6/24/14. The post where we unleash our inner geeks.

6/24/14: it was still raining this morning in St. Gallen, but no worries, because we had some indoor sightseeing to do.  We walked a few short blocks from the hotel to the Abbey of St. Gallen, which was founded in the 8th century.  First we toured the church.  The most recent renovation of the church was done in the Rococo style, and they weren't fooling around.

The most important part of the tour, though, was the abbey library.  It is one of the oldest monastic libraries in the world, with examples dating back to the 9th century.  My patient, long-suffering husband had visited the library 25+ years ago and was anxious for me to see it.  A few of the books on display contain examples of the earliest known form of musical notation.  Some of you may not know this, but my undergraduate major was history, so this place was a nerd paradise for the two of us.  

There were shelves and shelves of ancient texts, with dozens on display.  Many had beautifully decorated pages and jewel encrusted covers.  A far cry from the iPad on which I do most of my reading now.  Some of the books contained a page or so at the end where the scribe explained how difficult it was to transcribe books by hand and asked the reader to forgive any errors.  At first this also seemed quaint to me, until I thought of the email postscript we've all seen - "This email was typed on a smartphone, please excuse any typos."  I guess some things never change.  

The room itself was incredibly ornate, with delicate wood floors.  To protect the floors, they require visitors to slip on very large flannel slippers over their shoes.  As a result, when you are in the library, your movements are more akin to ice skating than walking.  While I managed to avoid any mishaps, they did not realize that the chances of me damaging the room or its contents were much greater with the slippers than without them.  They no longer allow photos of the room, but I found one courtesy of the World Wide Web, so you can check it out for yourself.

We left St. Gallen for the short drive to Lake Konstanz, Germany and checked into our hotel, built in a former abbey.  (Notice a theme developing?)  Pretty nice digs for a monk, don't you think?

We took a long walk along the lake in the afternoon.  For the first time in our vacation, we were in a place that was completely flat and the temperature was perfect.  So I was extremely disappointed when my foot staged a rebellion.  It may have been a culmination of the last two weeks, but at what became the mid-way point of our walk, it suddenly remembered that walking really hurts.  We sat down at a cafe for awhile to rest with a cold bottle of water and then made a pretty uncomfortable walk back to the hotel.  Thirty minutes of rest seemed to do the trick, but it scared me a little.  

We had a wonderful dinner outside under the umbrellas and shut the place down.  (Notice another theme developing?)  Looking forward to another day here tomorrow.