Walking in the Rain

We started out today by going to the train station to purchase our tickets for Munich and Padua. Internet ticket purchasing was not working well. Our walking trip back from the station took us through Chinatown.
We walked through part of the red light district next. Few of the girls were up. Their curtains were closed. Later when we walked through the district there were more girls up. They were dressed rather scantily and you could see the furnishings of their cribs--a chair, a bed and a basin for washing up water. You can tell the windows by the red lights. I read that a company has bought some windows and business space in the district. They plan to have live lingerie models and then sell lingerie in the store.
We finally found the Old Church. Originally built in 1300, it used to be called St. Nicholas. It was pretty well gutted in 1566 when the Protestants stormed in and broke and tore up most of the Catholic decor. They broke statues and windows and tore up anything they considered a graven image. They sort of did a Taliban on the place. As you can see it is pretty bare. The Protestants fully took over the property in 1578. At that time they changed the name to Old Church. They took the organ out, but then put it back when they discovered the congregation could not sing on key without accompaniment. The inscription here in Dutch reads "The false practices introduced into God's church were undone here in 1578."Some of the old wood carvings "misericords" were left intact in the original choir stalls. These were mostly meant to illustrate proverbs for an illiterate congregation. This one illustrates "money doesn't fall out of my ass".Some of the window fragments were saved and put back in where ever they might fit-- in the 1970's.
I found poor old St. Nicholas in a side room. Maybe he was a more modern statue that might have been out for the holidays.
After lunch we went to Rembrandt's House. Nice place. He overextended himself and did not manage to pay off the mortgage. The contents of the house were well described for the bankruptcy, so the house was able to be restored and refurnished as a museum. Here William is carefully studying all the items Rembrandt kept in his artifact collection. These were items used for paintings.
The paintings and etchings displayed in the house were great------especially the etchings. We were able to watch a demonstration of the techniques of etching and printing a from a copper plate.