Worms

So I went to Worms on Saturday, and it was a beautiful day, a wonderful preview of summer. Unfortunately it is getting cold again, but I will take the relative warmth and sun when I can!

Worm is actually the Germanic version for dragon, so there were lots of dragons around the city...and random playground equipment.

Guerilla marketing? Definitely a way to attract attention to your business...I just wonder if people ever steal the shoes!

This is the main square. The wheel was actually moving...and if it wasn't winter it would actually be a working fountain. :) The group of people behind the wheel were manning a free trade booth...trying to entice you to go over there with talk of free chocolate. 

Just a cool building

More non-working fountains! But this one is by the north side of the cathedral, or "Dom" in German. They are actually doing work on it, so that side of the cathedral has a bunch of scaffolding.

But I just loved the image this made. Blue skies, dragons, and a fairy tale Church (that looks like a castle). What could be better?

Here is a metal dragon close to the fountain!

This is the Rathaus I believe...with another fountain that will cool in summer.

It was just such a nice day...blue skies, green grass,and good company!

The cathedral was quite impressive. Lots of fine detail, although the altar had so much gold that it was a bit too much.

Lots of churches have statues around the door like this--like Notre Dame! :)

The main altar...lots and lots of gold

The thing about all the cathedrals that I've visited, is that since the altar area is so big, you can either walk around it, or it has separate chapels to the sides. This is the chapel on the left side of the altar.

View from the back of the Church

The ceilings of a lot of the churches I've visited, if they don't have painted murals, have the wooden cross beams.

Lots of important abbots all around.

This is the chapel on the right hand side of the church. No service was going on right now, so I could take pictures. :)

This was the room located to the right of the altar. More sculptures of fighting with dragons (I hope, because otherwise there was some bestiality going on, and that's just not right)

Here's where some important people were buried...this was a small catacomb (and had an air filtration system), so it wasn't that creepy. But overall, catacombs are creepy.

Statue outside the church

This was just a fun building. All the drug stores, etc are called "Apotheke" so I've gotten into the habit of calling them apothecaries. :) Another fun fact? You can only get aspirin from pharmacists, and it costs 7e for a pack of ten...so if you come over here, make sure you bring your own medicine! (and luckily I have my own advil and tylenol...Germany, you won't rip me off!)

I love cool telephone booths!

Such a contrast...black tree, blue sky

Now this looks like a fun party bus!

Feurerwache! (Firehouse)

Cool castle thing next to the highway

A water mine I believe. It had an inscription (In German) saying "The next time you look, you'll be seeing God."

The Rhein...also goes to Mannheim

Because we love dragons...and dragons love beer

More playground equipment around the city!

Here are some pics of the oldest Jewish cemetery around! Although I was talking to one of the kids from NC about how we used to do gravestone rubbings...and he just didn't get it, lol. But this would have been an awesome cemetery to do some.

Tourist trolley!

Martin Luther was a big deal here...here's a monument of him and other important people