Month: August 2024

June 14, 2024, my 60th birthday, began with a trip to a castle (my 169th!), and then Kate and I went back to her apartment in Leipzig for a bit of a rest and time for Kate to walk Riley the Wonder Dog.

That evening, as part of the International Bachfest, I had gotten tickets for Kate and me to attend a Bach Choral Cantatas Concert in the Nikolaikirche, one of the churches where Bach served.

So we walked into the city center. I was still taking pictures of the wonderful old buildings.

Kate took me to a nice place for my birthday dinner. I was taken with the Cherry Blossom Tonic.

After dinner, the evening light on the buildings was even more lovely.

And we arrived at the Nikolaikirche with the October 1989 monument out front.

Inside, well, we didn’t have the greatest seats as far as seeing the performers.

And I’m very glad there wasn’t a fire while we were there.

But what a beautiful church!

Here’s the similar balcony across from us.

But despite the seats, Oh! The music!

The performers were the Amsterdam Baroque Choir and Orchestra. All the words of the cantatas were listed in the program, in German – but translated into English as well.

Something I didn’t realize would happen was that each cantata begins and ends with congregational singing. I saw several people with big song books with the music and words and the program referenced that book. However, it turned out there was a pattern, and the congregational part matched the words of the stanzas printed in the program, so I could sing in German – or in one case, in English.

The first cantata was Christ Lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4.2, “Christ lay in the snares of death.” This cantata is mainly about Christ’s resurrection, and was full of joyful praise – and amazing singing.

The second cantata was Nun Danket Alle Gott, BWV 192 – “Now Thank We All Our God”! Yes, this is exactly my favorite Thanksgiving hymn that I sing every year at Thanksgiving. It was funny – the English translation in the program didn’t match the hymn as we English speakers actually sing it – but I sang the hymn I know when it was time for the congregational singing.

This cantata was a bit shorter, and the congregational singing didn’t cover all the verses, but I did love hearing a soaring soprano voice singing in German what I knew to mean, “O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us. With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us. And keep us in his grace, and guide us when perplexed, and keep us from all ills, in this world and the next.”

The third cantata was Was Gott Tut, Das Ist Wohlgetan, BWV 100, “Whatever God deals is dealt bountifully.” I thought all the words of this one were especially perfect for my 60th birthday and not being quite sure what life is going to hold for me next. Some of the lines that really touched me (and remember, they’re sung to amazingly beautiful music):

Whatever God deals is dealt bountifully:
his will remains just;
however he runs my affairs,
I will hold still before him.
He is my God,
who in time of trouble
well knows how to uphold me;
therefore I will just let him rule.

Whatever God deals is dealt bountifully:
he is my light, my life
who can grant me nothing evil;
I will surrender myself to him
in joy and sorrow!
The time will come
when it shall openly appear
how faithful is his intent.

And the fourth and final cantata was Sleepers Awake! Well, actually, it was Wachet Auf, Ruft Uns die Stimme, BWV 140, “Awake! We Are Called by the Voice.” I don’t know the words to this cantata, but I am very familiar with the tune, as the brass quintet my ex-husband performed with had an arrangement of the piece. I love its haunting melody, and hearing that melody with the words simply wrenched my heart.

This cantata is about the parable of the Ten Virgins, telling the listener to be ready, because the bridegroom (Jesus) is coming. There are a couple of astonishingly beautiful duets with a soprano and a bass as a conversation between “the soul” and Jesus. Here’s one such exchange:

Soul: When are you coming, my salvation?
Jesus: I am coming, your portion.
Soul: I am waiting with burning oil.
Soul and Jesus: Open/ I open the hall for the heavenly feast.
Soul: Come, Jesus!
Jesus: Come, lovely soul!

And the cantata goes on to joy and praise.

No eye has ever seen,
no ear has ever heard
such joy.

And I left the concert with songs in my heart. Such a beautiful day!

