Out and about in Heidelberg and Rothenburg

The 2015 FairMormon conference in Darmstadt is over, and our trip is drawing to its end.  So some of those of us who’re still left did a bit of sightseeing today.

First, we drove to Heidelberg, the beautiful university city on the Neckar River that I visited (and fell in love with) during my first trip to Europe many, many years ago.  We spent most of our time there touring the ruined castle that sits above the city:

Here’s how Mark Twain described it in his 1880 book of travel narratives, A Tramp Abroad:

A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. This one could not have been better placed. It stands upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green woods, there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude. Nature knows how to garnish a ruin to get the best effect. One of these old towers is split down the middle, and one half has tumbled aside. It tumbled in such a way as to establish itself in a picturesque attitude. Then all it lacked was a fitting drapery, and Nature has furnished that; she has robed the rugged mass in flowers and verdure, and made it a charm to the eye. The standing half exposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like open, toothless mouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have done their work of grace. The rear portion of the tower has not been neglected, either, but is clothed with a clinging garment of polished ivy which hides the wounds and stains of time. Even the top is not left bare, but is crowned with a flourishing group of trees & shrubs. Misfortune has done for this old tower what it has done for the human character sometimes:  improved it.

Some of us then drove further on, to the romantically picturesque little town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

The photographs that I’ve posted here don’t begin to do Rothenburg justice.

But, once again, we were able to hear wonderful organ music in a centuries-old church, just as it was meant to be played.  This time, it was in Rothenburg’s Franziskanerkirche.  It was a half hour of preludes and fugues composed by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who once directed the musical undertakings in the Thomaskirche at Leipzig as well as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Posted from Darmstadt, Germany