Day #6--Monday

The morning came somewhat strikingly, but there is no square inch of this world that isn't touched by human ingenuity. The frontier, in Holland, died about 1000 years ago. There are no dark corners and very little place to hide.


And American cemetery in far southern Holland. It's more than enough to shake the soul--8000 crosses, a symbolic fraction really, of the young Americans who died here, on their way to Berlin.

After the cemetery, a quiet, hour-long bus ride through rural Belgium and then into Germany, to yet another ancient city, Aachen, home of Charlemagne.

The ubiquitous cathedral top rooster eaten alive by a swamp monster from ancient German mythology.

Aachen's ancient cathedral is just about as breath-taking as any of the others we've seen.

Tour guide showed us around.

Just one little ornament on the pulpit in this old cathedral. Must have taken the artist hours to make, but the hundreds of visitors every week will never see it, small as it is, out of the way as it is, almost indistinguishable as it is amid the splendor and magnificence. I don't know how to feel about those Reformers who destroyed so much of this art, but I do understand why they did, after a fashion. After all this excess, they wanted nothing more or less than plain pews in a little white meeting house, someplace far less extravagant for a worship that was too.

We spend most of our time keeping our people from fisticuffs over theological matters, as you can see.

Gluttony is, of course, one of the seven deadly sins. But it's the least of the bunch, the seventh. It's what we tell ourselves anyway.

Seen on a sidewalk cafe in downtown Aachen.

And then, finally, there's this.

These doors were laid in place in 800 a.d., at the time of Charlemagne. The people building the ancient church ran out of money and bargained with the Devil to give them the cash to finish it. Now it was well understood that he who sups with the devil had best use a long spoon, but the people needed the money so they gambled.

All right, the Devil said, but I get the soul of the first person to enter the cathedral once it's finished.

Deal, the good people of Aachen said.

But when the day finally arrived with the people would be allowed into the new cathedral, the Aachen people were smart--they volunteered a mangy dog, which, of course, the Devil caught. He's got himself the soul of the dog.

When he determined that he got himself conned by the Aachen smarty-pants, he slammed this door behind him, creating a little crack that's still visible in the lower right hand corner, 1200 years later (no picture, sorry!). But he also lost his thumb in the right hand gargoyle, and if you doubt the tale, you put yours into those holes and lo and behold you feel it--some obstruction that the locals are sure is the Devil's thumb.

That's me locating the dumb Devil's thumb.

Perhaps a better day tomorrow.