A Quick Trip to Germany

A beautiful view of the Transylvania Alps from our plane as we flew to Frankfurt for a Europe Area Humanitarian Conference.

The view of Frankfurt as we were coming in to land.

Our hosts were John and Susan Leonard, Area Welfare Specialists (our supervisors). Doesn't Susan look cute in her German costume?

We all stayed in the building on the left which has rental apartments for patrons of the Frankfurt temple (right).

We were able to attend a temple session on the first evening of the conference.

Here is the beautiful tudor-style home of the temple president.

Also on these temple grounds is this church meetinghouse and a church distribution centre.

Here is the whole group. Besides us, there were humanitarian missionaries from: Albania, Cape Verde (off the coast of Africa), Croatia/North Bosnia, Czech Republic, Macedonia/Kosova, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia/South Bosnia and Slovakia.

For two great days we were instructed and inspired.

Elder Fingerle, Area Authority Seventy was our keynote speaker.

We heard from John Leonard, Area Welfare Specialist ...

John Mulligan, Welfare Services Manager for Europe ...

Elder Wirthlin, Director of Temporal Affairs and others.

We listened and learned from each other as each couple had an assigned topic to present.

At the close of the formal conference meetings, Vicky led the ad hoc chorus.

On day three, we got out to see some of the sights:  First stop, Braunfels castle.

It was built in the 13th century, but like most castles, there have been many renovations and extensions. It has been the way it stands since 1885.  What is unusual, is that it has remained in the same family over its entire history.

The castle is still inhabited.  The Count came out to walk his dogs as our group arrived for the tour. He said "hello" to the tour guide, but just walked past the rest of us. We would only be allowed to see a few rooms because it is still a private residence.

There was the typical arms and armor room.  We saw samples of their extensive art collection, but were not allowed to use our cameras there. We learned that one daughter in the family gave up everything and worked with the poor. Another ancestor, Prince Carl, nicknamed "Texas Charlie", moved to Texas and built New Braunfels, a famous German community there. Our tour guide says he takes his wife to New Braunfels on vacation every year.

On prime real estate, the castle overlooks the town.

Enjoying the castle grounds.

We exited the castle grounds into the town square where we enjoyed lunch at an outdoor cafe. Then we all headed to Frankfurt.

We boarded public transit to go to downtown Frankfurt.

Apparently it was the first warm sunny day of Spring, so shoppers and buskers were everywhere. We enjoyed this fellow with his alpine horn.

We learned that 75% of Franfurt residents carry a foreign passport!

Tucked in among the large modern stores were these charming curio shops with their medieval-looking signs. At 6:00 PM on the dot, all the church chimes in the city began to ring - it continued for 15 minutes. Lovely!

On to Romerberg Square - the sight of the famous burning of the books by university students - an action against "unGerman spirit". Happening in 1933, it began an era of state censorship and control of culture.

This action occurred in 34 towns across Germany. This is the memorial of the event in Romerberg Square.

 I am standing on the memorial plaque and pointing the camera at the balcony where Hitler came out and waved at the people around the bonfire where books by authors including Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Helen Keller, and H.G. Wells were burned. Especially notable were the writings of German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, who wrote in his 1820 - 1821 play, "Almansor": "Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people." 

While in Germany, Randy was on a quest to find "kasekuchen" (cheesecake) - something his Grandma Deibert made. He didn't find any that tasted quite as good as he remembered his grandmother's, but he did extensive research in the attempt.

This is the top of a three-storey mall -a fascinating piece of engineering. As you can see, there is a glass tunnel through this wall.  We had to go inside to see it from another angle.

So cool! We felt so lucky to have been able to visit Germany.

Now we're back home in Romania and on the lookout for another project.