Worms

The theme of my blog this summer has been that of bucket lists and one of the reasons why I have been on a bit of a hiatus from my little corner of the internet is because back in July I was actually away experiencing one of my top ones. 

Ever since I was nine years old, I have dreamed of studying abroad. It was at this age, my older cousin, Stephanie, spent a semester Down Under. I had never heard of study abroad prior to her departure, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world that while a person was still in college they could spend some time in another country, absorbing its culture, for credit. I can still vividly  remember gathering around the computer with my family and reading her e-mails detailing her adventures. One picture in particular that stood out is one of her feet just before she jumped out of a plane to sky dive. I wanted nothing more than at that moment but to reach through the screen and take the plunge into the unknown. 

I started research on programs during my freshman year, and the past two years have been a discouraging time trying to find one that wouldn’t cost me one of my kidneys. Just when I thought all hope was lost, my best friend, Angela, went online and found a two week trip to Germany through my university. Last July, she went on a faculty led trip to Italy with her university. Suffice to say, she was determined to not see me miss out on an unforgettable opportunity.

Our first Deutschland destination was Worms. We were here for an hour long pit stop before we made our way to our first stop in Heidelberg and here is an assortment of pictures I took while I was there. Be sure to stay tune for September 1st, which is when my post on Heidelberg will be live.

This Rhineland-Palatinate city's most famous visitor was Martin Luther, who was the leading figure in the Protestant Reformation. He came to Worms in April of 1521 when he was asked to appear before the Imperial Diet. It was here he refused to renounce his views and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, declared him an outlaw. 

This mosaic on the balcony of the Holy Trinity Church, the largest Protestant church in Worms, illustrates the trial for Luther of heresy. 

The other symbol of Worms is  dragons. Everywhere I turned I kept seeing countless dragons in sculptures, fountains, and figurines. Worms in one of Germany’s oldest cities and that there used to be folk talk here about a dragon that was going to smash the city unless he got a townsperson a day as a sacrifice.  Worms is also the setting for the epic poem, “The Nieblungenlied.” In this poem, the hero Siegfried is a dragon-slayer who bathed in the blood of a dragon he’d killed. The dragon on the city coat of arms is believed to be the dragon from ‘The Nieblugenlied.’

This  mural reminded me of the scene from “The Hobbit” when Bilbo runs into Smaug. 

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