First day riding - depart Eisenach and bike to Wechmar and then onto Ohrdruf

Eisenach to Gotha to Ohrdruf 

Cycling along the banks of the Hörsel River which flows along the northern edge of the Thuringian Forest in central Germany, we made our way to Gotha, where we stopped to tour the early-modern Friedenstein Castle, one of the largest Renaissance/Baroque and first castles in Germany.

Friedenstein Palace (it's good to be the Duke)

While at the Palace we refreshed both body and soul. We ate a simple, yet quite tasty lunch while listening to a Bach Passion, parts of which were ultimately incorporated into his famous St. John's Passion BWV 245. 

There is evidence of only two Bach visits to Gotha in his lifetime; once in 1711 and again in spring of 1717 where he performed, for the first time, a Passion on Good Friday, March 26 at the Friedenstein Palace. It was quite thrilling inhabiting the very same space that Bach himself had 301 years ago and listening to the glorious music he composed and performed there!

After a short ride through lush fields of rye, we arrived at Wechmar, a small town about 10km southeast of Gotha. Wechmar is known as - the the "Home of the founding fathers of the Bach musical family" - the Bach ancestral home.

Bach Family Tree

In 1735 J.S. Bach himself wrote these words in the opening of Origin of the Musical Bach Family, the genealogy of the Bach dynasty: "No. 1. Veit Bach, a white-bread baker...settled at Wechmar, near Gotha, and continued his baker's trade there. He found his greatest pleasure in a little cittern (a stringed instrument similar to a lute), which he took with him even into the milland played upon while the grinding was going on...and this was, as it were, the beginning of a musical inclination in his descendants" (NRB, no. 303).

Veit was J.S. Bach's great-great grandfather. We visited the house, in existence since 1571, and the mill. There remain a few original remnants of both structures and both are now museums. 

Veit Bach House (now the Wechmar Bach Museum)