Pivoting from the Netherlands, we took a day trip to Munster, Germany, a town with a large population of students, many museums, and bike lanes galore. While the Netherlands is famous for its bike-friendly infrastructure, Munster also does a great job of implementing biking into the city in a safe and accessible manner. Bikes have their own clearly marked-lanes, traffic signals, and bike racks are easy to find. Compare this to Oakland Pittsburgh where bike lanes only exist on some roads and bike racks are limited(although the bike lanes between the Cathedral and the William Pitt Union are marked very well). While biking in Munster and the Netherlands is a separate challenge, they both promote a culture of this transportation form which pays off in lowering carbon emissions and providing exercise. 

In our short tour Enno gave us a background into the town. Munster was destroyed in WWII and was rebuilt quickly, as reflected in some of its simplistic architecture. However, some cathedrals partially survived and could still be viewed today. One of the cathedrals commemorated the Bishop of Munster during WWII who used his title to publicly speak out against the inhumane acts committed by the Nazis, and due to his popularity and church position, he couldn’t be killed without causing an uproar. His actions are an example of both how religion can hold power in times of conflict and how WWII was not a line drawn between two sides. 

After the tour, we had free time to explore the town and visit some of the museums in the area. I went to a Picasso museum, an Archaeology museum run by a local university, and the Munster Museum of Art and Culture, which was my favorite. The museum had a collection of art and artifacts ordered chronologically from medieval to modern times in Westphalian history. These exhibits were built up over 200 years of attempts to preserve history after the destruction caused by wars and religious conflicts. Going through the exhibits in order offered an interesting perspective of how religion influenced art and how you could see the shift between prevalent ideologies throughout the years. An example is how during the shift from Catholicism to Protestantism, still life portraits that were meant to convey mundane and simple things began to grow in popularity. It was at that point where the art exhibits began to shift beyond portrayals of religious figures to more general portrayals of landscapes and life. While Germany may not have been my expected destination on this trip, it was a cool opportunity to compare my experiences with the Netherlands to Munster.