Tag Archives: Germany

Stuttgart, Germany to Mulhouse, France

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Day 44     Monday, October 13, 2025

First stop on our way to Mulhouse is a pretty little town called Esslingen.  At first sight we thought this was a real person!

Our Airbnb in Stuttgart had a calendar with almost this exact photo.  It was the impetus to visiting Esslingen.

Autumn has definitely arrived.  I love walking through the fallen leaves.

We walked into this church because its doors were so interesting,

I didn’t record the name of this church, but it had a very austere dark interior……but the area to light candles was small and intimate and appealed to me.  We lit a candle for all our family members and friends who are facing health challenges right now, and spent a few moments in silent contemplation.

Back outside, we see Esslinger Castle in the distance. But this castle isn’t actually a castle, it is a well-preserved part of the medieval city fortifications, located high above the city centre. Originally expanded in the 13th century, it was reinforced in the 16th century with walls up to 5 meters thick. We can see people up there but we don’t have time to go and explore. Travel days don’t allow for in depth exploration and only give us a chance for brief visits to sites along the way.

One thing I love about European cities and towns are the unexpected little things, like the face on this wall. There is always something interesting and different to discover.

We pass this road construction site. I think they were replacing some pipes.  All the little stones from the cobbled sidewalks and streets are piled up and then relaid in the pattern that matches the rest of the in place stones.  Very labour intensive, but such a wonderful final result.

Built in 1423 as a sales hall and tax house this building is the Old Esslingen Town Hall. We were hoping to hear the Glockenspiel and see the figures on the clock move but later discovered that only happens five times a day. We are out of luck.

The cobbled streets are lined with ancient timbered houses…

…and there are canals here too.  We could have piloted our own electric boat for a trip on the canals but they stopped operating the end of September.

The town is surrounded by vineyards.

I thought this house was particularly spectacular. It is dated 1531!

As we are leaving Esslingen I quickly snap this photo from the car window!  I just googled it and dick means thick in German, but also discovered that F. Dick is a German cutlery manufacturer that owns this smokestack…too funny!

Next stop is Baden Baden. We spent some time in Baden Baden a long time ago so we thought we should stop there for a visit. There are flowers everywhere, but bathrooms are few and far between!  We spent 45 minutes trying to find a bathroom. Using Google maps we walked several blocks to where there was a WC…but we couldn’t find it. Turns out it was in a parking garage and both of us walked right past the doors to the washroom twice without seeing them! They were on either side of the of the parking payment machine with a tiny sign on each door!

I love how people have tiny potted gardens on their window ledges or on the street beside their doors. 

Baden Baden has a lot of very high end shops.  This watch is priced at €15,500…no prices on the others. I presume they are even more expensive.  We also see small diamond earring studs that range from €399 to €820 and there were no clothing items on display in the shop windows below €100!  A bit too pricey for us, but it is fun to window shop.

Loved this stork fountain!

This is the Baden Baden Casino.  Bob thought we could go in and tryout luck but men must wear a suit jacket and tie.  We wouldn’t be allowed in with our jeans and casual sweaters.

The drive from Baden Baden to Mulhouse in France was interesting.  I see these strange structures on Google maps while navigating…turns out they are huge shopping malls with parking on the roofs of the buildings.

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Just a few kilometres down the road I see this huge truck rest stop on Google maps. I count 86 trucks stopped for a break! Bob’s biggest complaint about driving in Europe is all the trucks on the roads. The right lane is one truck after another and when a truck pulls into the car lane to pass a slower moving one all the cars have to slow down until it manages to pass and get back into the truck lane.  

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Remember the German highway speed limit is usually 130 km and often there is no speed limit so a truck pulling into your lane at 90 km is actually quite dangerous.  Bob does enjoy the chance to drive at 156 km/h though!

We get caught in traffic for almost half an hour, moving just a car length at a time.  We finally figure out why. This huge boat was trying to move through a rather small covered bridge so all traffic was stopped during this operation.  Notice our speed now…1.6 km/h!

We arrived just in time to meet our Airbnb host, but our planned stop for groceries has to wait for another day.

Stuttgart’s Cannstatter Volksfest

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Day 41     Friday, October 10, 2025

On the drive into Stuttgart we pass a huge fairground. It is the Volksfest Canstatter, which is the second largest beer festival in the world!

