We continued our pilgrimage to the Bach towns by taking a short trip to Köthen today. This is where Bach was in the employ of Prince Leopold of Anhalt Köthen and composed many secular works such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Well-Tempered Clavier.

We visited a couple of churches, St. Jacobi and the Marienkirche, but apparently the parish Bach was associated with was St. Agnus was closed for renovation. We also stopped by the castle and just missed an organ recital on the small but very pretty one-manual organ there.I was struck by the many colorful buildings in the old town.

This is the Rathaus (town hall) of Köthen.

In my last post I didn’t tell you what an adventure we had at the laundromat, and just finding one was difficult enough. Plus it doesn’t help when you can’t read the instructions on how to use the machines because they are in German and you never had those words in German class. I’m talking about Carl here since my entire German vocabulary consists of chorale prelude titles!