These are the churches of St. Ulrich (front) and St. Ulrich and Afra (behind) in Augsburg. St. Ulrich is a Lutheran church that is actually attached to the side of the Catholic church -- there used to be a door between them, and the monks used to come in and bother the Lutherans in the 17th century. A few years ago they repainted the Lutheran church so it matched the colors of the Catholic church. Such a travesty! After all those centuries of Lutherans painting the building yellow so it wouldn't look like a part of the Catholic church!
Isn't this the cutest little German town you ever saw?! And not a tourist in sight. This is Shorndorf, and the town church in the background is the one Augsburg pastor Thomas Hopfer was exiled to when he got the Augsburg city council all upset at him in 1661. There's a big monument to Hopfer in the choir of the church. Poor guy, he looks so old and grouchy in his portrait. I have to say, I wouldn't much mind being exiled to this adorable village! This church is also important to me because it was rebuilt by Joseph Furttenbach, just like Holy Cross in Augsburg. I will probably end up spending much of the next few years writing about Joseph Furttenbach, Holy Cross, and Thomas Hopfer, which means I'll have a good excuse to come back to Shorndorf.
We went to Prague for a little honeymoon weekend (happy eleventh anniversary, Austin!) and it was fun to explore some churches with no particular purpose in mind. This is the Cathedral of St. Vitus, up on the hill inside the walls of Prague Castle. Stained glass windows, flying buttresses, mysterious crypts and tombs, and spooky gargoyles!
Anyway, the House of the Virgin wasn't the strangest thing at the Loreto. Even the two fully-clothed skeletons with wax faces in shrines in the Bethlehem Chapel weren't the strangest. By far, the strangest sight was a shrine to St. Winifred, a woman who was mysteriously changed into a man then crucified. A life sized model of her is just hanging there in a side chapel, heavily bearded but unmistakeably female from the neck down.
The church of Our Lady Before Tyn in Prague's old town square is only slightly overshadowed by the Brazilian Samba dancers, don't you think? Overlooking the scene just outside the picture frame is a huge statue of the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus. He has a very sour expression on his face. I suspect Jan Hus would disapprove of just about everything that goes on in Prague's Old Town Square.
I'm posting this picture of the Pinkas Synagoge because it has the coolest exterior of any of Prague's synagogues. The most interesting interior is the Old-New Synagogue, which looks like a Gothic chapel.
Behind the Pinkas is a Jewish cemetery with thousands of gravestones hundreds of years old, including the grave of Rabbi Low, who supposedly created a monster called a Golem and hid him in the rafters of the Old-New Synagogue. The first Frankenstein.
Finally -- here is a picture of the new LDS chapel in Augsburg. It's really so beautiful. I love that it has 2 1/2 stories, which seems like a better use of limited space than sprawling Utah-style chapels. Something like this would be perfect for the space at 39th and Chestnut in Philly -- though I don't know if I could really part with the building that's there now. The old Philly chapel isn't the most attractive church but it certainly feels sacred to me.