The Canstatter Volksfest started in 1818. In those early days agriculture was the primary focus.  Vendors around the edge of the fairgrounds sold sausages, sauerkraut, and beer. Carnival attractions featured “strong men” and other typical nineteenth-century curiosities but as the years passes beer and food took center stage.

Today the festival takes place for 17 days between September 25 to October 11. Last year this event had 4.6 million visitors.

Right beside the entrance, which is free, we see these young men in matching lederhosen drinking beer.

This ferris wheel is at one end of the fairground and we decide to go for a ride.

There are 5 kilometres of rides and attractions, children’s rides, stalls, market stands, many food and drink stands, including eight beer tents, countless beer gardens, snack bars, and candy stands. We have a great view of some of this from the top of the ferris wheel.

The white roofs are all the beer gardens!  The eight tents on site hold a total almost 34,000 people! There is also a second ferris wheel at the other end of the fairgrounds.

We have a great view of these swing ride.  At 80 meters it is way too high for me!

After our ride we notice the changing colours on the ferris wheel, done with 1000 LED lights! The centre circle changes too, and we both thought this eye was quite striking.

The fun houses here are huge and very ornate. This photo captures about one half of the length of this one.We liked the flying witch, the dragon, and the ghost in the window.

I thought it was lovely to see live flowering plants on the tables at the beer gardens.

There was lots of screaming coming from this ride!  The rides here also last a long time, much longer than the exhibition rides back home.  If you decide that a ride wasn’t a good idea, you are trapped on it for many revolutions!

Time for some Bratwurst mit Brötchen…but we decide against the half meter long option.

Back to walking around the grounds and the sun has set.  Our ferris wheel ride looks much prettier at night.

Some of the sweet treats available.

The beer tents have facades that look like alpine chalets and they are huge. Each tent seats anywhere between 2,500 and 5,600 thirsty festival-goers!  It takes several weeks to erect the tents and then almost as long to take them down and store them. I really thought these were permanent structures until we walked behind one and saw the SeaCans and canvas walls.  Seems like it is mostly young folks attending the beer gardens, and many are dressed in traditional German dirndl dresses and lederhosen. There was a very long line up all night long to get into this particular beer tent.

This beer tent balcony is packed…

,,,and a screen outside gives us a view of the action indoors. I am quite happy not to be inside with that mob of drinkers!!

We are quite content walking outside and looking at the rides and all the people having fun. At home this ride is called the Drop of Doom…it is pretty colourful! Those are people’s feet hanging below their seats as they ride up to the very top of this tower, and then plummet to the bottom!

There is a rollercoaster ride. It is much bigger than it looks in this photo.This was a crazy ride with seats spinning in one direction and the whole platform spinning up and down in another direction!  There was a lot of smoke and screaming riders!

A lot of the rides have smoke effects.

I always like carousels. This one had a lot of lights… 

…but not as many as this ride!

Another crazy ride.  The seats are just visible through the smoke.  They twist and turn upside down as they twirl around, with lots of smoke…

…and some real shooting flames!

The last time we saw fish on a stick was on our trip when our oldest daughter was four years old. I didn’t see anyone actually eating one of these. Maybe they taste better than they look?

The rides here all have lots of lights and special effects.  You can just make out the seats flying by at the bottom of the ride.

There is a definite Polizei presence. We saw several groups on patrol,  but we only saw one drunk person.  His buddy was half carrying him..his feet and legs just weren’t working at all!

Some of the lederhosen wearing men have these funny half socks that they wear on their calves along with regular socks.

There is even a store on site selling lederhosen and dirndl dresses,  We were both rather shocked at how expensive the lederhosen is.  They started at €250 and went up from there!

The grounds are busy and I’m not sure we saw everything but we were tired and head home.

There is also a little fair just a few minutes from our apartment, so we walk through part of it too. I loved these balloons and stop for a photo. The guy selling them came over to sell me one, but when he saw I was just taking a photo he burst out laughing!  It was a fun night but we are happy to be home.

Mainz, Germany and Gutenburg Bible

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Day 35    Saturday,  October 4, 2025

It is a 45 minute drive to Mainz, and Bob has several items on our ‘must see’ agenda. First stop is the market. The flowers at these markets are always so beautiful and very reasonably priced.

