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.
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| 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...
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| 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!
