As Thursday the 17th was a Holiday in Germany, most everyone in the city took all or part of Friday off as well. For us, that meant that we were heading on another quick road trip with Clemens and Judith.
Clemens took us to his college town of Thubingen, roughly 30 minutes away from Stuttgart. We parked in the town square (the guy is the luckiest person on the planet when it comes to find a parking space) and made the 10 minute walk directly uphill to the town's original castle. Along the way we passed roughly a dozen fraternity houses/castles as well as other apartment buildings.
Thubingen is one of Germany's oldest cities, and by the looks of the castle and local buildings, there was no doubt that this was true. As we made our way around the castle grounds, we found ourselves perched on a great viewing point of the town. From there, you could see the main square, the city hall, and the large church.
After snapping some photos, and taking in the sunshine, we decided to walk into town. The streets were as narrow as we've seen since arriving in Europe and the town seemed to be laid out in no particular order. Buildings were just attached to eachother and the town sort of organically grew around the main square.
Once we wandered our way into the main square we found the city hall (rathaus) and were impressed with the amount of detail that had gone in to the artwork on the outside of the building. We noticed that the buildings were constructed a little differently than some of the buildings in other towns. We noticed that as the building got taller, each floor stuck out over the street about 4-6 inches past the floor below it.
The reason is simple, and somewhat disgusting. Before sewer systems came to be, townspeople had do dispose of their own waste by dumping it in the street. So, if you lived on the top floor of a building, you would simply toss it out the window. The buildings were built in such a way that the top floor wouldn't give the floors below them an unwated gift. Needless to say, we didn't see many balconies in Thubingen either.
After touring the main square, we headed for the local Church. Once inside we viewed the royal burial museum and then headed up the narrow spiral staircase to the top of the bell tower. Once up top, we had an amazing view of all of Thubingen and the Neckar river. We spent about 20 minutes up top and then realized we were very hungry and thirsty. So we headed back down the tower and found a beer garden on the Neckar.
After some great stories, some laughs and a couple of beers, we headed back to the car, as Judith needed to get back to Stuttgart for an appointment. Clemens couldn't stop without getting a Currywurst, after that it was back to Stuttgart.
Check out the photos in the Thubingen gallery...tomorrow, we're off to Munich.
We are having a great time, however, we are getting to the point in the trip where we are starting to miss home, and miss our daughter. We'll see you all in about a week.
Much love,
Shane and Chris