The main sculpture in the main square (market) of Mainz is the Heunensäule, or Hay Column. It is a 1,000-year-old sandstone column with a bronze casing, depicting various symbols of Mainz’s history and culture like a fool’s cap and bishop’s miter. It is in the market square in front of the Mainz Cathedral. 

I like this wishing well and we both toss in a coin and make our wishes.

We both like the interestingly shaped squash…we might have to try growing some next year.

We have seen these coloured eggs in the grocery stores and wondered what they were. Turns out they are hard boiled eggs that are coated in a tinted resin that keeps them fresh for months! The colour helps to identify them as being hard boiled.

Gorgeous sunflowers!  I am definitely planting some of them in our garden next year.  They are so cheerful. Next stop in the Mainz Cathedral.  We are met at the door and told that there is a concert starting and if we enter the church we have to stay for the 45 minute concert.  Sounds perfect as it is raining and cool outside!
We spend the next 45 minutes listening to an amazing organ concert to commemorate the new cathedral organ.  The musician, Alexander Grün, is only 25 years old and has three Masters Degrees!  He plays some traditional organ music and then music that is innovative. The 45 minutes absolutely flew by.  I sketched for a bit while listening to the music.  Loved it. I wish I had recorded more of the music, especially the finale of the concert…it gave me goosebumps!      https://youtube.com/shorts/HykSsp-S-9E

There are fall foods displayed on the steps to the altar to remind people to give thanks for the harvest, and to share with those in need.  

The Cathedral cloister has a beautifully tended garden,

Bob liked this statue statue of a man holding his head. This is probably Saint Denis, who was beheaded but picked up his head and walked some distance, preaching the Gospel.

The buildings surrounding the market square are tall, narrow and decoratively painted.
Next on Bob’s agenda is a visit to a small museum underneath a shopping mall. We see Roman ruins from before the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. These ruins were discovered when excavations began for the shopping mall. The area was thoroughly excavated and recorded, but ultimately the mall was built and most of the ruins were destroyed.

This little museum has the reconstructed ruins of a temple, under a ceiling of constellations. Some of the items found when the ruins were excavated.  Well endowed males were well represented.

Our final stop in Mainz is to visit the Gutenburg Museum, which is connected to a small Natural History Museum. This display in the entrance is quite striking.

We start with the Gutenburg Museum which shows the impact of Johahannes Gutenburg’s invention of a moveable type printing press in 1440.  This press allowed for the printing of 3600 pages a day, compared to 40 by hand printing and only a few by hand copying. There were  several beautiful ancient books on display. This Atlas of the World was printed in 1482.

The World Chronicle is from 1493.

An ornate Columbia Printing Press from 1824.  

We are given a blank card that has a chip installed inside the paper when we entered the museum.  We place this card into a machine that takes a selfie of us. Then we take the still blank card to a modern printer and this is what we received.

Entering a small room with dim lighting we see the Gutenburg Bibles. Only 49 of the approximately 180 printed Gutenberg Bibles have survived and the Gutenberg Museum owns two. The complete two-volume Bible shown in the bottom of this photo was added to the collection in 1978. The second Bible is incomplete, with only the second volume surviving. The book in the top right is a calligraphed manuscript.

The Bibles were only printed in black ink – two or more colors would have been too time-consuming and expensive. Spaces for colored ornamentation were left empty and the books were handed over to an illumination workshop. As a result, all surviving editions have different ornamentation.

The Missale Moguntinum, was hand written on parchment between 1453 – 1459.

I love that the guide lines are still visible. Imagine writing this huge book. Gutenburg’s press changed how books were produced and made them available to so many more people. Seeing these bibles in person is special but I am still in awe of beautiful hand written and illustrated books.  

In the mid-15th century before printed books were readily available, the demand for books could not be met. One solution was to produce books faster. This was why copies of the “Speculum Humanae Salvationis” or “Mirror of Human Salvation,” were created in cursive and quick pen-and-ink drawings. The volumes are dated around 1450, making them approximately the same age as the printed Gutenberg bibles.

We wander through the Natural History Museum. I wonder how archaeologists are able to reconstruct skulls and bones from a pile of fragments.  It must be a very difficult puzzle.

