Day 5, Part II – Eisleben and Mansfeld: Castles, Sunsets, and the Kindness of Strangers (Alex Curley)

Today I got to experience something that I have neither ever experienced before nor think I will ever experience again: Eating horse meat. After breaking up into our predetermined travel groups for lunch, my group (Team Mannschaft) broke away and ventured down a few small alleys looking for a café to eat at that was actually open. About three minutes away from the town square in Eisleben (that features a famous statue of Martin Luther as it’s centerpiece) was a small mom-and-pop restaurant away from the main street running through the town. As we were being seated by the waitress (who didn’t speak a word of English), we noticed there were a lot of pictures of horses and farm equipment but didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t till we received our menus that I noted two whole pages were devoted to “Pferdefleish”, which means “horse meat” in German…when I asked the waitress in German if it was actually horse meat, she said “Ja” and shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. Being the adventurers that we are, we decided to order some of the Pferdefleisch dishes even though we had a choice of pork as well. The dishes ended up being phenomenal; among the dishes chosen were Schnitzel with potatoes and peas and Roulade with dumplings and candied red cabbage. As we were ordering, the waitress, who had been easy for me to understand before, kept pointing out of the restaurant and mentioning that something was happening in two hours. I didn’t really understand what she was saying, but I nodded my head anyway and she walked away. After we finished our dinner, she mentioned it again and finally told me to follow her out of the restaurant. Across the street, unseen by us, was the garden that the Augustinian monks would pray in and that Luther himself had also allegedly prayed in during his time in Eisleben. Littered around the white-gravel garden were beautiful trees and small speakers playing recordings of people whispering prayers and chanting. I never figured out what was happening later in the garden.

We headed back to Luther’s birth-house and got back on the bus to travel to the Schloss-Mansfeld castle, which is only about eight miles from Eisleben. Amazingly we are staying inside the actual castle, albeit a renovated area that is now a hostel. I don’t know if the management realized what they were getting in to when they booked the rooms for fifty college students, but the 10^th Century architecture as it turns out is perfect for climbing on and trying to find secret tunnels (which there are a surprising amount of). Despite being covered in construction and restoration equipment, the castle is truly beautiful and we took many beautiful sunset (or “golden hour” as Pastor Mark so lovingly refers to it) pictures on the courtyard overlooking the town of Mansfeld and the countryside behind it. Watching the sunset is always beautiful, but there’s something about being on a castle looking on both a town and the German countryside is incomparable…thank God we are here for another two days.