main difference is that there is a government safety net plan that picks up if you lose your job so that no one ever goes without insurance.  If our medicare system could do that, the countries systems would be virtually identical.  Karin was surprised to hear about our Medicare system exclaiming, “Why you do have “socialized” medicine!”  And I was surprised to hear that their system was so similar in many ways to ours!

We had our dinner late in the evening out on the patio.  The adults had boiled white asparagus, and ham cold cuts, while the kids had red sausage (the ones cut so they curl up), and everyone had boiled potatoes with butter.   I really enjoy wheat beer, so we had some local wheat beer, which was non-alcoholic and quite delicious.  They even tracked down one glass that is the particular type in which you serve wheat beer and let me have that glass. It is becoming more common here to drink non-alcoholic beer so that you can enjoy the beer with none of the side effects.

The kids went inside to watch “the Tooth Fairy” movie, and the adults stayed outside talking long into the night.