The Ulm Munster

Before we headed out of Ulm to our last big stop, Munich, we embarked on a climb to the top tower of the Ulm Minster.  As the tallest church in the world, you can imagine what kind of feat this is.  How many steps to the top of the tower?

You can't see the top of the tower in this picture.

800.  800!!! We were brave, though, and went for it.  I've climbed a few church towers in my life, but this was Kevin's first.  It has also been many years since I climbed a church tower, or I might have had second thoughts.

The thing I hate most about climbing church towers, aside from the pain in my legs, shortness of breath, sweating, and fear of heights, is the scary spiral staircase.  The staircase isn't even so bad going up, but to me, it's terrifying coming down.  I am always just certain that I will have a misstep and tumble head over heels down 700-ish cold, wet stone steps, bones cracking the whole way.

Kevin took this without me knowing because he knew I wouldn't want to forget these terrifying stairs.

I mean, is a railing to much to ask?  And even then, what if someone comes up while I'm going down?  See how narrow the stairway is?  And how slender the inside of the step is?

Some of the views going up were quite nice.

The Christmas Market

The Danube

At one point, you could go inside to a room above the bell room (I'm sure there's a more official term for this), where you could look down and see the bells.  Hanging around the room were drawings of many of the other great churches/cathedrals of the world, and it was fun to pick out the ones I/we had been to.  Kevin was more interested in the bells, of course.

Every time I see this picture I get the theme from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame stuck in my head.

This is the view from the highest point of our ascent, again, of the Christmas Market:

Once we came down, we toured the inside of the church, then split up to do some souvenir shopping.  Funnily enough, there wasn't a lot of "Ulm" merchandise to be had - Ulm is just not that much of a tourist destination,  Still, I purchased a few items with sparrows, as the sparrow is the Ulm mascot, and there are sculptures of them everywhere, kind of like we used to have all the crab sculptures in Baltimore.

Then, the strangest thing happened. We were standing outside of the Ulmer Weinachtsmarkt on the only sunny day we'd had since arriving in Ulm, and thought it would be nice to have a photo of the two of us in front of it, perhaps to use as our Christmas card.  We looked around for other tourist-types to ask to take a picture, but since it was nearing lunchtime on a Monday, most people were dashing purposely and we didn't see anyone we felt we could stop.  Then, we noticed a young woman standing near us - maybe in her late teens or early twenties, somewhat sullen looking (so, she was probably a teenager ;-)) with headphones on.  She was just standing around as though she was waiting for someone or something, so she seemed like our best bet. 

"Enshuldigen zie," I said politely.  This is German for "Excuse me."


She looked at me.


I held up my camera, smiled, gestured at Kevin and myself in the universal sign language for "could you take our photo," and said questioningly, "Photo?" 


She glowered at me, and spat out, "No."


I was so bewildered, I thought she might have misunderstood me.  I held up the camera again, and with a confused smile, gestured again and said, in English, "Could you take our photo?"


She shook her head and with a bigger scowl said again, "No."


Ok, I realize now that I should have:


A. Learned how to say "Could you take our picture?" in German ahead of time.


or


B. At least asked her if she spoke English and apologized for my bad German, first, which I had really done for about everyone else I talked to the rest of the trip.


 I don't think that she misunderstood me at all.  I don't see how she could have.  Who hasn't asked or been asked to take a photo with the universal gesture of holding up the camera and pointing?  I had obviously offended her in some way, or she is just a super, super grouchy person, or was just in a really, really terrible mood.  I was just really kind of bewildered by it for the rest of the day. 


So, just imagine that Kevin and I are standing under the sign in this picture.

Ulm, Part II

Ulm proved to be just as lovely as a town by day as by night, despite somewhat miserable weather.  We started off for a walk along the old city wall, past tiny quaint houses to find the Einstein statue.  Ulm's one minor claim to fame is that Einstein was born there.  However, his family left the city around the time Einstein was one year old, so I don't know that he felt as much of a connection to Ulm as the town feels to him.  In any case, they honor him with this monument:

Pulling Einstein's tongue is apparently the thing to do.  We didn't take a picture, but the top, dome part of the statue is pretty cool, too, with random shapes and symbols that we supposed was an imagining of what was floating around in Einstein's brain.