For 18 years, ever since I moved away from Germany, I was always a little wistful on my birthday that I couldn’t visit a castle. You see, I was the one person in the family who never got tired of castles, so on Mother’s Day and on my birthday, I could always get them to go with me to dinner at one of our favorite castle restaurants or explore a new castle we hadn’t seen before.

On June 14, 2024, my 60th birthday, I got to go to a castle again!

I’d checked out some castles not far from Leipzig before I left. Nowadays, they have a website called Schloesserland Sachsen! In fact, the region of Saxony has made their castles and palaces family-oriented tourist attractions. This is very different from the castles in the Rheinland-Pfalz, as you’ll see in the later part of my trip. But when I went to these, I was envious for the sake of my kids. Not that they were exactly bored with the castles we visited when they were small, but the ones we saw in Saxony had activities and fun things especially for kids to enjoy. And there were historical displays for everyone, with English captions as well as German.

Anyway, on the morning of my birthday, I drove Kate (who still doesn’t drive on the Autobahn. It’s so much fun, Kate!) to one of the closest castles, Schloss Rochlitz, my personal Castle #169.

Much to my dismay, I forgot to bring my good camera, so I took far fewer pictures than usual, but maybe that helped me take in the fact that I was at a castle again.

I love the way castles always have a beautiful view.

And we got to climb the tower.

We did get rained on a tiny bit. But I love these passages either way.

And remember how I said there were fun things for kids? I had to try the jousting video game.

These lit-up ghosts were positioned around the castle for kids to find. A fun way to look a an old dungeon!

And I always have to show how BIG and tall I am by posing in a castle doorway.

After roaming the castle to my heart’s content, we had lunch at a little restaurant just outside the castle. Altogether, it was exactly what my heart desired to start off my 60th birthday!

I’m blogging about my 60th birthday trip to Germany, and I’m up to Day 3, June 13. I was staying with my friend Kate, and she suggested giving me a walking tour of Leipzig for the morning through early afternoon. That sounded absolutely perfect after so much driving the day before. They live a short walk from the Altstadt, and we saw all sorts of wonderful things. I love German cities with so many old buildings mixed with modern ones, which is what I love about the roofline in the picture above.

The weather was perfect, as it so often is in June in Germany, bright and sunny, not too hot, not too cold. We walked all over the city. Let’s see if I can remember what most of these buildings in the pictures are.

We went inside the University Library:

Here’s the Neues Rathaus:

Love those towers!

I was excited to see the Bachfest booth, because catching the Bachfest was why I went to Leipzig first.

And there’s a statue of Johann Sebastian Bach outside the Thomaskirche, one of the churches where he served for most of his life.

More sobering, here’s the Holocaust Memorial. Each chair represents 100 Jews who once prayed in the synagogue on this spot and were killed in the Holocaust.

And here’s the Altes Rathaus:

We also went inside some “Passages” – beautiful enclosed walkways.

Some of the passages have cool art.

We had lunch (later) at the restaurant on the left. It has a cellar where reportedly Goethe used to hang out as a student.

Here’s a statue of Faust being tempted.

And a statue of Goethe outside:

At the Nikolaikirche, which I didn’t get a picture of that day, we got to go inside and sit in on a bit of a rehearsal for a concert that was part of the Bachfest. The soloist had a crystal-clear voice that filled the large space. We didn’t stay long, because we still hadn’t had lunch.

The Nikolaikirche was the site of meetings that ended up toppling Soviet domination of East Germany, and there’s a monument outside, with a pillar similar to the ones inside the church.

I still love that skyline!

And I’m always a sucker for faces on buildings.

Here’s the Hauptbahnhof:

And inside, there was more about the Bachfest.

Here’s a statue in front of the GDR Museum.

I insisted on getting a picture with the statue of the great mathematician Leibniz:

And there’s the Neues Rathaus again:

I’m afraid after all our walking, I took a nap, while Kate walked Riley and then prepared a wonderful dinner. We had fascinating guests that night. I mentioned that Kate’s husband worked at the U.S. Consulate in Leipzig? Well, the U.S. Special Envoy for Global Youth Issues, Abby Finkenauer, was in town, and she and her aide came over and we had completely fascinating dinner conversation.

