4.8.2011 The Bus System and Church

Now that we’re all caught up on our travels to get here, our posts will not be as chronological, but more of our observations on different topics or specific day's events. Today I want to say a little bit about the bus system and our experience at church last Sunday.

The Bahnhof (Train station).

During our first few days, we bought single tickets for the bus because it was fairly easy to get across town. It is only 15 minutes to walk to Goetheplatz (the center of town), but when we went to visit Freya or to church, it was too far to walk. But when we did so it was 1,80 Euro per person (kids under 6 are free).Then if our trip was longer than an hour, we’d have to pay it again on the way home. So 7,20 Euro (about $10) for a round way trip was not worth it. Instead, we decided to get month passes. It was 35,30 Euro per person so we figure if we do 10 day trips like that we’d get our money worth. With this Heather thought it would be better for her to just use the bus system rather than buying a bike. She doesn’t feel comfortable pulling a bike trailer on these narrow streets, and a lot of the drivers (especially the buses) seem to go flying through the streets.

The crazy thing about figuring out the bus system is the different routes. There are only 7 or 8 routes in the city. However, each route has 2 - 4 variations. You have the “normal” route. Then there is variation 1, 2 and 3. And then route 3 has route 3, 3A and 3B. Then don’t forget there is the Saturday schedule, and then the Sunday and Holidays schedule. I’m starting to figure it out, but it still gives us headaches.

How the kids get around. Their Chariot!

One of the places we were able to use the bus to get to was church on Sunday. We were talking to one of the teachers at the school and found that there is a Baptist church in town. However, she couldn’t tell us any more because another teacher just took her there the week before. So on Saturday night, I spent a long time trying to find the church and how to get there. Finally I found what looked like a Bapist/Presbeterian church. When I did an English Camp in Germany back in 2002, I learned that you don’t want an Evangelical church, you want an Evangelical Free church. This one “Evangelisch Freikirchliche Gemeinde Weimar” fit that bill. However, I couldn’t find an address on their website. Thanks to Google, I was able to locate it on a map, then I had to figure out which bus would get us the closest. Due to the confusion that I listed before with the bus system, it was quite the ordeal.

So Sunday morning we were off to see if what I found was accurate. Fortunately, the bus system worked perfectly. We had to take two buses, one to Goetheplatz, the second towards the church. Once we got off, we had a 300 meter walk to the church. When we arrived, we were warmly greeted, and we asked if there is someone who spoke English. The lady at the door looked around and introduced us to a young gal in the foyer. She was able to give us some information regarding the church. The kids had slept in that morning (yay) but that meant we missed the first service which has childcare (bummer). Unfortunately, that meant that Heather spent most of the service in the kids room playing with Stanley and Holly.

Stanley and Holly playing the in Firetruck from Aunt Beth in their room

Normally, that wouldn’t have been much of a problem since the services are in German. However, on that day there was a team report which was partially in English. The team/project is called Yad B’Yad which means Hand in Hand. It is a reconciliation program between German and Israeli youth. For the project German students and Israeli students come together, and visit concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and they work through forgiveness through Jesus and how through Him there can be forgiveness and reconciliation. The Israeli students were from all over, the USA, Russia, Pakistan, and more. Or they were from all those countries originally, but now live in Israel. It was really neat to hear some of the stories from the group. One of the stories was of a Jewish girl who’s family was all killed (except for one sole survivor) in a concentration camp. Then there was a German girl who’s family was involved with a concentration camp. If I think of it, that would be my grandparents and great grandparents who would have been killed. What was nice for us (me since Heather was watching the kids) was that the Israeli group spoke English. So I got to listen in English while there was a German translator for everyone else. Here is a link to what the program is about if you want to learn more. http://www.beitimmanuel.org/yby.pdf

The Movie Star pushing the sleeping beauty in her Chariot.

Afterwards, during the worship time, the songs were all in English with the German translations underneath. They did some songs a the beginning in German. Later we learned that it is normal to have songs in English, because they were written in English. During one of the German songs I realized in my limited German that the chorus was, “Better is one day in your courts than thousand elsewhere.” Although the tune was completely changed to fit the German language.

After church we were looking around and saw a sign for a Cafe next to the church. By now it was 1 pm and our kids were not going to make it home. So we thought we’d check it out to see what type of food they had. Unfortunately it wasn’t that type of cafe, but more a place to get coffee or tea between services. However, they were serving lunch to the Yad B’Yad team. One of the lady’s serving the team, was able to answer our questions about the cafe, but she also said that she would be happy to serve us lunch since they had extra. So she took us to the room next door which seemed to be a Bible Class type room. She brought us Vegetarian Lasagna, salad, water, tea, and even some European cookies. What a blessing. She told us that she understands having kids and the need to feed them. It made us realize that this is the church we need to get plugged into. This lady followed what Jesus said about feeding the stranger. She then gave us her contact information and got our information, and later that week she dropped off the bus schedule and a Weimar activities guide at our apartment. She also said that if we need anything we can contact her, and she will keep an eye out for a possible apartment for us. Wow! We’re excited to see how we can get plugged into the church. Two of the things they do are English classes and home churches. Two ideas we have is to help with an English class or have an English speaking home church. But, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, we’ve only been in country for 9 days. We’ll be patient and see what God has for us. We will be going back this next Sunday. But this time we’ll go to the 9:30 service where there is child care.

Our family after dinner in old town Weimar

I think I’ll end things there for tonight. We still want to share about our shopping experiences, more about the school I’ll be teaching at (Thuringia International School), the parks, my running, and other fun outings we’ve had. So there are some things for you to look forward to. Thank you for reading, and have a great day.