Today we went to the St. Thomas Church, where Bach worked for a number of years. Inside the church there is a spot where Bach is supposedly buried. After looking around the church we went across the street to a Bach museum. The museum was pretty interesting. It was almost a completely interactive museum, which is sometimes hard to tell if that is a good thing or not. In this case, I think most people skipped the reading and went straight for the hands-on things.

A couple of us ate lunch today at the Thomaskirch Brauhaus. Thomaskirch as in St. Thomas Church, in which Bach played a significant role. After lunch we all met up at the Runde Ecke museum. This was a Stasi museum which had a fairly small exhibit in part of the building. The Stasi was the secret police in East Germany. The Stasi kept a close eye on the citizens and was very repressive. The museum had everything from badges to concealed weapons to how they recruited school children. The Stasi eventually fell apart with the GDR.

Today we went from Göttingen to Wolfenbüttel by train. Wolfenbüttel is a small town that we primarily came to because one of the Bethel faculty members used to work here. We only had one day here and spent a good chunk of it getting a tour of the library. Our tour guide was a woman that worked with the Bethel faculty member that was there. The library has around one million books, most of which are from the 17th century. It is one of the most significant libraries in Germany. My favorite part of the library was a section about typography and calligraphy. There’s a lot of thought that goes into typography that most people don’t realize. After the library we walked around the city a little bit. It was hard to find places that were open since it was a Sunday, but eventually we found a place to eat.

This morning we went back to the center of the city to see the market. It was full of fresh foods and produce. While we were there we started a scavenger hunt. Lisa came up with the list yesterday afternoon and the items were scattered all over the city. We were split into groups of four and spent the rest of the afternoon looking for obscure objects everywhere within walking distance. Luckily we remembered a lot of things from the day before and had a general idea of where to go for some of the items. To conclude the scavenger hunt we all met at Gauss’s grave in the cemetery. After that we went and had a nice dinner together, then made our way back to the hotel to go to sleep.