I mean, did you even know the U.S. has a Special Envoy for Global Youth Issues? Here’s a description she posted today of what she does: “Since her appointment, Special Envoy Finkenauer has traveled the globe, consulting with young leaders and sharing their insights with colleagues across the U.S. government, to ensure that our policies and programs are thoughtful, impactful, and youth-informed.” That day (or at least some time recently), she’d met with young entrepreneurs. She was going to be traveling the next day to Chemnitz, where they were having “America Day” with a group from the USAFE Band participating. This was significant to me, because the reason I lived in Germany for ten years was that my then-husband was in the USAFE Band. I was glad I had other plans for Friday and wasn’t tempted to go to Chemnitz because that would have been a little too much. My husband had played in Chemnitz (and Leipzig) many times, though I had never attended one of those concerts – but I had attended many others.

Anyway, look at the website of the Office of Global Youth Issues. I was proud that our government is doing this kind of diplomacy. Abby Finkenauer was the youngest person in history to flip a Congressional seat, and she’s clearly an excellent person for this job. It was a beautiful evening, leaving me with lots to think about on my last day of being in my fifties.

I’m telling the story of my 60th birthday trip back to Germany, 18 years after living there for 10 years. Wednesday, June 12, started in Fulda, and then took me to the Bachhaus in Eisenach, through the village of Sondra, and then two hours on to Leipzig to stay with my friend Kate for a few days! I worked with Kate for years at the City of Fairfax Library, and she left to move with her husband, who works for the State department, to Istanbul. And last summer, they moved to Leipzig. Since I was already hoping to visit Germany for my 60th birthday, I made plans to visit her. She could not have been more wonderful and welcoming!

It was two hours from Sondra to Leipzig, so I got there early evening, settled in, saw their beautiful apartment with a balcony all the way around it, and had a wonderful dinner. After dinner, we walked to the nearby giant park in the middle of Leipzig. Here’s the lovely street right at the edge of the park:

Something I love about Germany in June is the long, long twilights, with the sun not going down until about 10 pm. We took a leisurely walk, for the sake of the amazing Riley the Wonder Dog. We got ice cream at a shop in the middle of the park. Riley knew that he gets a small cone of his own, though he was very interested in getting more (and that’s what Dave’s hiding in this picture).

We walked through the park and then along the river, taking a big circle back.

It was such a lovely finish to an absolutely beautiful day! I was back in Germany, and my heart was so full.

I confess, my next stop was one of things I’d most been looking forward to about my trip.

I’m blogging about my 60th birthday trip back to Germany. On June 12, my first full day in Germany, I was traveling from Fulda to see my friend in Leipzig, about a four-hour drive. But I’d noticed that smack in the middle of that trip was Eisenach (where I visited the Bachhaus), and I knew that Eisenach was near the village of Sondra.

Let me back up. My name is unusual. My Mom says her own mother had a piano student named Sondra, but I thought she’d made the name up because she didn’t want me to have a name that rhymed with Randy, her planned boy’s name. (And yes, my next brother is named Randy.) All my life, I’ve gotten mistaken for Sandy or Sandra, even when the name is written out in front of them. I’ve never ever found my name on a mug or a keychain. (Though as an adult, I’ve had those exact things specially engraved.)

So — when my family and I moved to Germany in late 1996, I was super happy to discover that Sonder is a German prefix meaning “special.” You can still find that fact on every page of my website. So one day I was looking at my road atlas, which I loved to peruse to find castles to visit, and I saw a nearby town called Sonderhausen, which of course means “special houses.” I was tickled by this, and then I got to wondering if there might be more German towns with the same prefix. So I flipped back to the index in the back. Well, my eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw a village with the name “Sondra”!

