Happy Birthday, Johann Sebastian Bach!

The Germans threw a party today in Eisenach, the birthplace of my favourite composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. That’s because today is Johann Sebastian’s 330th birthday. This house ― known as Bachhaus ― is a museum dedicated to the man; at one point, it was thought he was born here, although now it is believed that his birth house is no longer standing.

I visited this museum in 1998 with my dad. We were on walkabout through Germany and France and came to Eisenach because of the Martin Luther connection; the Bach connection was a bonus (for me).

What we didn’t realize until we arrived and were looking for a place to stay is that Eisenach is in the former German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany). Which meant no one in the town spoke English. I managed to get us a room by telling the woman at the tourist information centre that we wanted ein Zimmer, zwei Nächte (one room, two nights). She congratulated me on my, ahem, German.

But it got really comical the next morning when the owner at the pension where we stayed insisted on chatting to us throughout breakfast in German ― even after we told him we could not understand him. Dad had studied German a bit in college, but it wasn’t enough to help us out. The pension owner offered to speak to us in Russian, but we assured him that we understood even less Russian than German.

And so, Dad and I nodded politely at our host while we drank our coffee and ate our bread and cheese. He was a compulsive talker ― that much was obvious ― and eventually he resorted to sign language. We kept nodding.

By the time Dad and I left for our day of sightseeing, we were exhausted. Even so, it was the loveliest and friendliest of introductions to Eisenach.