That Other Germany – not just Bratwurst and Beer

 

My trip didn’t start out all that well. Almost as soon as I got to Europe I came down with a particularly nasty 'flu -Influenza A to be precise, which put me in hospital for the best part of the first week, despite having had a 'flu shot before I left. Although the hospital cleared me in time for the reunion and my granddaughter had to explore Europe on her own, I was often really tired and miserable and didn't manage to do half the things I'd planned. Nevertheless, it was lovely to see everyone again and I did manage to do a couple of side trips as well as a few excursions in the Stuttgart area. 

This is about all I saw of Switzerland, apart from the train in and out

I never want to see hospital food again, despite the appealing menu!

 Coffee, Cake and Castles

You won’t find many of the places I visited on any tourist map. Indeed, had relatives and friends not shown me around, I wouldn’t have seen them either. Some were to do with my early childhood –the  places where my parents lived and the places where we'd lived as children, including the house in the middle of the Black Forest.

 When we lived there, the trees were dense, tall and dark and the forest was full of mystery. Though I had found the house on two previous occasions, the forest had changed so much, I no longer recognised anything. It was only after a friendly farmer led the way, still mounted on his disc plough, that we found the place at all. Alas, amid our excitement at finding the house, he quietly slipped away before we could thank him, so if anyone knows him, please pass on our thanks.

Where has my fairytale forest gone?

The forester's house where I spent the first three years of my life

It is Verboten to leave the Black Forest without having an enormous helping of Black Forest Cake. We got ours here at Castle Glatt, which obviously used to have an excellent moat

You can just imagine the Knights clattering over the cobbles on their horses

One of several dining halls

This one is inside one of the towers. Note how low all the ceilings are

I got to spend a lot more time with my family, especially one poor 'cousin' who had to put up with me during my down times. I shall call her a 'cousin' though she's more likely a niece since she's the daughter of a cousin once or twice removed. I have given up trying to figure out who's who, though there's a weighty family -tree around which explains all the relationships and at the reunion we all wore little lanyards which denoted which line we represented. It was this cousin who coaxed me out of the house at regular intervals to visit this place or that and gave me a chance to see what daily life was like in Germany and what it was like inside the villages you usually only see from the motorway. 

From a distance, the towns and villages seem timeless - neat houses clustered around a church steeple and surrounded by ample green and then forest. Yet beneath their placid surface, things are changing too. Go inside and you will see that many traditional businesses which have been in families for generations, have been supplanted by large supermarkets, leaving the inner core somewhat deserted unless the original shops have been replaced by pizza parlours and kebab shops.  

Kirchheim unter Teck

One  of the places we visited was Kirchheim unter Teck (Teck is the name of the river). It has been  lucky in that it still has many of its original shops and lots of well preserved, half -timbered houses. It even has a link to the British Crown. Mary of Teck – the  Queen Mother, the Mother of Queen Elizabeth II, has ancestral links here from when her father acquired the title of Duke of Württemberg before moving to the UK. 

Town Hall, Kirchheim unter Teck - Those are grapevines under the windows

This fertile and favoured region had long been occupied by the Celts, the Alemanni and the Romans and there are even traces of Stone Age culture here. The Alemanni were a loose collection of hill tribes which extended into northern France, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. In around 296 CE they united to give the Romans a run for their money for almost 400 years. They also gave the region its distinctive dialect. 

 If you want to know more about the Celts in the region and happen to be in the area, you could visit a new museum and archaeological education centre which recently opened near Grabstetten on the plateau above Bad Urach which, with around 20,000 people, once housed the largest Celtic settlement in Europe. Though the centre was closed when we visited, you could still climb the new viewing tower and see the burial mounds, as well as get some expansive views across the entire region.  [By the way, if you see Bad in a name, it means it has or had a spa or hot spring of some kind]. 

There are other places which feature Celtic history. There are signs of Celtic occupation near Nagold too

By the 9^th and 10^th Century Kirchheim unter Teck had become an important trading centre and was declared a town between 1220 and 1230. 

Typical Streetscape - Kirchheim unter Teck

There are still lots of half - timbered houses

This magnificent mill is now a museum which occasionally hosts events such as concerts

Kirchheim’s Castle near the town centre also remains intact, though its moat is long gone. Perhaps it owes its survival to the fact that Franziska, King Eugen’s wife (1728 -1793), did so much good in the town. Known as the “Wohltaetige Fee” (Benevolent Fairy) she founded industry schools, soup kitchens, orphanages, a hospital, a fire service, a school for small children and one for the higher education of girls from upper class families. She also organised 'Paulinen care' for the vocational training of disabled children and a Frauenstift  -a kind of secular nunnery, for women who remained single.    

Part of the Castle in Kirchheim Teck - Apologies that these pics are so dull, it drizzled on and off all day

Kirchheim may have survived invasions, Religious Wars such as the Thirty Years War (1618 -1648) and the Peasant Wars which erupted in Germany in the C16th, but in 1690 it was almost reduced to ashes by a great fire like the one which razed the City of London in 1666. This however, gave rise to new forms of town planning which included wider streets, setbacks, curved lanes and large open squares, so that fire couldn’t spread as easily.  It may also have inspired Queen Franziska to start her fire brigade. 

Survivor - This inn dates from 1538

[Incidentally, I was wondering whether there was any connection between these great fires and social upheavals - other cities such as Stockholm had them too, and it turns out that scientists are now looking at the climatic shift – The Little Ice Age which brought a long period of drought and poor harvests to many parts of the world, as being a possible underlying factor]. 

Another Survivor - another inn. This one is from 1571. Both would have been on the outer fringes at the time

A Hellish Trip

Our next excursion was my pick and I noticed on Google maps that there were supposed to be some limestone caves just a little to the south called “The Hell Holes” which sounded pretty interesting. My cousin had never heard of them and I must say I was a bit shocked at how little Germans knew about places outside their immediate orbit. Unfortunately, when we got there, there was absolutely no signage to indicate where they might be. None of the local people we spoke to had a clue either, but we did come upon a sign that said “Devil’s Gorge 0.3 Km." Well, if the Hellholes were lost, it seemed like a reasonable alternative so off we trotted in search of that. We walked and walked. Eventually we came to another sign that said “Devil’s Gorge  0.7 Km." 
On the plus side, I instead became acquainted with Disc Golf which involves tossing Frisbees into a metal basket. It is apparently very big in Germany with 208 courses, 21 of them in the Bad – Württemberg area. Players certainly seem to take it very seriously with some having specialised outfits and a neat little cart on wheels with which to navigate the course. We also saw deer and squirrels and ended up on a Wine Trail, proving that there’s more than one way to go to Hell. It is also where we found the Forest Kindergarten.

This is an old army training ground which has become a recreational reserve  (both images by Ina Z)

When we saw this, we thought it was to feed the deer, but it's the basket where you aim your Frisbee for Disc Golf

 NB: Note to regional tourist bodies - signage could be greatly improved!