Please sir, can I have some Meersburg?

So many photos, you guys! On the last day of our trip, Easter Sunday, we got up and out bright and early in order to spend the morning in Meersburg before driving back to Luxembourg for a family dinner at Jules's mum's.

The internet waxes lyrical about the charms of Meersburg - its steep streets presenting a higgedly-piggedly vista of quaint old houses rising up from the tranquil lake front, capped by a 12th-century castle. Reading all this, we had originally wanted to stay there, but it was too late to find anything reasonable at Easter by the time we booked, so we went with Uberlingen. Uberlingen was perfectly nice, especially for walking along the lake front in the sunshine, but it's true that Meersburg is very charming.

As I touched on in a previous post, it's funny that somewhere with such lovely old houses AND a gorgeous lake doesn't get more press. I enjoyed Colmar, but now have a sneaking suspicion that, had Alsace stayed in Germany, it wouldn't be nearly the famous tourist attraction it is now. Well, I suppose if that had happened, it would have meant the Nazis won, so probably a good enough reason to eschew a visit right there.

After Saturday's constant drizzle, it was good to have some sunshine again to enjoy the beautiful views. It got a bit cloudier as time wore on, but that made for some nice photos at least!

The castle interior was quite good. Not absolutely packed with artefacts and explanatory information (although there was some of each), but interesting enough. We visited the tower as well, which can only be done as part of a guided tour. That was not super fascinating for me, since I had to stand there while (a seemingly very enthusiastic) guide went over everything in German, but there are some great views from the top, so worth your time.

You all saw how excited I was about signs that say "fahrt", so imagine my delight at finding a Bum Bum icecream

I want to stay in a hotel with a bear-bedecked turret

View from Meersburg castle

Me and a hoof stein

Jules in the armoury. The ones with the cloth over their faces are creepy. I think they're probably alive

View from the castle tower

See, how pretty is that?

A ferry coming in for a handbrake turn

Explanatory gif for the above photo caption. I laughed at this for a good 10 minutes, that is one badass mofo ferry service right there

On the lake front

It's a shame it's a bit hard to see the cool statue on the right - reminded me of those on the Charles Bridge in Prague

In the castle grounds

Meersburg town square

Street selfie. Lucky I just got new sunglasses, seems those ones got pretty chipped when I wasn't looking!

Looking up at the castle

Church and vineyard overlooking the lake

So there we go, I didn't have much of interest to say about it, clearly, but ten thousand pictures must be worth ten million words, so hopefully I've shown a little of how pretty it is there, for those of you (like me) who were unfamiliar with the region. There's so many beautiful and interesting places out there, I just wish I had the time and money to visit them all!

PS This time the pun was bad. So bad, it's good? BUT, it actually has a direct link to my trip as Jules and I were playing a "guess the movie/book/show I'm describing in Luxembourgish" game, and he didn't know "please sir, can I have some more"?!?* It didn't help that I don't know words like gruel, workhouse, or orphan, but come on now.

*"Wann ech glift, Herr, kann ech méi hunn?" ...is probably not how you say this, but is my best attempt, in case you ever find yourself playing a round of  "guess the movie/book/show I'm describing in Luxembourgish" in the future.

Monky business

As I said, it was originally forecast to rain during the entire Easter break, so we were actually relieved that it only rained on the Thursday and Saturday. Nothing like low expectations to make everybody happy. The Lake Constance area is pretty much built for outdoorsy activities, or at least that was what we had been looking forward to, so we had to come up with a Plan B. The original plan was to take a ferry trip to the "flower island" of Mainau, but since the weather really wasn't co-operating (and, also, it's really expensive, so you're even more keen to have a nice day for it), I suggested a drive to a different island - the "monastic island" of Reichenau.

There was much debate in the car over whether it was really an island or just a peninsula reached by a narrow isthmus, but you'll be happy to know that we did cross over about a foot of water to get there, so it has been declared officially an island by the Sandiego-Luxembourg household.

Source

Not just any island, it is a World Heritage site thanks to its monastic history. A Benedictine monastery was founded here in 724, and you can visit its three main churches, built between the 9th and 11th centuries. In all honesty, I don't think two of the churches would be drawing visitors from far and wide - they're worth a look if you've already made it on to the island, but they're mostly riding the coattails of St George's. Modest and unassuming from the outside, its interior is decorated with early medieval wall paintings depicting Christ's miracles. In the summer, you can only visit at set times (I think once or twice a day) on a guided tour, as the number of visitors risks damaging the paintings, but luckily enough we were there just before the season started and we got to see the church all by ourselves.

