We drove to Gottingen in the late morning. The day was miserable. It was foggy and wet, and we had intermittant showers all the way. We deliberately took the "back"roads but there was plenty of traffic on these roads, including lots of truck, so it was treacherous. Jack's nose was very stopped up - he just could not breathe - and had not slept well the previous night. I was worried about him, but we kept on going. Maybe in Gottingen he would be able to breathe.
We finally got in the town; my Google map directions were fine but when it says "turn right at Gartenstrasse" or "left at Mertensplatz" that doesn't help much, since they don't much believe in road signs. When we are traveling by car, we learned while we were in Spain a few years ago, to drive into the town, stop at a hotel and ask directions to our hotel. They always knew all hotels, they had city maps and they gave us good directions. We did this again and it worked like a charm. We probably would still be driving around, looking for our hotel if we had not stopped. Sure enough, the signs on the road really are there, after you know what you are looking for.
We were staying at an NH hotel, our fourth such hotel. It is a Spanish chain and it has very nice hotels. This one was nice though standard. The first thing we did on checking in was to ask about laundry - what time in the morning should we bring our clothes down. The second thing was to find the doctor that was recommended for Jack.
It so happened that he was at the clinic just up the road from us, so at the proper time we walked over and asked to see the doctor. We waited for about five minutes. I was prepared for a long wait; I had my crossword puzzles and my Kindle, but in about fifteen minutes Jack was back, armed with a couple of prescriptions.
We walked down the street to the pharmacy; they filled the prescriptions - some kind of pill and some nose drops - and we were on our way back to the hotel. The doctor thought that Jack had some kind of viral infection rather than an allergy problem. Jack took a couple of pills and sprayed his nose and suddenly felt better. I was a little skeptical - how could he have a viral infection in all of the places where he had nose problems: western England, Ireland, northern Germany? I saw those places as cool, rainy, full of trees and hay and grasses... that sounded like allergy problems to me, but I was not the doctor. I just murmured how great that he might be feeling better soon.
There was a bus stop in front of the hotel, and most busses went downtown, so we hopped a bus to find a place to eat. The bus driver was very nice, but I don't think he spoke any English. Jack asked questions about directions, and the bus driver started rattling off directions. I asked Jack later what that conversation was about and he said he got about 20% of it. Anyway, the bus driver motioned us when to get off, and we found ourselves in the middle of downtown.
The Germans have the required pedestrian area where all of the shops are, just like in Holland. This was Thursday night, a late night for the shops, so the town was still pretty lively. We found a cute little cafe and walked inside to have a schnitzel, what else? It was crowded but we were in no hurry, and enjoyed the atmosphere. The food was pretty good too.
We walked around a little after our meal and then headed back to the busstop, hopped the number 4 bus to head home. It really wasn't far back to the big road where our hotel was; this street, Kasseler Landstrasse, a four land road, is full of hotels and automobile franchises, with a few private homes squeezed in among them. I am guessing that many years ago this was a nice road out of the town, and people thought they lived in the country. Then they built the autobahn down this way, with an exit on this street, and businesses and hotels sprang up here, just like any American town with an exit on the freeway. We even had the customary Burger King and McDonald's.
We were going to spend Friday in town to see what history Gottingen had and what interesting sights it had in the middle of the city. We called it a night and hoped that Jack could get a good night's rest for the first time in a long time.
It didn't happen. He couldn't breathe any better than before. He was miserable. The next day was Saturday, so he was going to have to wait until Monday to see the doctor again. Jack tried to put on a good face in the morning, but he was tired and felt awful.
We did get in the car on Sunday to drive to Eisenach, about fifty miles down south. The road followed the Wesser River, and all along the way there were encampments, where Germans were spending the last days of their holiday in their little campers with the daytime activities, like walking, biking, boating. Jack says that Germans like the outdoors and like the idea of camping. I thought it would be very uncomfortable, having another camper right up next to mine, etc. But Jack says that it is fun to camp - they did it in Germany when he was in high school. You meet people, you have good campgrounds with showers and bathrooms, and the weather is good most of the time. I guess.
We got to Eisenach and it was pouring down rain. It never stopped the whole day; we made the best of it. This little town is very important because it not only has the Luther and Bach houses, where both of these famous people grew up, but it has the Wartburg castle, where Luther was protected by the German princes while he was on the run from the Pope. He was excommunicated, which meant that he was fair game to be killed by just about anyone. I grew up Catholic, so Martin Luther was considered a very bad guy, but other than that, I never knew much about him. Around these parts, he is considered a hero and one who changed history.
The Luther house is just your ordinary old house, with old furniture. I must admit, I didn't get much out of it, since all the signs were in German. But evidently, Luther was a very good student, and he decided early on to become an Augustinian monk, so he could study and have a quiet life. I guess he never realized how much he would do in his lifetime to upset the order of things and go on to be such an historical figure.
The Bach house was fascinating. Bach also grew up in this little town, some two hundred years later than Luther, and he was also a good student, music wise. The house was extended to include a wonderful little museum which housed instruments that were in use in Bach's time, a great room with earphones where you could listen to all kinds of his compositions, and a music room, where we heard a lecture in German and a demonsration of several different kinds of percussion instruments that were from Bach's day.
This part of Germany used to be in the eastern part, and I couldn't help but wonder how these people lived during that time of occupation, so to speak. Everything seemed ordinary, but I couldn't shake the feeling that these people had a hard life during those times.
Fortunately for me, every sign in the Bach museum was also in English. I read about his experiences in each of the churches where he worked. The sad part was that in most of his church jobs he was misunderstood. so he had to put up with a clergy that was ignorant of music and gave him a hard time with his plans and his music. I shook my head sadly: this kind of tension between church musicians and their pastors has existed all those years ago and still goes on today.
Since it was getting late and the rain was not letting up, we decided to save the Wartburg castle for another day. We made our way home through the rain. The only good thing was, all over Europe on Sundays, trucks are not allowed to use the highways, so we had a peaceful trip back despite the bad weather.
Jack was prepared to get up early and go to the clinic to see the doctor again; hopefully he would help him. He left for the clinic and was back in less than an hour. The doctor gave him some pills that were more powerful, some other nose drops, wanted to see him again on Wednesday, and made an appointment for Jack to see a specialist if he did not get better in a few days. We crossed our fingers and hoped that these new pills would do the trick.
In the meantime, we decided that we could not leave Gottingen. We had reservations for Magdeburg in a couple of days, but we rescheduled that reservation and extended our time here in the Gottingen hotel. The most important thing for Jack was to get well, or at least to feel better. Our march across northern Germany was secondary at this point.
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