Sondra was 3 hours away from where we lived, in the former East Germany, but one weekend in August 1998, I dragged my whole family there to get pictures with the sign. We went to the nearby Wartburg castle as well, to add value to the trip, but the highlight for me was Sondra! A lady in an actual kerchief was out working in a nearby field, and who knows what she thought of us. Later, I went to a t-shirt shop at the BX and had a t-shirt and sweatshirt made from the image.

Here’s a picture from 1998:

And with my kids:

Now, before I tell more about the story, let me backtrack to a couple weeks before the 2024 trip. My much anticipated return to Germany was fast approaching, and I was beginning to freak out. This time, I was going all by myself, and there was a lot that needed to work out. I was planning a couple long days driving, including that day from Fulda to Leipzig, and I was really counting on my GPS working. I’d ordered via Amazon a chip that was supposed to work in Germany, but what if something went wrong? What if I was too jet lagged and wasn’t safe to drive so far? What if the timing was wrong and I was too late to check in that first night? And then there was worry about getting packed in time and catching my flights and all going well. What if I caught Covid on the plane, like I did going to Maui a year and a half before? (Note that I wore a mask on the way there and did not catch Covid. I did not wear a mask on the way back and did catch Covid.)

That gives you the idea — I was just plain fretting about my upcoming trip, worried about everything going smoothly. So one day, when I was walking by my lake, praying (I like to use my walks that way), I wanted to stop fretting and trust that God would look after me on my trip. And I prayed for that — and then I asked to see the great blue heron who often frequents my lake. I hadn’t seen it in weeks, and I did ask, just as a reminder that God is watching over me and God is listening, and I’d take it as a sign that I didn’t need to worry about my trip. I prayed this on my first pass by the lake — on my way back, sure enough, a great blue heron popped up and flew to the other side of the lake. I saw it again on each one of the three or four more walks I took before my trip. And yes, it helped with my fretting.

And when I got to Germany, my GPS worked! I’d had a little difficulty finding the right turn to the monastery in Fulda the night before, but by Wednesday I had it going well, and my ten years of driving in Germany – with stick shift – all came back, and I still felt so exhilarated to be there. That morning, I checked out around ten, got to the Bachhaus in Eisenach with no trouble, had lunch after enjoying it, and then was ready to drive about twenty minutes to the village of Sondra.

The day was beautiful! Blue skies, white puffy clouds, cool breezes, and my heart was light. I got to the village and found a place to park near the sign on the far side of the village. Sondra! I was really back!

I took pictures, happy to see they’d taken better care of the sign. They’d made some changes since 1998, probably having to do with how the town is incorporated. Comparing pictures later, there was a house closer to the sign and no evidence of a farm where there’d been one before.

Looking back at the village:

Looking at the field on the edge of town:

So I took lots of pictures. Both sides of the sign. Selfies.

Finally, I went back to my car. I stood outside it for a bit, just soaking up this beautiful place. To me, there was something so symbolic about being back in Sondra. It tells me that, yes, I am special. My life matters. Despite all that happened to me and my lost marriage, God has been with me. And I was just soaking all that up, looking across this field:

And in the distance, I saw a big bird approaching, with another behind it. I wondered what kind of raptor it was, though it wasn’t exactly shaped like a raptor, and I tried and failed to take its picture. But I put down the camera to get a better look. And, I kid you not – when it got close, I could clearly see – it was a great blue heron!

It flew right past, with another behind it. I didn’t manage to get a picture, but I had gotten a clear view.

That’s right, at the start of my Germany trip, in the village of Sondra, God sent me a great blue heron.

Yes, I’m taking all the symbolism I can muster out of that one.

I drove away marveling, even laughing out loud with delight. Remember, I was alone in my car. I did some shouting out loud, “Really God? IN THE VILLAGE OF SONDRA????!!!! Could you even be more obvious?!!!”

Let’s just say it was a wonderful moment, which I’m treasuring in my heart to this day.