Driving on to the island in dreary weather

Outside St. George's

Panorama of the interior of St. George's

Looking from the altar along the right-hand wall to the back of the church

This is what it looks like without the distortions of the panorama (which I think are kind of cool, for the record)

I think this is the raising of Lazarus - the 3D scroll pattern at the bottom is pretty cool too

Mummy Lazarus

This illustrates a misogynistic saying that women talk so much nonsense it wouldn't fit on an ox hide. When Jules read this, he informed me that the saying still exists in German, although they've dropped the reference to chatty women, so he didn't know where it came from

The wall paintings are not the brightest and most vibrant you'll ever see, of course, but their history and completeness is pretty awesome. It's a cool feeling to stand in the middle of this tiny church and have them surrounding you - much nicer than they look in the photos.

One good thing about Reichenau is that each church had its accompanying little visitors' centre, which explain what you will see inside the church as well as the history of the monastery and its activities. Two of these were free, while the main one charged a small fee. I was mostly interested in the main museum because it claimed to display medieval manuscripts from the monastery, but be warned, they turned out to be just facsimiles. Still, there was a lot of interesting information across the three sites, especially laying out the monastery's connections with the rest of Christiandom, including its role as a major artistic centre, sending those manuscripts all over Europe.

Tomb in the church of St Mary and Mark

Facsimile of one of the monastery's manuscripts, showing a remarkably passive piece of dragon-slaying

If you end up in the area on a rainy day, there are definitely worse things you could do with your time than a trip to Reichenau, although how much you get out of it will largely depend on how much you want to read about medieval times!

Not so black, and not so foresty

Quick, what comes to mind when I say Black Forest? Cake, probably. But think again, what do you imagine the region of the Black Forest to look like? A forest... that's black? Dark, mossy, overhanging, intertwining trees gloomily lowering over impenetrable undergrowth, with here and there a man in lederhosen, axe in hand, angrily chasing after a fleeing German Mädchen? What a coincidence, me too! But, while I'll admit we only strayed through a tiny portion of the High Black Forest, it looked completely different from what I imagined.

I never realised it was so hilly. We got up to over 900 metres on our drive from Freiburg to Uberlingen on Lake Constance, and there was even still snow on the ground up there. (And, in fact, isolated flurries of snow in the air too on our way back home.) The weather on Friday was gorgeous, and it was a beautiful day for a drive.

I missed this photo off the last post, so had to add it here because it's so cute! (I know, if I say so myself)

Snowy blurry car action shot

We took a small detour to the Titisee, mostly because it's funny to say Titisee. I burst out laughing at Easter dinner at Jules's mum's because people said Titisee too many times for me to handle. Mature. We only stayed there for a total of about 20 minutes, enough to park, walk down to the lake, take a few photos, and walk back. It was buuuus-y! I don't know how it gets in summer, but it was already crowded and very touristy, with chalet-style buildings and cuckoo clocks as far as the eye can see in the small town centre. The lake is pretty though, and the town cute albeit cheesy.

I don't know how it is in other countries, but Germany is not really talked up as a tourist destination in my experience. At home it's all France and Italy, Eastern Europe if you're looking for a bit of exoticism or a stag weekend, Spain for sunshine, the UK for history, catching up with family or working in a bar for a couple of years, but Germany's not really on the radar. Berlin, of course, but you never really hear much about other parts of Germany, and it's only in the last year or so, when I've been living on its borders, that I've really started to explore a little bit. So far, it seems full of really cute picture-book towns, and this weekend was really a surprise with how lovely some of the scenery is. 

Titisee panorama - look how clear the water is

I'm wearing the same clothes in like all my blog posts. I suppose if something works for you (hopefully), why not stick with it? Plus this dress is super comfy

This says Titsee and Fart (almost). Schoolgirl giggling ensues and continues for the next 20 minutes. Signs saying 'fahrt' may be my very favourite thing about Germany

Titisee snowball fight!

After our brief detour, we continued on to Uberlingen, on the shores of Lake Constance, in time for a long stroll along the lake front, an icecream, and a beer slash wine on a terrace in the sun. Great day, and we got to make the most of the nice weather, which was good.

When I discovered we were staying in the Bad Hotel, I was all...

This is the other side of the Bad Hotel - it's secretly actually very nice! We had a lovely big room on the corner, not with a lake view unfortunately, but windows on two sides

Street in Uberlingen

Panorama of Lake Constance

On the Uberlingen lakefront

Two ships crossing in the night day

From snow at Titisee to daffodils in Uberlingen on the same day

The sculptor gives the unfortunate impression that Jesus is worshipping a pile of poo

We had a definitely not-Michelin-starred but tasty rösti dinner in a traditional(esque) German restaurant to finish our first evening in Uberlingen.

Jules is happy with his beer

While I'm not used to having wine glasses the size of my head after too many years in France!

Oh and the million-dollar question - did we have Black Forest gateau? < Whispers > I actually don't like it, so no!