Fall 2013: Missing the sun

As it turns out, we have not seen a fully sunny day since October 28th in Zurich Had some sun in Vienna, Budapest and Prague but not enough to call any a sunny day.

Our week in Augsburg did not include any sun at all. While it did not rain much, we had cold gray skies throughout our visit to Bavaria. We chose Augsburg because it is one of the largest towns in the Romantic road and sort of in the middle so we might travel from there to other towns, which we did.

The Romantic Road was actually marketed as such after the second world war, but it loosely follows an old Roman road linking some of the towns. Like so many of the places we have visited, this town has a long history, but unlike other places it has not needed to be totally rebuilt due to war devastation or other natural disaster. Of course WWII did cause damage to many old buildings and some of them were rebuilt.

Augsburg was the place where the Lutherans proclaimed their definitive statement of faith, called the Augsburg Confessions. There is quite a bit of the medieval town still standing and we were lucky enough to live near one of the preserved walls and canals.

Jim coming down from our staircase to the common area

The neighborhood was an interesting blend of restaurants and small local crafts people shops, as well as boutiques.

On one of the canals we found the kayak below, which was 'dressed' as a gondola and was called a Kanondel - a mixed gondola/kayak- The town prides itself in having more bridges over canals than Venice.

Since it was rather cold, we did not spend our days walking around as in the past few months. We spent part of each day in the apartment resting and reading as well as finishing plans for the next leg of the trip We had one warm room and that was the kitchen.

Cozy and simple but homey enough to be cheerful despite the lack of sun. Eventually I bought a heavy sweater, a hat and gloves for Jim and went off on our explorations.

The Schaezler Palace

Because of the cold, the fact that we were there on weekdays, and we are not in the Christmas season yet (the streets and shops are getting ready for that now), there were few tourists in these parts and we were able to have the local museum to ourselves. A large palace
full of the work of local painters except for some remarkable Holbeins and a couple of rooms with some interesting Italian masters from the Renaissance. The Schaezler Palace also included the Rococo room, a large hall full of mirrors and chandeliers that invited one to waltz.

The Fugger family's name is everywhere in this region. Fugger, the Rich, was a very successful banker in the 16th century and among the things he created and have endured is what they call here "the Oldest Social Settlement for poor people in the world" and it is still in existence. There are some 147 apartments in The Fuggeri, a church, a cafeteria,a park surround the apartment and a museum to tell the story. We did not go in because the information from the tourist office was very clear about the history. I understand some 157 people live there paying less than 1 Euro per month for rent and taking care of their utilities. They must say 3 prayers a day for the Fugger family and pay a small fine and enter via a special gate if they arrive home after 10 PM! It turns out Mozart's great grandfather, who was a craftsman, lived there.

We discovered wonderful paths outside the city gates and found an amazing restaurant to try some typical Bavarian food and drink. The Weinbaeck would be a great wine bar during the summer as you can see from the pictures,but in the winter, the basement cave-like eating area was totally what we needed.

Adding to the touch, the music being piped in during most of our dinner was Cuban music!!!

We decided to take a train to Nodlingen, there should be an umlaut over the o, a town on the Romantic Road that is located on a meteorite crater. For centuries they thought it might be a volcanic crater but NASA and other scientists in the 70s made the final findings that it was formed by a meteorite. There was a very informative little museum that we visited that would have enchanted the scientists of the family. I enjoyed it even if I did not quite understand a lot of the information.

Lodingen also boasts about having one of the only totally preserved town walls and we walked on them and followed them all around the medieval section of town.

The town featured in Willie Wanka and the Chocolate Factory scenes from the sky (town roofs) was shot here.

Neat as a pin the medieval section had the feeling of being a show piece. We enjoyed it anyway as we seldom see buildings like these in our neck of the woods.

A beer garden complete with mural

We packed up our bags and will fly to London and spend the next week in Southwest England first in Devon and the Moors followed by a few days on the Dorset coast, also called the Jurasic coast. Much to learn about all that. Will keep you posted.

Meanwhile enjoy some interesting things we found along the way in Augsburg.