The Wooly Rhino had a huge head compared to the rest of its body.  There are samples of real wooly rhino hair on view that were found preserved in permafrost.

I thought these fossils were really beautiful.  The plants, insects and other animals are preserved in the finest detail. They are incredible.

We forgot to check what this prehistoric creature was.  

There are a few more displays of stuffed animals.  I thought this one of different types of rabbits was interesting. It is a small museum so it doesn’t take too long to see everything.

I know this is a strange photo, but this is the handicapped washroom at the museum.  I’ve never seen a public washroom like this.

We walk along cobbled sidewalks with reminders that summer is over on our way to see the next sight on the agenda in Manz.

This huge fountain is the Fastnachtsbrunnen, or Carnival Fountain. It is almost nine meters high and has over 200 bronze figures from the Mainz Carnival Mythology. Every year on November 11, at 11:11 pm, people celebrating Carnival in Mainz gather here. When the clock strikes 11:11 pm the carnival officially begins.  

Our last stop before heading home is St. Stephen Church. This is the only German church for which the Jewish artist Marc Chagall created windows.

In 1978, the first window by the 91-year-old Chagall was installed. Chagall completed the final church window shortly before his death at the age of 97! Although all the windows are beautiful, I didn’t find the blue light in the church appealing…it felt too sombre,

Time to drive home…this was a very full day!

Frankfurt, Germany

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Day 33     Thursday, October 2, 2025

We take a train into Frankfurt.  Once we had our tickets it was easy but once again we had problems using one of our credit cards.  This trip has been a challenge with credit card, debit card and cell phone issues.  I am beginning to think we are jinxed!  It is so good to be traveling together. I think if either of us were trying to sort out these problems on our own it would be much more difficult. The saga continues as we find the Hertz car rental company in the train station.  This trip we are told we need to extend our car rental contract every 30 days by simply checking in to any Hertz office.  Well, it turns out that a Hertz office in Germany cannot extend  contracts that was signed in another country. Sorting this out takes more than an hour and we are still not sure it actually will be taken care of.  We will see.

We walk down the street across from the train station. I am struck by the contrast between the old and the modern buildings.  I should have paid a bit more attention to the signs on the storefronts.

After a man and his lady friend propositioned me we noticed that we were walking through the red-light district!  We had a bit of a chuckle!

Nearly 70% of Frankfurt was destroyed during the Second World War but many of the buildings look older than they actually are.

There were four of these massive sculptures supporting the bridge across the street in the above photo.

In1405, two houses were joined together to make Frankfurt’s City Hall. It is a striking building.

Saturday is a popular day to get married and there is a steady parade of weddings taking place. The bridal couple and their guests wait outside for their turn to be married. It seems strange to me but is perfectly normal here.

We have our picnic lunch on the banks of the Rhine River and then visit this pedestrian bridge. ‘Love locks’ are covering this bridge.  I suspect that before long authorities will have to remove these locks before their weight begins to damage the bridge because of their weight like the bridge in Paris that was covered with locks.

Saint Bartholomew Cathedral is the only church in Frankfurt that survived the bombing of WWII.  Divine intervention?

As we enter the church we see this group of sculptures depicting Christ being crucified on Calvary Hill.  

The cathedral was built in the Gothic style between 1315 and 1358, but suffered a fire in 1867 and then the bombing of Frankfurt in 1944. The reconstruction after these events changed parts of the church. Today it is a hall church with three naves.  The cathedral’s organ is impressive and has a different layout of pipes.

I saw two priests walking out of the church and hurried to take a photo.  They look like they belong in another age and appear very intense.

The cathedral’s bell tower has survived from the 15th century and we are climbing it. This is the view from about halfway up the 66 meter high tower.

We are above the gargoyles.

I will admit that I needed to stop and rest a few times as we climbed 328 steps to the viewing platform, although there were people much younger than me were who huffing and puffing more than I was!  We had a spectacular view of Frankfurt.

Some views from the tower.

We walk around the platform several times.  I wasn’t going to climb all those steps for one quick tour around the tower!

We begin our descent of those 328 steps.  I am very thankful that they are solid stone and I don’t have to contend with see-through wire steps, specially as this is the only staircase to access the tower. We have to squeeze to the side when people pass us their way up the stairs.  

