Our German Travels

The greatest thing about being in Gelsenkirchen is that we are within driving distance of a number of really unique German cities. Normally we have to save our sightseeing for the weekend when there is time to drive further out, but since everything is so close we were able to travel to a different city every night last week.

On Monday we traveled into downtown Gelsenkirchen, which is really cute. There's a large shopping area with cobbled pedestrian walkways (you may remember we previously got to see these when our taxi driver thought these were roads).
On Tuesday we headed to Munster, about 45 minutes away. We toured the altstadt (old city), which was beautiful. The creepiest/most interesting sight we saw there was St. Lambert's Church. At the top of the steeple you may notice three hanging cages. These were used in the 16th century to display the bodies of the leaders of the anabaptist Munster Rebellion. Talk about creepy! It is pretty cool that the cages and the cathedral itself are so well preserved considering it was built in 1375.
We also had our first authentic German meal at the Pinkus Mueller Brewery: sausages, potatoes, sauerkraut, and of course beer brewed on-site. There was even a band playing old time German music.
On Wednesday we drove to Dusseldorf. Despite our crazy taxi ride, we learned that it really does take just a half an hour to get there! Again we went through the altstadt, where we found this cool octagonal shaped art museum.

We also spent some time strolling through the cobblestone streets and the walkway along the Rhine River.

On Thursday we went to Essen. We heard there was huge Synagogue there with a really unique museum in the basement. Unfortunately the museum was closed, but the building was certainly impressive.

Just like all of the towns in this area, there was a huge Catholic Cathedral there. We went to check it out when suddenly the church bells started ringing and people began filing out of the church. We watched for a while and realized that the Bishop was saying mass for some reason. We watched in the courtyard for a while as the Bishop greeted everyone. The one really unique thing about this cathedral is the golden statue of the Virgin Mary which dates back to the 11th century.
On Friday we stayed in the Gelsenkirchen-Buer area and had dinner at this gorgeous old castle (complete with a moat!) that has been converted into a restaurant. We didn't stay out too late because we were gearing up for our weekend trip to Belgium. We had an awesome time there, but that's for another post!