Communist schooling!?

Monday 29 August - Anthony’s travel Blog

Started the day with a legendary German breakfast, they take this, and of course coffee and cake, very seriously.

Walked round the cathedral in Naumburg, some wonderful original lifelike stone carvings done by a now anonymous master mason. We were given a trip up the organ loft of St Wenzels Hildebrant Organ with view of the innards and the manuals known to have been used by Bach. The subsequent organ demonstration was excellent.

Weißenfels was a Short cycle and a home-made Wurst away and after check in we walked up the hill to the old ducal place, once used as gestapo hq. Through a non-descript door was this amazing chapel where Handel was known to have played as well as Bach. The guide had a great voice and was lovely to listen to; without speaking much German I got the sense and feeling of what she was saying about Bach’s life in Weißenfels and the death of his first wife, the hunting cantata and then Bach’s second wife and how she never got credit deserved. I then picked up the words 3rd world war and reunification. I found out later she was an old East German and the history she was telling us was in the context of a communist schooling. This town had a huge shoe factory supplying all of the GDR and a good amount of the eastern block but collapsed after reunification with resulting unemployment and resentment. Reunification has been a theme of to conversation today.

I hummed along to one of the st Matthew passion arias (Geoffrey would be proud), the acoustics were wonderful; three of the group are semi professional choir members.

As we ate a demonstration passed, placards included anti vax, anti immigration and pro Putin ones. One of the others said this is the equivalent of the German Brexit faction!

After eating we listened to the hunting cantata with a glass of the local schnapps. Prost!