Bernburg

Our stay in Bernburg went by very quickly and I had great hosts - Dietmar and Ute. Dietmar is the president of their Rotary club and they are both wonderful people. I have included a photo of me with them.

Tuesday morning I got a long run in which was great. One of the Rotarians ran with me and my teammate Sara joined on bike. Half way through the run we crossed the river (Saale) on a pedestrian bridge and in the middle stood Dr. Clemens...their incoming president. More on him later. He had a table set up with water for us. He's a retired vet, so he pulled out a stethescope to check our pulse! He then stamped our hands with his stamp and sent us on our way! Very cute.

We then had a walking tour of town and a boat ride in the afternoon. I got to sit and chat with Dr. Clemens and his wife on the boat with my running buddy translating. He said his son wanted to be a vet but wasn't allowed under the former GDR. Unthinkable. The pic is on the boat with my stamped hand.

Wednesday was a vocational day so Dietmar took me to their farm progress show in the morning. I felt like I was in Decatur....long line of cars to get in and very similar setup. I stopped in at the John Deere booth and the marketing manager had just been to Moline a few weeks earlier!  It was a rainy day and they didn't have paved paths...so my running shoes got their first trip through a washing machine later that day. 

Wednesday afternoon I visited Anhalt University and a couple of professors talked to me about their ag program and showed me around. We were supposed to grill out that night but the weather didn't cooperate. We had a schnitzel dinner on a boat instead. I was hoping for a low key night with a decent bedtime...I was not prepared for what was about to occur. We left the boat around 10:30 thinking we would be home in 10 minutes but all of a sudden we were pulling into Dr. Clemens' house. He started pulling out bottle after bottle of homemade wine and then threw some brandy in for good measure. And trays of random food kept appearing (eggs, tomatoes, sausage). We were all sitting around a table and I swear at one point there was 5 different conversions taking place. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time and I couldn't even understand 75% of what was being said!  At one point Dr. Clemens went down to the basement to get more wine and came up with a cowboy hat on, holding the 2 bottles to his hips like guns.  We finally stumbled out of their house at 1 a.m. (except our driver....Germans have been very responsible in that department). Who needs sleep anyway?

Today was Wittenberg! (Martin Luther....Reformation....95 Thesis). They had arranged an English speaking tour guide just for us. It is a neat little town and they are leading up to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. Katharina, Martin's wife, sounded like a tough, independent lady. I posed for a photo with her....

We now transfer to Naumberg. Only 2 towns left and we head back to Illinois in 1 week...hard to believe. I will be very sad to part ways with Germany.