Bach, Baroque, Booklessness
Yesterday morning we were awoken to the strains of Bach organ works played at very loud volume—a much nicer alarm than a beeping clock. We had breakfast with our hosts and on the way out of town, after paying a quick visit to the statue of St. James outside the St. James Church, took a peek at the bookstore where Frau Reichert works.
The morning was disconcertingly cloudless—not a single cloud in the sky, which was a glazed blue. Certainly that’s the first time it’s happened on our trek! It might have been terribly hot but the wind was fierce all day; Andrew and I noticed in the evening that we both had some sun– and windburn.
Most of our time was spent crossing fields, the farmers bustling around on the tractors bringing in hay and sugar beets while the weather holds. (Today they’re expecting rain to begin again and last for 4 days. Oh boy.) Still there was more corn than anything else.
In the little town of Maihingen—which boasts at every turn that an archbishop was born and grew up there—we visited a pink and gold Baroque cloister church that was, well, beyond description as most Baroque churches are, though after Vierzehnheiligen nothing can shock me. We also traversed for about 3 km a perfectly straight road between two towns, the work of the Romans from the time of Emperor Trajan, still in use 1900 years later.
Evening brought us to Nördligen, whose claim to fame is a perfectly intact city wall all the way around. We were too late to visit the St. George church but plan to do so on our way out this morning.
Personally we are continuing to find that we are pretty tired but it isn’t all that difficult to keep going, all the same; it must be that altered mentality of pilgrimage. I’ve started to feel wistful for all my books at home. I have something along to read but I’m certainly reading far less than usual. I didn’t expect that to be one of the strongly-felt sacrifices that goes with pilgrimage!
