Heidelberg – Germany Trip Blog Post #4

On Friday, May 8 (only our second full day in Germany), we once again climbed on our bus for the two-hour drive to Heidelberg. By the way, our bus driver for the entire trip was Erick, from Poland, and Fred, from Austria, was our tour manager the whole time. Fred’s job was mostly to make sure we got where we were supposed to go and that no one got lost. He also talked about the history of Germany and the surrounding countries, while we were riding on that bus every day, as well as answered our dumb questions.

(Can't see him well, but Fred is the tall guy in the middle of the picture.)

I don’t know if it is because of my strong German roots or if I just paid attention in German class, but I remember so many places throughout Germany, places I’ve wanted to visit for fifty years. Sometimes I forget that most people haven’t heard of these places, so I try to tell you everything. Hope I don’t bore you.

So, Heidelberg Castle is one of those places. I’ve seen so many pictures of the ruins of this massive fortress perched on the hill overlooking the Neckar River. It’s hard to describe it when I finally saw it in person.

It was built in the 1200s, and our tour guide for the day, Roman, told us so much of the history of it and its people that my head kinda started to spin. I wanted to remember it all, the melodramatic stories of what went on at that time, but there is no way. I will look it up for myself online sometime, and you can do the same. 

Anyway, even though parts of the castle are still in decent shape, it has been considered a ruin since the 1700s.

 

We rode a funicular up the hillside to the castle and took it back down.

Once back down in the city, we wandered a few blocks down the Haupt Strasse or pedestrian street. Lots of interesting buildings and shops, but it was too overwhelming to even know what stores to go into.

 

The large church on the Marktplatz, or market square, was the Church of the Holy Spirit. 

I walked part of the way across the Old Heidelberg Bridge, a historic stone walking bridge on Neckar River.

 

Along the river I walked past this swan and her partner, tending to their next of eight eggs. Oh, wouldn’t it have been sweet if they would have just hatched.

We ate lunch at the restaurant Zum Weissen Schwanen, which means “to the white swan". Did they know about the pair of swans a few blocks away?

I had the pork schnitzel with fries. It was good. Your basic meal.

Blaubeuren – Germany Trip Blog Post #3

 

Late morning, on our first full day in Germany, after our walking tour of Ulm, we boarded the bus for Blaubeuren. 

The town of Blaubeuren is a half hour drive from our hotel in Ulm, in the Swabian region of southern Germany. Cities in this region which you may have heard of are Stuttgart and Augsburg. 

Blaubeuren is a small, quiet village known for its Monastery, which was founded in 1085 by the Benedictines. During the Reformation, it was taken over by Protestants in 1535, but monks returned for a while during 30 Years War. In 1817, it became a Protestant seminary with attached boarding school. 

Our tour guide spent a lot of time telling us about each of the pictures in these panels, which told the story of John the Baptist, as well as Jesus.

He also told us that all monasteries were set up using the same blueprint, such as where the chapel, the garden, the cloister, et cetera were going to be. Anyone coming from a different monastery would be able to find their way around. I never knew that before, and I also don’t know if this was something they did just around that part of Europe during those years, or if they have done this around the world for millennia.

 

The chapel was beautiful, with many wood carvings. I am sure that they all had a certain meaning. 

 But some of them were rather creepy.

Behind the monastery, was the Blautopf, the spring where the Blue River originates.

It was a serene, wooded spot, and felt so much like home to me.

We wandered up one of the streets of Blaubeuern for lunch at Restaurant Ochsen (or Oxen). 

We were treated to Maultaschen, which translates to “mouth bag”. During Lent, to keep church leaders from knowing that the people were eating meat on Fridays, the women put the meat, usually beef, between sheets of rolled dough to hide it. It is a traditional Swabian dish and was very good, with the meat mixed with spinach, bread crumbs and onions. Similar to ravioli, they are square or rectangular and three to four and a half inches across. This was served with a lettuce salad atop cooked shaved potatoes, pickled beets, shaved carrots and shaved cabbage. I ordered it for lunch another day, but it wasn’t quite as good as this first one we had.

I had cut it up for the picture, so you could see what's inside. 

Too Many Books

 

Love justice, you who govern the earth, turn your minds to the Lord in a righteous way, and seek him with an upright heart. For he will be found by those who do not put him to the test, and he will reveal himself to those who do not cease to have confidence in him. (Wisdom 1:1-2, New Catholic Bible)

Today is my mom’s birthday, by the way. She would have been 99. Holy cow! How is that possible?

And how is it possible that it’s been a month since I’ve written here about the Bible? Four weeks ago, I told you I wanted to learn more about the Bible. I know that life got in the way, so I’m not going to beat myself up, but here I am, with lots of other things to tell you, but I’m going to stick to that promise.

Okay, most versions of the Bible are composed of 66 books: 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. These versions include the King James Version, New King James Version, Good News Translation, New International Version, Revised Standard Version, New Living Translation, the Message, and many, many more. Those are mostly considered Protestant versions of the Bible, but there is also the Catholic Bible.

There are also many versions of the Catholic Bible, but the biggest difference is that they all contain seven additional books in the Old Testament. They are referred to as deuterocanonical books, or the Apocrypha, and include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees.

These were all in the original Bible, but during the Reformation, reformers like Martin Luther dropped those books. There is a long history of that, which I read online, but most of it was over my head. I would rather keep things simple, so I apologize to my Catholic friends. If you’ve never heard of those seven extra books, you can look them up on the internet.

The verse above is from one of those books, the Book of Wisdom. If you are familiar with the Bible, you may remember the Book of Proverbs, written by King Solomon. Bible scholars used to think he also wrote the Book of Wisdom, but they have since decided that is not true, and no one knows who wrote it.

And just in case your head is already spinning, there are other versions of the Bible with even many more books. I don’t have any opinion of them one way or the other; I’m just going to stick to my good old 66-book New International Version of the Bible, which I have had ever since I can remember. And which I have always counted on to speak God’s truth to me.

(The above picture is of the Central Library in Ulm, Germany. The glass, pyramid structure stands in sharp contrast to the medievel buildings around it, but it surely contains many, many books.) 

Ulm City Tour, part 2 – Germany Trip Blog Post #2

Our walking tour of the city of Ulm took us, in the rain, into the Fishermen's Quarter and the Tanners' Quarter. I’m not sure where one quarter started and the other ended, so I am going to dump that whole area together.

The River Blau flows thru this historic, picturesque district, which is filled with medieval half-timbered houses, narrow alleys, and small bridges.

The River Blau empties into the Danube River near this point and across the Danube is Neu-Ulm, or New Ulm.

Ulm was founded around the year 850. Isn’t that insane? Neu-Ulm was part of the original town until 1810, when the Danube River became the dividing line between the kingdoms of Bavaria and Württemberg. The left side became part of Württemberg and the right remained under Bavarian sovereignty. The handful of homes on the Bavarian side eventually grew into Neu-Ulm.

One of the truly fascinating buildings in the old part of Ulm is the Schiefes Haus or Leaning House. 

It was built in 1443 but started leaning in the 17th century. At some point the foundation was shored up, but it continues to lean.

It is currently operated as a 16-room hotel and passes routine safety inspection. The guest rooms still are on a slant and anything round you put on the floor will roll into a corner.

The oldest part of the building below was built in 1370 (but I don't know if this is that section or not). It was mentioned as a town hall in 1419. 

The walls on all sides are opulently painted in early renaissance murals. I’m going to guess that the paintings all tell a story, but I don’t know what it is.

 

The beautiful astronomical clock was installed around 1520.