Wittenberg: Internships and more!

This post should have come before the Halle one, but the Halle one was easier to summarize so it came first. Last Wednesday we had dinner with our internship liaisons/supervisors. I'll be working with Herr Weisner and Herr Winkelmann for the Wittenberg Kultur organization in town. Herr Weisner speaks good English, but Herr Winkelmann doesn't, and since I'll be working in two different places (with one at one place, then with the other at the second place, I think) I'm just hoping I'll be able to understand what they are telling me in German. If they talk slowly, I can probably figure it out. Still, I ought to go buy a good dictionary just in case--no harm in being prepared! I'll know more about the internship after tomorrow.

Later that evening we had a really nice surprise! Dr. Bennett (or someone else, I'm not sure) arranged for our group to have a guided city tour with costumed tour guides! We had a Katharina von Bora (Martin Luther's wife), a wealthy woman whose name I can't remember, and two city guards that took us around to the big places in town. We visited the Cranach house/apothecary, the Castle Church, the City Church, and I think one or two other places. It was very cold, but we all had a nice time. The costumed actors definitely made the tour more interesting. I know that I personally was dreading another city tour (Metta and Heinrike, the interns, gave us a walking tour on the first day here) but this tour was very different because we really delved into the history of the city and the important places. The actors did a really good job of getting the group to interact within the premise of it being the 1500s (For example, since we were in the 1500s, it took three-four months to travel from America to Wittenberg, and so on).

The actors were very knowledgeable and the costume really added a lot to the tour and made it more interesting than a normal walking tour. I really liked it; it was sort of like the Renaissance Fair, but on a smaller scale. It was a different, more interactive way to learn history and I'm all for that! I appreciate a good history book as much as the next person, but it's much easier to learn something visually/by example. The tour did a really good job of making me learn by interacting with the actors within the parameters of "We're living in the 1500s, and this is what our city is like" and I really enjoyed it a lot. (Also, I really need to get some Wittenberg pictures! I'm talking about the Castle Church and the City Church and you don't have visual aid! I'll have to remedy this soon.)