Eisenach: One big castle on a hill

So, here's a funny story.  Back when I was planning and booking the trip, my original thought was to spend my two solo days checking out an additional town before meeting up with Lisa on Friday and seeing Erfurt.  Both Eisenach and Gotha sounded promising -- Gotha has a cool tram that winds through the Thuringian forest and ends up at a gypsum cave, and Eisenach has a big beautiful castle and some Martin Luther claim to fame.  However, when I researched train tickets online, for all appearances it seemed like a train ride to either Eisenach or Gotha did not exist.  I was very confused and frustrated, but then discovered that budget accommodations were scarce in both towns, and decided I'd go straight to Erfurt instead, taking a day trip on regional trains to one of the towns in question.

Okay -- why is this a funny story?  Because my train to Erfurt passed right through both Eisenach and Gotha.  Why these destinations had not been available on bahn.com will always be a gigantic mystery to me, but what can you do?  Well, what I did was continue my merry little way along to Erfurt, to do some backtracking the next day as I chose Eisenach over Gotha (castle beats cave), and went to see what I could see.

Eisenach:  Day Two

According to my various guidebooks, it is possible to hike up to Wartburg Castle from downtown Eisenach.  I, however, chose to take a bus.  Said bus was right across the street from the train station, left in ten minutes, and cost less than two euro.  And let me tell you, this would not have been an easy or short hike.  Hooray for smart choices.  Or at least, lazy ones. :)

Wartburg Castle

Cute wee Eisenach down below

 Wartburg Castle only has one English tour a day, which I missed by eight minutes because I was taking these photos.  (For YOU!!!)  If I'd bothered to read my guidebooks more carefully, I would have seen that Rick very clearly and kindly stated the start time of the English tour.  But I did not, which means I got a tour in German.  Could have been worse; at least I got to see it.

I hate to say this, but I wasn't blown away by the restored rooms inside here.  Because the castle was in use up until pretty recently, most of the rooms were preserved in their most modern incarnation, which frankly is just not that interesting to me.

For example, the castle's chapel, above, was last decorated in the 1950s.  Woot?  The one exception here was the remains of the 13th century fresco on the other side of the altar, showing some of the apostles.

The most beautiful room on the tour was doubtless the Ladies' Chamber, covered in gorgeous mosaics from the 19th century.

Knight's Room

A famous someone's bedroom

 As you may have noticed, the tour was kind of lacking in info on Wartburg's biggest draw and most famous guest -- Martin Luther himself.  As I mentioned in the last post, Luther fled persecution to hide here for a few months and translate the New Testament into German for the very first time.  Whether you're religious or not, this was unquestionably a pretty huge watershed moment for Europe.

All in all, I'm afraid I can't give the (expensive at 9 euros!) tour an enthusiastic thumbs up.  The castle also offered a "kurz" (short) ticket, and at almost half the cost,  this really might be the better option if you're on a budget.  The short ticket included the one big ticket item, which came next.

After the tour, there was a small museum, and then you got to see what everyone had been waiting for -- the room where it all went down.

So, this is the spot.  Luther sat here, translated, and doubtless played many hours of 15th century minesweeper and solitaire like we all do when we are definitely not procrastinating on writing a huge paper.  (These days it's probably candy crush and fruit ninja though, I guess.)

After my castle tour, it was about mid-afternoon.  I debated getting lunch in the very pictureque cafe next to the castle, but also wanted to get down and see some of the town before I lost much more of the day.  So, took the bus back down and wandered for a bit until I found a sidewalk cafe I liked, sat and had a flammkuchen, which is kind of like German flatbread pizza.

Eisenach is, natürlich, incredibly cute, which seems to be what German towns do best.

In town, the big-tourist-ticket items are Martin Luther's house and Bach's house.  I wasn't over the moon about seeing either but thought I should check them out.  I didn't have the slightest bit of a map, but Eisenach is tiny and I was able to find Martin Luther's house ten minutes before it closed.  So, I was spared having to go in. :)  However, Bach's house was open an hour later, so I found that, paid, and got myself some Classical culture.

The house/museum was pretty interesting, but rather sparse for the price (8 euro I think?).  The coolest thing they had was this room, below, where you could sit in these mod little pods and listen to sample of Bach's work.

Oh right -- apparently contemporary Bach lovers were so desperately keen to find out what the composer looked like that they exhumed his body so they could take a cast of his skull and fill in the appropriate flesh and muscle.  I don't even.

I finished up with Bach and headed back into town for some more walking around.  I was strangely tired, so ended up making my way back to the train station and heading back to Erfurt.  I wanted to head out for a bit, maybe back to Modern Masters, and eventually find a snack for a late dinner.  But I was so beat that I ended up just staying at the hostel and having a very early night.  It was like I really had hiked up that hill to Wartburg!

And that... was it for Eisenach.  Beautiful, full of history, and most definitely worth a side trip should you find yourself in the area.  As is sadly the case all too often in Germany, the tourist sites are undeniably pricey.

The next day would be Erfurt once again, as I'm joined by the always-lovely Lisa, and we enjoy some truly magical hot chocolate.