My husband and I just returned from Leipzig. It was our 5th time and the city had become a familiar room in my life. Returning is not so much going away from home as opening a door and walking through. We joined others from Houston, those traveling with Houston Rotary or the Houston Leipzig Sister City Association or Christ the King Lutheran (CTK). Zentrum, the small compact center of town, is sublimely walkable and always we cross paths with fellow Houstonians, adding to the feeling of living there, belonging there, knowing the inhabitants. Actually, we do know the inhabitants. The generous Leipzigers who repeatedly host Houstonians are familiar faces, and we exchange greetings with them as we bustle from hotel to concerts to church services to restaurants to museums to receptions and to walking the narrow cobblestoned streets. Ever present among them is Gabriele Goldfuss from Mayor Burkhard Jung’s office and Pr. Christian Wolff from St. Thomaskirche. We met repeatedly with Renate and Rainer Jungandreas, who stayed with us during the friendship visit by Leipzigers to Houston in 2010.
This time, we stayed at a newly opened hotel on the small square at St. Thomaskirche, Bach’s own church. Our room faced the door that we would use to enter the church for concerts and church services. It was the Arcona Living Bach 14 at Thomaskirchof 13/14, and, like so much of Leipzig, it preserves the old on the outside and makes everything new on the inside. To stay at a German hotel is to wake up with more enthusiasm than one usually feels, because that is the moment of the day when one swoops down upon the amazing German breakfast! Envision multiple kinds of muesli, yogurt, breads, cheeses, meats, smoked or pickled fish, dried fruits, fresh fruits, seeds, nuts, sauces, sausages and the usual bacon and eggs. And enjoying the array is without guilt, because one will walk it off during the day. We saved guilt for dinner, especially when our sauerbraten or rouladen or schnitzel was accompanied by weighty dumplings!
Besides Pr. Moore, we had Bishops Michael Rinehart (Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church) and David Zellmer (South Dakota Synod, ELC) in our group – a weighty ecclesiastical representation for visiting church history. My husband missed only the Wittenberg site. He chose to join the Houston Rotary group that day for a tour of the Porsche factory just outside Leipzig, pardoned because he had been to Wittenberg before.
Americans cannot travel without shopping. We are distinguished from one another only by what we bring back. For me, it is always the same when in Leipzig. A small piece of antique jewelry, an antique etching or lithograph (preferably of an ancestral village), and a new kitchen gadget. (My gadget this time was a sturdy metal device for safely slicing or mincing garlic.) I also come home with a few children’s books in German to help me with my ongoing efforts to learn the language.
We were in Leipzig, of course, not for shopping, but for the 800th anniversary of St. Thomaskirche and of the Thomanerchor. And there are still more anniversaries ahead. In 2015, Leipzig celebrates the 1000-year anniversary of the founding of Leipzig. In 2017, it celebrates the 500-year anniversary of Luther’s posting of Ninety-Five Theses and the Protestant Reformation. And the annual Bach Fest in June means one does not have to wait for an anniversary to open that Leipzig door and walk through.