Our time in Wittenberg during our Elbe cruise with Viking was all about Martin Luther and the start of the Protestant Reformation,which was kicked off by the posting of his Ninety-five Theses on the door of All Saints’ Church. Our excursion to the town began at the Lutherhaus museum. Luther lived there as a monk (it was an Augustinian monastery known as the Black Monastery) when he wrote the theses and afterward he continued to live here with his wife Katharina von Bora. The museum contains objects from his life, including paintings and bibles.
Original Lutherhaus entrance 
Courtyard statue of Katharina von Bora 
Pulpit used by Martin Luther 
Portraits of Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora 
Death portrait of Martin Luther
After our museum visit, as we walked to the town’s Christmas market we walked past an interesting gate that’s an entrance to Wittenberg University.
We also spotted a type of mail delivery vehicle that we haven’t ever seen at home:
The Wittenberg Christmas market was set up in the town square in front of the town hall (at the left in the picture below) and the Stadtkirche that is known as the Mother Church of the Reformation. This is where Luther preached in services that were for the first time conducted in German instead of Latin.
The shiny Wittenberg globe in a corner of the town square provided a reversed reflection of the Christmas market:
After perusing the market and the surrounding shops, we headed to view All Saints’ church where on its side door Luther had posted his argument against the Catholic church’s sale of indulgences. The original wooden door has been replaced with a bronze door with the text of his theses embossed on the surface:
After our morning tour of Wittenberg, we returned to our ship that had continued sailing upstream while we were out and about.
Viking Astrild 
Local car ferry across the Elbe 
Cruising @ Christmas time 
Wintertime so-called sun deck
The video below gives you a sense of what it’s like to sail along the Elbe. For most of the trip, the surrounding land is flat. There are no locks in this section of the river, so the Astrild was doing all the work of working itself upstream.
We docked late in the day. After dinner we had a flashlight walk in the rain into Torgau, a riverside town in Saxony, Germany. (The night time picture of the Astrild at the top of this post was taken here.) Torgau is known as the location where the American and Soviet armies first met as the end of war drew near. The monument pictured below memorializes that meeting.
In a bit of bookend to our day starting at the Lutherhaus in Wittenberg, Torgau is also the site of Katharina von Bora’s death and her burial.
Up next: More cruising and Meissen, home of the Meissen porcelain factory.
Halfway There Travelers 