Baden-Wurttemberg

The southern tier of Germany has two states - Bavaria in the southeast and Baden-Wurttemberg, about half the size, in the southwest. Here's the Black Forest, Stuttgart in the middle, Baden-Baden, and Heidelberg and Mannheim in the west corner. The Rhine defines the south and west edge and it's here the Danube starts. So much for the geography lesson.

Napoleon made Baden a grand duchy and Wurttemberg a kingdom in 1806 and the whole region was under French rule until 1866 when they and Bavaria joined the Austrian Empire. You'd think there would be some French influence still around but we saw none.

We stopped in Heidenheim for lunch. The downtown pedestrian shopping mall is quite large in proportion to the town's size.

Loved this statue of a woman washing cannonballs with green water in an army helmet.

Along the road, Lowenstein is up and down the edge of a bluff. Tiny town but grand pub.

If you'd like to read these pages chronologically, insert the Heidelberg page here.

In Munich, 8€ would get the two of us unlimited use of the S-Bahns, U-Bahns, trams, and busses for a day. Same in Heidelberg. But there 12.50€ gets use of all that plus the ICE trains for about a 30-mile range including Mannheim and its local transport system. So in 20 minutes from our hotel room we're in Mannheim via a fast train.

Neat idea they had when they laid the city out oh those many ages ago. It's a grid. Yep, a real waffle iron. Square blocks about 12 X 12 with a major route bisecting it both ways. Streets, though, aren't named. Each block is named like map coordinates. A1, B2, C3, D4, etc. House numbers proceed from 1 around the block. Outside the city center, it's back to streets that follow old cow paths and houses numbered from one end or the other seemingly at random.

We went to Mannheim mainly to see the schloss, a 400-room palace built in 1720 when the powers-that-be, Prince Elector Carl Philipp, moved out of Heidelberg. Stopped at the i tourist information to get a city map and it said the schloss is "closed because of renovation until 2007". At least they directed us to the local brewery tap.

Maybe as a result of the grid system, downtown Mannheim could well be any US city of 300,000. Except for the streetcars. Here's three looks from the center streets.

We noticed a tram ran along the Neckar all the way to Heidelberg so we took that back.

Sinsheim, between Heidelberg and Heilbronn, has a large museum of cars and airplanes. There's a TU144 or whatever the number was of the USSR's SST. Not having the internet to look this stuff up is frustrating. Next time we're at least loading Encarta onto the laptop.

Bad Wimpfen is a fairly small town with a lot of attractions besides it's funny name. Bad Wimpfeners are called "dobels" - not a swear word, as they point out to us ignorant tourists, but a family name of a commander on the losing side of the 30-years war who escaped to the area.

This, though isn't one of them.
Kebaps are a Turkish lamb dish where big hunks of processed meat are
turned on a vertical spit all day. Orders are shaved off the outside and served
on bread or on a plate under a cream sauce. It's the one food you can get any
time of the day or night in Europe (except for England's Indian restaurants).

The traditional local dish of Baden-Wurttemberg is the Maultaschen.
It's sort of a lasagna or large ravioli with vegetable filling with or without minced meat.
Moderately spiced and very solid, it's filling, and boiled so not at all greasy.
Variations: In broth as suppe, baked under cheese (pictured), chopped in a salad,
fried - schnitzel style, or served under cream, tomato, or onion sauce.

Also in Bad Wimpfen, the Einziges Sammler und Schweine Museum. Yep, a museum devoted to the noble pig. More accurately, the collectable pig. Porcelain pigs, toy pigs, piggy banks, Christmas tree pigs, knitted pigs, Nivea cream pigs (don't really know what they have about Nivea cream), plastic pigs, pig masks, metal pigs, pig steins, glass pigs, two-headed pigs, Porky Pig, Miss Piggy, even a pig made out of pigskin. Three floors including the gift shop.

Heilbronn has about 70,000 people and a good, big, cheap Ibis hotel. It's located on the Neckar River upstream south from Heidelberg and the salt mines.

The downtown section is only 4 X 6 blocks but there's a great Saturday market in front of the Rathaus.

Jason, Jill, and Katie all told us johannisberrys are currants. Thanks. They have them in black, red and white. But can anyone tell us what Stachelbeeren are? They are very soft.

The Hafenmarktturm downtown was the bell tower built in 1688 for a church built in 1314. The church is gone as well as the bells but the tower is now used as a WWI and WWII memorial - the first we've seen for German soldiers.

