On Sunday, we went to Innsbruck to visit the famous Goldene Dach, where Jakob Hutter was burned at the stake. I’ve seen lots of pictures of it, however, being here and actually seeing is another thing. That section of the city is very old, we’re lucky that we’re here before tourist season, they say it can get really crowded. It was Sunday morning and the bells in the neighboring churches started ringing. We went into Der Dom zu St. Jakob, which is another huge Catholic Church. I was watching from the back when the priest and his procession came in. The acoustics in the building were impressive, once the organ started playing and the singing started. I watched as the priest went through some of the traditional customs, but then the others wanted to leave and I had to hurry on. Just outside the church is a building that was used to hold prisoners before they were burned. It a good chance that Jakob Hutter was held prisoner there for a few days before his death. Everything is so old and well preserved, the whole atmosphere of the place can take you right back to the 1500’s. After that we went touring another church and a few other tourist attraction. Being Sunday, we decided to go to a church for a service; Linde Lederer told us of a church that were ‘wiedertaufer’. So towards evening we went there. We came in late, there weren’t too many people there, it was more like a large meeting room then a church, nothing fancy like all the Catholic churches that we had been seeing. The songs they sang were Peter Strauch songs, the same songs that we sing at home with the choir. Eddy V. and Judy B. were asked to go up and gave a short message. The people were very interested and afterwards we spend a bit of time talking with the people, that was the best part. It seemed like the people in the area are not impressed with that church because they are going away from the Catholic church, it looks like the same problem that this country has had before.
One couple invited us home for supper so we went to their place, which just happened to be up on the mountain. So we wound our way up, hairpin turns and all; there was still quite a bit of snow on the ground because of the high altitude. We spend a nice evening at their place, and again experienced the friendly hospitality of these people. We started talking about music and they played for us a few songs that the wife had made. She started to sing along and it was ‘echte Tirolishes yodeling.’ They give us a few harmonicas as a gift.
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