Vacation in Germany.

We were quite busy during the last few weeks (yesterday we assembled our last piece of IKEA furniture). This is thus a delayed post on our holiday in Germany during August. We will soon have more regular posts, including more about our new apartment (with a video if we can convince Carina to make one)...

During August, I attended a conference in Tübingen. After the conference Carina joined me and we spent  a few days touristing. The city of Tübingen (located 30 km from Stuttgart), is an old student town with a university dating from 1477. The castle Hohentübingen (with records from 1078) is now part of the university, where DNA was first isolated by Friedich Miescher. Below is a picture of the entrance to the castle:

Tübingen was not bombed during the second world war and the inner city has kept its old town charm. Many of the building are from the middle ages and below is a few pictures of the inner city as well as the buildings located on the Neckar river:

We visited some of the traditional German restaurants and explored the local Swabian gastronomy which included various sausages, spätzle (thick egg based noodles), maultaschen (ravioli-like pasta filled with bacon, bratwurst spinach and onions), and of course beer:

Situated close to Tübingen is the famous Hohenzollern castle. The castle is the ancestral seat of the house of Hohenzollern, the last emperors that reigned over Germany. This castle could have been from many fairytales with its spiral towers, high walls, drawbridge, dungeons, and majestic statues peering over the surrounding forrest. The castle is situated on a hilltop which made it somewhat inconvinient for the servants that transported goods. However, the location served as a efficient stronghold up until the second word war:

This was a nice short visit and we hope to return to see more of Germany. 

R&C