Weimar, town most famous for its connection with Goethe & Schiller, the twin greats of German literature
Weimar, also famous for its decorative onion bundles - no, really!
Weimar is home to many beautiful buildings
This is not among them!
Horsey horsey
An imposing tower
Delightful main square
Tasty bear - I mean beer
The church we sang in one evening
Thuringia's excellent cuisine can be found in every town
Another delightful mediaeval square
Impressive church too
Ah! At last, some grafitti! I thought it was all going to be too twee
No, not an outsize shopping bag, but rather an art installation
Now that's what I call half-timbered!
Egon, our amusing guide for the weekend
The twin churches of Erfurt
Impressive entrance
These women are supposed to look anguished. I don't buy it
Delicate carvings in the choir stalls
Great knockers!
A view down onto the huge market square
Erfurt is majorly mediaeval
Luckily, the Communists couldn't scratch together the money to bulldoze the whole town, which apparently they wanted to do
Since reunification, stacks of cash has been invested and now it's a lovely town
Crazy chapel with stacked ashes from cremations
These were once student accommodation, hundreds of years ago
The famed bridge at Erfurt, one of only a handful of extant bridges with buildings all along them
And here is the cute shopping street along the middle of the bridge
Cool ex-Eastern-Bloc trams still in service
Another lovely building
And another one!
The two churches, from the market square
A pleasing shade of red
We found a great coffee house
Some of the new buildings are also great
A little bit of art nouveau
And a little of bit of "let's tart up the hideous concrete blocks bequeathed us by our Communist past"
Ah, at last a corner that hasn't been renovated - yet
Cool decoration of the arch
A statue of a young Bach, outside the Bach church in Arnstadt
The Bach organ in the Bach church in Arnstadt
How many arrows??!!
The Wartburg, Germany's most important castle
A watch tower to see right across the Thuringian forests
The oriel window of the room in which Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German
And here is an original copy of Luther's bible
Some stonework from the museum in the castle
Glowing heart?
Lovely relief
Oops! I appear to have been eaten by a dragon
The fantastic mosaic ceilings in one of the palace rooms
The huge concert hall, scene of the mediaeval "singer slaughter"
The castle's original structure is Romanesque, and has been added to over the centuries to produce a unique architectural record of the German aristocracy
