A little stir-crazy over the weather that’s just seeping fog and on a mission to find a few good gifts, I took a drive through Hessen towards Giessen and Marburg, along a stretch of the historic short-cut trade route (Kurze Hessen) from Frankfurt am Main to distant Leipzig, and stopped at an antique exposition in the city of Alsfeld.
Passing through the old town on my way back, I took a few minutes to explore the market square. Wandering through a knot of narrow lanes with hosted a romance of half-timbered (Fachwerk) houses, I headed for the landmark town hall (Rathaus) that dominated the skyline it shared with a crowd of medieval buildings.
The gothic Rathaus had a matching, towering post-and-beam façade, perched on top of a foundation of stone arches.
I hated to cut the visit short, but surely we could both have the chance to visit the area again together, since not only is the antique market a regular occurrence—there was a lot immediate area that I missed with my windshield-tour, I learned later: Attila the Hun and his armies camped there and there’s a museum plus a living legacy with the locals, who have to this days a high incidence of Mongolian genes, the storied Church of Saint Walpurgis has a particularly spectacular carillon of bells that I didn’t get to hear and apparently an ossuary (Beinhaus) to see, plus a small constellation of equally undiscovered architectural jewels to find in the vicinity.
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