July 4, 2009

This morning we headed out from Frankfurt and began our drive south. Our first stop was Worms, the site of a well-known cathedral and a place famous in Reformation history. This is where Martin Luther was called to appear before Emperor Charles V and the Diet of Worms in 1521 and supposedly uttered the famous phrase “Here I stand. I can do no other.” He probably didn’t really say these exact words (in German of course) but the sentiment is probably close enough. We had a little shower during our time here, but had a good look around the town centre anyways.

After Worms we continued our drive south to Speyer, the site of another well-known cathedral. We all agreed that this cathedral was fantastic, especially the stained glass windows. After touring around the cathedral, we headed back into the van and drove to McDonald’s. We had promised the boys that after two months in Ethiopia we would hit a McDonald’s as soon as we could. Over 30 Euros later (that’s close to $50!) I made it clear that this is probably the last time we will do this.

We continued our drive south and stopped in Karlsruhe, where we parked downtown and toured the palace grounds, which include a large park. We took a little train ride around the park, which Isaac really enjoyed. The only driving “incident” we had that day was when, while being guided by the GPS, Richard ended up driving down a pedestrian mall meant only for the tram. After a few pedestrians made their feelings quite clear to us, we quickly found an exit and were no worse for the experience.

We then met our host family for the evening, arranged through Mennonite Your Way. It was a Funk family from a Mennonite church in the area. They were very hospitable and had a nice room for the five of us. We showed them some of our Ethiopia pictures and talked about people we knew in common (the Mennonite world tends to be pretty small – one of their former pastors was one of our seminary professors, and we knew the brother of one of the church members!).