The view through a glass window in the stairwell.

This is the tower…

and here is the viewing platform above the clock! If you look closely you can see the platform railings.

Next we visit the indoor market. I am so tempted to buy some flowers.

Edelweiss and Gentians, two of my favourite flowers.

Everything is so colourful and looks delicious.

Produce doesn’t look this appealing at home.

The leeks are enormous!  We buy some pastry for a snack and I even find a slice of yummy gluten free apple cake.

Heading back to the train station we do a bit of window shopping.  We don’t buy souvenirs as a rule.  It is just too difficult to carry purchases around during an extended trip.

These characters made us laugh. This store carried some interesting merchandise.

I am always kind of shocked to see semi-automatic weapons and other guns on display in store windows!  

In front of the train station this group of friends are all wearing Lederhosen.  I think it was for some special event as they were taking photos of themselves.

Back to the train station to head home.  Another full day!

Funicular and Rhine Boat Ride

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Day 32     Wednesday, October 1, 2025

We take a funicular to a park area high above Wiesbaden, a town about an hour from our bnb in Frankfurt. This funicular uses water as its power source.  The car at the top fills with water and it is used to counterbalance and power the car that is going uphill. When the funicular car gets to the bottom it empties its water tank, which is then pumped back up to the top of the hill. It is quite ingenious.

Halfway we meet the funicular car that is descending.

There is a panoramic view of Wiesbaden from the top.

This is a monument to the German soldiers that died during World War I. I think I may have mentioned that there are big trees in Europe? This hollow tree was cut down, I presume for safety.  Can you see me in the other end?

We see golden domes in the distance and walk along a path to this ‘Burial Church’.

This Russian Orthodox Church is a declaration of love from the deeply grieving husband Duke Adolph to his young wife, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, who died in childbirth along with her baby. He built the church with funds from her dowery.

I took this photo before I was told that no photos were allowed in this church. The dome is gorgeous. There is lots of gold decoration and many icons in elaborate gold frames on display.

Outside the chestnuts are falling.   They are incredibly prickly!We had our picnic lunch on a bench beside the church, overlooking the town far below, then walked back uphill to the park.  We hear a lot of laughter and screaming so decide to find out what is going on. Just a short distance away there is an enormous Tree Climbing Adventure Park that covers several acres.
The first thing we see is this youngster trying to get up the courage to step off the high platform, which eventually does happen. I was wondering if someone would have to go up and rescue them?

I googled these climbing parks. “Using cables, ropes, bridges, planks and branches, the participants, equipped with harnesses, climb. walk in balance, jump, leap into the void and cross various obstacles. It is the variety and difficulty of the obstacles that makes these courses fun.”

I have never seen such a big park or one with such high platforms and challenges. I love watching all the kids as they make their way around the park. These swinging plaforms look hard enough to cross, but…they are also very high above the ground!

Most of these kids have no fear whatsoever! 

Crossing from one tree to another on these stirrups was a challenge for this young lady, but she persevered and made it!

While we are watching all the activity above, I look down and see all sorts of mushrooms.  I absolutely love the different shapes and colours of mushrooms and I took some photos to draw from later.This platform high in the trees…

…has two young boys jumping and laughing as the platform they are standing on sways back and forth!   The kids liked that I was taking photos.

This looked tough. These girls needed to hang from two pieces of wood above their heads and swing towards the next piece of wood to stand on! These kids are so strong and confident.  It was wonderful watching them!

If I were just a few years younger I think I would have loved to give something like this a try.  I was much more fearless then. Now I will have to be content with hugging trees instead of climbing them!

We walk down a trail instead of taking the funicular back down to the bottom.  I find more beautiful mushrooms.

The funicular car passes us on the way down.  It is faster than walking but we really enjoyed strolling down on the path in the forest.

Next we drive to Rudeshiem where we catch a boat to view castles along the Rhine.

While we wait for the boat to dock I see a little lizard sunning itself in a bit of sunshine.

I do some quick sketches of the castles along the shore.

We pass a lot of vineyards. This area is famous for its red wine.

We spot a few workers high on the hill.

Some of the castles are in ruins.