We then ate lunch in the Einstein Cafe, which was a great spot for tourists to have lunch.  It was very bright and modern, with an English menu and a variety of entrees.  Kevin got some kind of salad with deep-fried feta, and I tried a burger, just out of curiosity.  The burger wasn't that great, but Kevin's deep-fried cheese salad was super!

We wondered down to the old fisherman's village by the Danube and walked along city wall.

That is the Leaning Tower of Ulm in the background, apparently.

We ended up back where we were the previous night and took some daylight photos.

Note how the houses are pretty much built right in the water.

Supposedly the "most crooked house in Ulm."

The "most crooked house" at night.  Still crooked.

Hey!  Something that says Ulm on it!

Speaking of, imagine our delight at finding Ulmergasse, or, Ulm Street (or Alley, I guess).  Wait, you don't have to imagine it!  Take a look for yourself:

 

Am I thrilled, or did it just sink in that *I* am an ULMES???

 We'll wrap up Ulm with our attempt to climb to the top of the tower of the Ulm Munster.  Will we be successful?  Wait and see!

Ulmes in Ulm

We all assume that Kevin's father's family was, at some point, from Ulm.  We know that he has German heritage, and the names match up, so there you go.  I'm sure Ulm would never have been even a passing thought if it wasn't for the questionable family connection.  Ulm was listed in the travel books I picked up, but I don't know that it would've caught my eye as a destination if we didn't think we would find Kevin's long lost family castle (or even just brewery) there.

Regardless, Ulm ended up being a nice place to visit!  A little bit of a smaller town, but decent-sized with a serviceable downtown area and one of the more picturesque old towns.  Not to mention...

The Ulm Minster is the tallest church in the world, and for awhile was the tallest man-made structure in the world.  To be honest, looking at it, that statistic kind of surprised me.  For whatever reason, the Cologne Cathedral seemed taller.

Can you believe I actually had to borrow this from the interwebs?

(As a side note, when you look at the Wikipedia article for the Ulm Minster, notice that at the bottom they have a timeline of tallest buildings..  I just thought that was really interesting and a really good way to end up wasting a day.)

In any case, Ulm was so charming and festive at night...

 

 

Ulm was kind of a German Venice.  That's the River Blau.

We tried to have dinner at the place above, as it was highly recommended, but discovered when we got there that we needed reservations.  The least touristy city we stayed in, and we needed reservations.  It all worked out, though, because we ended about a block away at Allgauer Hof, which featured pfannkuchen, a.k.a.....

PANCAKES!

They really had dozens and dozens of pancakes, both savory and sweet, and they were literally the size of a large pizza.  To clarify, though, they were really more like crepes than American pancakes.  I had a spicy vegetable pfannkuchen, and it was DELICIOUS.  Really hit the spot.


On a slight tangent, I wanted to mention the attitude I took towards eating out in Germany. which I admit might have been a little...ill-advised.  So, as you might know, people in Europe tend to be less overweight than in the U.S., and there are far fewer obese people.  I also observed that no one got to-go boxes in restaurants.  Additionally, I know that people in other countries tend to be less wasteful than Americans, so I could only surmise that Germans probably don't leave much behind when they are out, which leads to my conclusion that German restaurants must serve just the right amount of food, and I was meant to eat all of what was on my plate.


Thoughts? Good theory?  Let's just say that while I abided by it for the most part, I wasn't willing to get on the scale that was in our Munich hotel.


But, suffice it to say that I ate my entire pizza-sized pfannkuchen topped with spiced veggies. Veggies are healthy!  We also got to try the local beer, Gold Ochsen. Kevin would have loved to tour that brewery, but of course, it was closed the two days we were there.  How would we ever entertain ourselves?  Stay tuned!