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I love Turkish food.

Monday, 2006 May 22 6:49 AM CEST — Margetshöchheim, Bavaria GERMANY

I didn't bother to change out of my clothes before bed again. This meant that by the time that I had woken up, I had been wearing the same clothes for three days straight. John had told us that Sunday was his sleep-in day since his church met on Saturday nights instead. We all found ourselves awake and bored, so we decided, with only two hours left until our train pulled out of Zoo Station, to go take pictures of the city. So, we all purchased some transportation passes and went to Brandenburg Gate and took a few photographs. It seemed odd to me that we took all of the trouble to get down to the gate only to take pictures of it.

With that, we headed back to John's apartment. On a side note, on the way back, I saw a robotic, East-German soldier with a silverish paint that looked very realistic. When you moved, it's eyes used some sort of tracking device to follow you. Occasionally, in a robotic manner, it would raise its hand and salute. It wasn't until later that I figured out that it was a mime. Back to the story, we got back to John's apartment and found him practising on his djambais. We thanked him for his hospitality, picked up our bags and set off for Zoo Station.

Although Berlin's superefficient transportation system is amazing, it's easy to know which train you're supposed to get on and off. It's hard to actually find the track where that train boards. After a while, we very much so delayed in getting to Zoo Station. It was clear that without doubt, we would miss our train. However, Jim made the observation that when we were coming into Berlin, the train stopped at the current station that we were at while going to Zoo Station. Therefore, the train should stop at the same station if it was coming from Zoo Station (which it was). We then quickly found the regional tracks at the station and found that the train to Wittenberg did indeed stop there. To our disappointment, that same train also stopped at Alexanderplatz — right down the street from John's apartment. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble if we had just gotten off and on our train at Alexanderplatz instead of Zoo Station. However, this would have meant that I would have missed out of the opportunity to visit a train station that had a song written about it by a major rock band. If you're curious as to why a band would write a song about Zoo Station, keep in mind that the the name of the subway line underneath the station is underground two or “U2”.

So, we took the train back to Wittenberg. Where I was disappointed in German punctuality when our train arrived twenty minutes late in Berlin, my faith in German punctuality was restored when our train arrived in Wittenberg at 14:40 exactly. Dr. Castleman and Dayton were waiting for us on the train platform. They were excited to see us but more excited about the fact that they were going to take the four of us around Wittenberg to see the sights (like we had wanted them too), but we insisted that we eat first since we got no lunch (we were in a hurry) and one of us hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours. So, the Castlemans directed us to a bratwurst stand in the middle of the town square. I had a bratwurst and a Coke, but I was still hungry, so I exchanged the two euro deposit on the Coke glass and got another bratwurst. Another observation about Germany (Dr. Jones, this is one of those cultural observations. So, pay attention.) is that there is a love affair with recycling. Apparently, you're supposed to throw your garbage into one of four trash receptacles: biomaterial, plastics, something else and everything else.

We first went to a church in Wittenberg I don't remember the names of the churches, but there are two important churches in Wittenberg There is the church that Luther preached and performed all of his important work and the church where he nailed on the door his grievances against the church. We first visited the church where Luther preached. Dayton (being the art professor) pointed out that the altar piece didn't include halos around the figures in the painting because while Luther himself believed that altarpieces were wonderful works of art and advocated their use, Lutherans don't believe in using paintings that glorify or venerate saints or other people. With not much else of note in this church (like we hadn't seen enough), we walked across town to the church in Germany that mattered if there was only one church in Germany that mattered. As we were walking, Dr. Castleman told us the story of how they twice walked right by the very doorway where Luther nailed the grievances before they realised it. Then, they pointed to the doorway, and it was right there in front of me. The door was made of bronze since the original door was long gone, but the doorway was there, and above the doorway was a Latin transcription (which I was mostly able to read) describing what had happened there on 1617 October 31. We then walked into the cathedral and saw where Martin Luther was buried. After that, we loaded into a box and headed back to Margetshöchheim.

The ride was long. I tried to pass the time by pulling all of the keys off of my laptop and cleaning all of the hair fibres and crumbs that had manifested themselves under the keyboard. That is something that I have learned never to do in a moving car as a piece and a key ended up missing. After we arrived in Margetshöchheim, I took a little extra time to look for the missing pieces. After I found them, I took a walk around the corner to meat everyone else for Turkish food. I love Turkish food. I would highly recommend that you go out right now and find some Turkish food. It is quite delicious. Anyway, we took our food and ate it while sitting beside the Main. Several ducks came up to us and just stood at our feet like they believed that they were entitled to some of our food. We partially accommodated them since they were really cool looking ducks.

The rest of the evening was basically just spend sitting around. Dr. Ostrander will be going to the train station in Würzburg to pick up the group that went to Prague at 4:00 which is in a few hours.

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