Münster (and Ahaus)

Well my fall break is already winding down, surprising as that sounds. Right now I’m in the Nuremberg train station killing a couple of hours before my train arrives. By 9:45 tonight (the 29th of September, that is) I’ll be back in by dorm in Innsbruck, tired and looking forward to four or five days of unwinding. So it’s time to update my blog with records of my trips.
First off: Münster. I took a long night train to Düsseldorf to meet Dad, with the intention that we would then travel to Münster. Unfortunately, the mighty Deutsche Bahn (the German railway system) failed me. My train was delayed for over two hours, and I almost missed Dad in the airport. But I ran into him just as he was about to leave for Münster, so all’s well that ends well. We arrived in Münster went to our hotel, the Tryp Kongresshotel. While it certainly wasn’t as nice as the Heffterhof in Salzburg, it was by no means incommodious. We napped, then toured the city before having dinner at a local restaurant.
The next day we rose bright and early to go to Metz’s birthday celebration in Ahaus, a tiny city north of Münster. (A note to my readers who aren’t part of my immediate family: Johann Baptist Metz is a venerable and famous German political theologian. Dad wrote his dissertation on Metz way the hell back in the late 80s/early 90s, and the two of them are fast friends. In fact, Dad has recently published a new translation of one of Metz’s works). The trip by car took us about an hour and a half on the way there, and we passed through terrain that would not have looked out of place in Ohio or Indiana: pancake-flat farmland with the occasional forest. The only difference were the wind turbines, which sprout out of the fields like great columnar trees.
The celebration itself (or, as the invitation put it, the “Theological Matinee”) took place in a Wasserschloss, a small Baroque palace surrounded by a moat-like pond. Apparently it was quite the vogue to build these things in northern Germany during the 18th century. This Wasserschloss is now owned by the city of Ahaus and is used as a kind of more stylish convention center.
The “Theological Matinee” opened with a series of speeches by friends of Metz. Naturally, these speeches were rather academic and were entirely in German, meaning that I understood them as much as I can write in Ogham. Each speech was separated from the next by a piece of piano music performed by a Prof. Dr. Tanski of the Mozarteum (the University of Salzburg’s formidable music school). The pieces were quite enjoyable, especially the last which poked fun at every Romantic composer from Beethoven to Strauss.
Afterwards there was an Imbiss, a German term for a quick meal, of stew, bread, pretzels, and dried meet, washed down with water, juice, or beer. Dad was able for the first to try a Radler, a German beverage made half of pilsner and half of lemonade. While by now means as alcoholic as a regular beer, a Radler is wonderfully refreshing on a hot day. I could spring for one now, because the Nuremberg train station is heated to Carroll-Hall levels (i.e., with many fiery furnaces).
After the Imbiss, it was back to Münster, where we had dinner with Metz and some of the guests of the matinee. The dinner, which was held in the Hotel Feldmann in the center of Münster, was also enjoyable, though the conversation was once again in German. My own skills served my a adequately, though I was forced to use English whenever I wanted to get a complicated point across. The food was served in suitably Germanic proportions, and just the appetizer (mashed potatoes, meatloaf, apple slice with topping, and pumpernickel with ham) would have been enough for me. I fear my stomach has contracted in my old age, and that I might no longer be capable of devouring one pizza single-handedly.
The next morning, Dad left and I explored the city for the rest of the day. Münster is fairly new, since most of the city was bombed into oblivion by the Allies during World War II. Thus it doesn’t have anywhere near the concentration of ancient edifices that a city like Salzburg has. Still, the churches are impressive specimens of their kinds (Gothic and late Romanesque), and some of the old buildings still remain.
First off, I visited the Friedensaal, the building in which the Peace of Westphalia was signed, ending the Wars of Religion and creating the Netherlands as a country. It wasn’t much more than a tolerably ancient room, although one of the suits of armor in the foyer possesses a pointed potbelly, the sight of which brought innumerable Monty Python-esque quotes to my mind.
Then I strolled down to the local palace, once the seat of Münster’s ruler and now part of the University of Münster. While the palace is not open to the public, the University’s botanical gardens behind the palace are, and I lost a couple of hours winding among the paths and experimenting with my camera’s “Flower” option.
After that, I returned to the city and walked around, taking pictures or just sitting and reading a book. I went to the shops of both the Picasso Museum and the State Museum of Art and Cultural History. As both Museums required an 11-Euro entry fee, I contented myself with browsing through photograph books and wishing I was awesome.
Later, after Vespers had concluded, I briefly toured the Paulus-Dom and the Lambertikirche. The Lambertikirche, it turns out, has a rather morbid past. During the Wars of Religion in Germany, a group of Anabaptists lead by one Jan van Leiden took over Münster, proclaiming that the Kingdom of God had come and setting up a utopian society. The local lords did not believe that any such kingdom had come, and they besieged Münster and captured it in short order. After executing van Leiden and his two chief supporters, the lords put the bodies in steel cages and suspended them from the spire of the Lambertikirche. The bodies have long since disintegrated, but the cages remain to this day.
By now, night was falling, so I headed back the hotel, collected my luggage and went to the train station. I went to a bookstore and discovered that books in Germany are a lot more expensive than their American counterparts (compare $7.99 to 11.90 Euros). Also, the bookstore didn’t accept my credit card, so most of my available cash went into the book purchases. I withdrew some more from an ATM and bought some pizza for dinner before settling down to a few hours’ wait in the train station.
I’ll leave off this blog post here, but my adventures in Nuremberg will be quickly forthcoming, and I’ll have that post up by the day after tomorrow latest.
Good night, and good luck,

-JA