Münster!

So. The Münster. It’s 209 steps up to the clock room, then another 29 to the bells if I remember correctly, and something like 44 to the observation deck. We did the bells first.

There are 18 bells in the Münster, and 16 of those are in the bell tower (the other two are scattered throughout the other spires). The total weight is well north of 50,000 lbs, and most of it is right there. To say this room is reinforced would be a massive understatement. It’s joisted up every two feet by massive, two-foot-thick timbers, and the larger bells are so huge that both Amy and I could curl up under them and still have room for the clapper.

We dodged the 12:00 noon bell chorus (where they all just ring like nuts), but did stick around for the 1:00 ringing. That’s four small chimes of two bells each, and a single chime of a medium sized bell. For chiming the hours, they don’t actually swing the bells, they just drop a small hammer on the edge.

Mind you, a “small hammer” has a solid steel head the size of a cinder block. It was quite loud in such an enclosed space. I remember the noon chorus (where they just chime all the bells like nuts) from when I was a kid, and the air vibrated so much it was hard to breath.

Anyhow, these bells are pretty cool. Also, old. All the bells have names, and Hosanna was cast in 1258 AD. She weighs 3,290 kilos, alone. They’re greenish gray behemoths, like slumbering elephants hanging off massive timber crossbraces. Really remarkable.

Then we climbed back down to the clock, and took the Wendeltreppe (spiral staircase) to the observation deck. Coming up the 209 steps was also a spiral staircase, but not like this. This thing was so steep you had to keep to the outside to get enough step to stand on, and the whole thing was only about four and a half feet in diameter- six inches of which was the center pole. Steep as hell, and with windows cut through to the outside to make sure you really saw the height. Neither of us are huge fans of being that high up, but we did make it, and sat in the center of the platform, clinging on for dear life and gasping for breath.

Cathedral spires don’t move of course, and there were high, temporary wire fences around the edge, as well as a cover for the platform itself, so it was completely safe, but it sure didn’t feel that way. The observation platform is 66 meters high- from two thirds of a football field up, the people at the marketplace below looked smaller grains of rice. Short grain rice.

The Münster is under renovations at the moment, so parts of the platform were taken up by construction scaffolding and blocked off with plywood, but that actually drew attention to the differences between the old and the new. After close to a millennia, the Münster is badly weathered and discolored, but the new sandstone pieces really shine. It’s a red sandstone, so it stands out bright pink against the dark gray and smeared black of the old pieces. And there’s the graffiti. Besides the standard “Christ we’re still here- Franz und Anika 16.12.11” written on the temporary wooden structures, there’s also names like “Ioseph” and dates like “1560” etched into the stone. It’s pretty impressive.

 

This is a door in the Altes Rathaus (old city hall). The ironwork was impressive. Freiburg, in general, has loads of neat ironwork. Most of it is post-war restoration, but it's gorgeous nonetheless. Freiburg.

 

The Münster, in addition to being a cathedral, was also the city lookout. The cylinders are leather fire buckets (if the top of the tower catches fire, the over 25,600 kilos of bells come crashing down). They're so narrow because the stairs up are narrow. The lantern is a signal lantern, so the watchers on the tower can communicate with the people in the street below, and the trumpet is a huge megaphone. It's over six feet long. The lantern ain't small either. Freiburg.

 

Some of the graffiti was quite old. The date on the bottom left is half in shadows, but it's 1560. A lot of the etchings we found were in old scripts (see the HI to the right of center), incorrect (H.S. just above 1560), arms and symbols (AW and WC top left), strange spellings and Latin (Gallea, bottom). This example is from a window in the clock room. Freiburg.

 

The view from the observation deck toward the Schwabentor with the Blackforest lost in the mist in the background. The columns to the left and right are less than a foot in diameter, and a good 20 feet tall before they arch together into a series of delicate Gothic arches. Freiburg.

 

You can clearly see the renovations in progress. The icon (statue) and the window are old, the roof over the icon is new. For scale: the roof is maybe 4 feet tall, and the large window probably about 18. Still, at 4 feet, that little roof has an impressive amount of detail for sandstone. That was the case throughout, right up to the roof- there were pieces up there only a master sculptor could have created, and nobody would have seen them without climbing all the way up there. Quite a bit of it was barely visible from the observation deck (high up in other spires, etc), but judging from what the rest of it looked like, equally delicate. Very impressive. Freiburg.

 

 And finally, this lovely ...thing. The sign says "children's and idiot's hands besmear walls and benches"- an exhortation against graffiti. Clearly, highly effective.

Then we climbed back down, did some last shopping for souvenirs and gifts to bring back home, ate lunch, and headed back to the apartment. We’d packed this morning, so we relaxed for a little while and then met my uncle to give the key back and head to the train.

We ended up getting on an earlier train, which was slightly more expensive, but we paid the difference and enjoyed the fact that we didn’t have a transfer anymore. We got to Frankfurt, and checked into the same hotel we were in when we first came in. I was ready to crash, but Amy dragged me back out for a walk, and I’m glad we did.

This time, we went to check out the old town of Frankfurt. We found some neat graffiti, the cathedral and roman baths. More next time.