In the Chamber of Mummies...

Liebe Familie, Montag 6 Oktober 2008
Difficult day, I got up early to do homework and study my Dative verbs while on a run. I went off to school, took a test, then spent the next few hours in class.

In between classes I went to Michaeler Kirche with some friends, and we had a tour of the crypt there. It was so cool! They stopped burying people there in the 1500s, and sealed it up until 1923 when monks decided to go in. Because of cold drafts going throughout the crypt, many of the bodies in the wooden coffins had been mummified—and it was natural. Originally when they first built the crypt they would just take bodies out of coffins that were no longer recognizable, put them on the ground, and cover it up with dirt, so I walked around on a meter and a half of dead bodies. Gruesome no? But yeah, there was a big flood when a bomb in WWII hit a pipe line, so many of the mummies were damaged, and many have been stolen, so they only have 27 left. They take turns and only display 3 at a time, so we only saw a man and two women. One of the women still looked pretty real. One of the mummies is of a pregnant woman and she has one of the more decorated coffins.

When the monks came there in the 1920s they piled bones and such as I've seen in loads of crypts over the past month. However, they also hung skulls all around the crypt on the walls “to make it look more alive.” Seems like not very good reasoning to me....but was auch immer. The coolest part of the crypt is being worked on right now, so we didn't get to see that part at all, but maybe someday I'll go back there and get to see it...Most of the crypt hasn't even been opened yet, many of the walls are still sealed and they do not know what's back there.

In case you were interested in how to mummify yourself naturally, you need to be buried in a wooden coffin—metal doesn't let in enough of the draft, and put yourself in a very cold, drafty place, not too moist though. It has to be just the right temperature to be too cold for bugs, but not too cold for you either. Then sit around for a couple hundred years and wait. Oh, and pure silk is the fabric that all of the mummies I saw today were wearing, so you should probably be buried in that.
After the tour I went back to the school, had another class, and then ran off to FHE at the Institut. I talked to my favorite JAE member, Robert. He learned English on his mission just from all of the other missionaries using it with each other! How funny...not that we were speaking English. Definitely Deutsch.

I've come home, sat around doing homework and taking care of some last business before leaving for Italy. I'll be getting on my train at 7 tomorrow evening, and arriving in Venice at 6 the next morning, wahoo for me. I'm excited to see Italy though!
Arrivederci!
Anna