We pass several charming small towns along the Rhine.

Some castles are still in use.
The castles look different on the return trip.  Interesting how a different view changes so much of what we see.

More vineyards on the way back to the dock.  It was a 45 minute ride with commentary in German and English.

This little castle was a signalling station on the Rhine River and it was in use until the 1980’s.

It looks like this castle might be in use as a hotel?

There are a lot of boats and ships on the Rhine River which is a very wide river, with some islands in its middle.

A Viking River Cruise ship passes us.  It is bigger than I expected…still a lot of people onboard.

Another selfie.

Several barges that have lots of pipes and valves visible…perhaps carrying oil?

This castle is now a museum.

Here are my sketches of the castles I drew as we sailed by.We stroll down some narrow streets on the way back to our car.

Fontoy, France to Frankfurt, Germany

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Day 30    Monday, September 29, 2025

Today is a travel day to Frankfurt Germany and we have been travelling for month already. Bob says we have to stop and see another Eiffel Tower along the way but it is not quite as impressive as the one in Paris!

We had no idea that this is wine country.  There are vineyards on both sides of the road as far as we can see.

The hills around each town we pass are all growing row after row of grapes.  We see the odd group harvesting grapes but the main harvest occurred earlier this month.

We stop in Trier and have our picnic lunch on a bench with this view.

The breeze blew water spray and made a rainbow just as I took this photo.

This foot of Emperor Constantine is a replica of one of the largest marble foots to have survived since antiquity. It was part of a 12 metre high seated statue of Constantine.

The Roman Baths are considered to be the largest Roman baths outside of Rome. 

The ruins are impressive!

We are able to walk through the underground tunnels that would have been used as a service level for the maintenance of the bath’s heating system. This is the entrance to the tunnels.

There was a group of schoolchildren ahead of us…probably the loudest group we have encountered on our travels! We took a side tunnel to avoid walking behind them. There are a maze of tunnels and we are free to explore as we wish. That is Bob peeking around the bend in the tunnel.

We do get a bit lost down here, but it was a lot of fun exploring these interesting tunnels.

Which way should we go!

This photo shows the size of the original baths, although they were never actually completed. The ruins of today are superimposed on the original baths.

The ruins are impressive, but they are only half the height of the original structure! We pass this lovely garden on the way to visit Trier’s cathedral.

Photos really do not show how beautiful and enormous the trees are. I wish we were able to grow trees this large back home. These trees wouldn’t survive our colder climate.

Trier Cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the oldest cathedral in Germany. Construction started in the 4th century and it was built upon the foundations of ancient Roman structures.

And yes, the inside of the cathedral is very impressive.

It has one of the most ornate organs we have seen… and many huge sculptures with multiple figures. We walk up these stairs for a view of the nave. This beautiful blue and white Baroque stucco work decorates the choir loft of the Cathedral. It is stunning and unusual. This is the first time we have seen anything like this in a cathedral.

We pass this building on the way to the Nigra Gate. There are many ornately decorated buildings in Trier.

I love watching the bubble makers, and the children trying to catch the bubbles. This fellow made huge bubbles…

and lots of smaller bubbles.  I would love to know how to do this.

At the end of the street we can see the Nigra Gate, another UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Porta Nigra, or Black Gate, is the largest Roman gate in Northern Europe.  It was part of the defensive walls and gates that surrounded Trier in 200AD. It is  incredibly well preserved, especially when you consider that it was completed around 200AD, and it almost two thousand years old!

We pay 6€ each to climb inside the gate. This ‘window’ has a pile of coins, perhaps people making a wish?

A view inside the gate.

We can see the Trier Cathedral from the second level of the gate.

Grafiti has been around for a long time.  Some of the dates on the walls are hundreds of years old.  I do really hate this practice of defacing monuments.

There is Bob, I sent him down to the street so he could take a photo of me in one of the gate arches.

Here I am.These carved decorations are still in remarkably good condition.

Walking back to our car we stop for a photo of the Electoral Palace. We had our lunch in its beautiful gardens which have many white statues and small ponds.

Another gorgeous tree.

The clouds are moving in on our drive home.

Big black ominous clouds.

We arrive at our Airbnb in Frankfurt. It is smaller than our last place but cozy and has everything we need.