The big Kilianskirche across from the Rathaus puts on a weekly organ recital much like the daily one in Heidelberg (read that page also, you'll enjoy it). Didn't even fall asleep through it, especially Bach's Fugue in D Minor.

Terry stopped at a Fisher/Bernina dealer in Heilbronn. The ground floor was machines and the basement devoted to patchwork. She'll take it from here.

I got to see not 1 but 2 sewing machine shops today. The first was a Pfaff dealer where I bought a spool of thread to mend a seam. The other was the Bernina dealer. When I walked in the friendly clerk asked if she could help me. I told her I was just looking. She asked if I wanted to see the machines or the patchwork. So.....There isn't much interest in patchwork in central Germany but she said it was starting to grow. Northern and Southern Germany has more interest.

There were more quilting books in English than in German. I asked her what they used for 1/4" seams. She said that it was much easier to use the 1/4" than try to figure out the centimeter equivalent. She herself uses the special Bernina patchwork foot for seams. She also showed me a little booklet dictionary that had short explanations of all the English quilting terms. "School English just doesn't cover these terms". The book was put out by (she thought) a national quilt guild in Germany. She said that by using that book she was able to use any of the American quilt books.

The store had a few mid-range Viking machines also but they aren't very popular here. They also had fat quarters which are slightly bigger than those in the states. I couldn't resist; I bought 2. More expensive than the States too - 4€ each (about $5). They also sell rotary cutting rulers in either inches or centimeters.

There wasn't a huge selection of fabrics. Not like we're used to in the states but enough for my enjoyment. They are the same patterns that we have in the states. A few simple examples such as a pillow, a stuffed pig, and of course the "Bernina chicken" were on display. She also had a simple patchwork jacket which she had worked up from a picture. No real quilts in evidence on display, but it was a "quilt fix" that I enjoyed.

Wandering around Heilbronn one Sunday morning looking for breakfast, Bob found a parking meter museum. Well, not really a museum but a display of a couple of dozen of them in a window. Weird. The parking meters, not Bob.

We went up to the Salzberg Werks salt mine just north of Heilbronn and walked about a mile underground. It's an active facility that gives tours on the weekend only. If you remember, Salzburg, Burghausen, and even Munich grew up around traffic from salt mines in southern Bavaria. The Neckar River wasn't like that and Heidelberg and Mannheim were important for other reasons. In fact they just found the salt in this area in the 1800s and the mine opened in 1848.

Most of the displays were in big rooms that grew to their maximum supportable size - about 45ft wide, 50ft high, and 300ft long. They've closed over 30 of these rooms and are mining 8 more right now.

Unfortunately all the signs were in German only but we figured out this salt deposit is separate from the Bavarian one and both were formed when this area was a big sea before the Alps were pushed up just south of here.

Most of the salt is 94% pure and has to be purified by producing a brine solution.
Some small pockets of white pure salt are sprinkled around.

Someone carved a bas relief story of the Legend of Barbara in a wall.
Never did figure out who Barbara was.

A large display of fossils included the great example below.

The fossil of a dachschadlerlurche at right is about a foot high. Maybe crocodiles really are living dinosaurs.

One other display at the mine documented how 436 people were assigned there during WWII from the nearby concentration camp. Many worked-out rooms were used to construct engines for U-Boats and V1 rockets.

We stopped in Neckarsulm for lunch and ran smack into the start of a parade of local clubs. They disappeared down the hill into a park where a couple of pigs undoubtedly sacrificed themselves for the celebration.

The morning we left Heilbronn, the 2000km durch Deutschland road rally came through town. Had to get some pictures.

On the left, Amerikaners that they claim are American donuts. It's has a donuty texture but it's flat with no hole. Covered in chocolate or that vague sweet stuff that's supposed to be vanilla.

On the right is are Berliners. They are jelly donuts Dunkin' style. That's what they call them here (they call them something else in Berlin, maybe jelly donuts); but this explains why Baden-Wurttemburgers thought it was amusing when Jack Kennedy called himself a jelly donut.

This is an unusual flower we saw at a Blumen shop. The stem curls over almost 180 degrees at the end and the bloom curls backwards to grow upwards. No doubt someone knows what they are called.

Heilbronn whimsy. We don't understand the French flag
unless it's that Napoleon influence from before 1866.