Bach Museum and Nusschnecke

Wednesday 31 August

A no cycling day today, but plenty of walking.

Leipzig is a great city. We started near the reconstructed St Paul church (Paulinumkirche) which survived WW2 only to be dynamited in communist times. From there to St Nicholas church and the square that hosted protests in 1989 that contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Zimmermann’s coffee house did not survive wartime bombing, however under a plaque we listened to parts of the Coffee cantata. I think we were all focused on our next coffee after.

It was the singer Anna Luise who gave the talk today as Marieke had orchestra practice. Germany does seem to take music education seriously. That and good public transport.

Anna-Luise told us of the story of Mendelssohn reintroducing the world to a largely forgotten Bach and how the Bach archive was then lost and found after being packed off by Joseph Goebbels in 1945. (There is a good podcast on this Radio 3 COTW C P E Bach) if you want to know more.

We ended up at the St Thomas Church and the Bach Museum, well laid out and interesting and some ways the focal point of this trip so far.

I love the way Germans stick words together. With today’s coffee I had a nusschnecke. A nut snail that we would recognise as a nutty Chelsea bun.