Travelog for: Elle

Because the weather was much better than the days before, Petra took us to her school, where we had to wait for her in the car for hours. Then she drove to Untergrombach, which is one of the suburbs of Bruchsal. The Michaelsberg, a small hill - only 296m high, belongs to Untergrombach. You have a wonderful view over the Rhine valley and if the weather is very very good, you can see the Palatine Mountains in the far.
3500 - 2600 BC first signs of humans had been found on this place, the "Michelsberg culture".



Here you see a part of Bruchsal .



The quarry pond belongs to Untergrombach, which you see on this photo. This is the best view to see the Palatine Mountains on the horizon, but today we had no luck.



You see another part of Untergrombach. You see, that it is also to the border of the Kraichgau, just the same as Bruchsal.



This nice chapel is called Michaelskapelle and it is on top of the Michaelsberg. Petra told me, that there are many couples, that want to marry in this chapel.



Here you see so-called "Steinriegel" (field clearance cairn), made by people working on their fields a long long time ago. They threw the big stones from their fields to the border of the neighbour's field, so that in the middle all stones were accumulated. Many animals and flowers love this gaunt places and that's why a few weeks ago, people cleaned the Steinriegel from all the earth, that came between the stone during the many many years and from all the other plants, that love to grow in earh.



Another word I learned is "Magerrasen" (neglected grassland), which is typical for the Michaelsberg.



Here we are still standing at the same place like before with view back to the chapel. You see the "Magerrasen".



The Michaelsberg is nature reserve area, I'm sure, you already realized this too. Soon there will be beautiful seldom flowers and animals.



We all wanted to go into the chapel and take some photos there too. It is nice baroque, not too many paintings or golden things.

Today we had to say Goodbye to some of our friends:

Lucky Bunny travels to India, Mocke, a really new toyvoyager, travels to England and Chocolate Moose will stay at the German border to the Netherlands and I travel to Munich now.

Hello Yumi,
I have arrived in Munich. It is cold and windy but I hope spring will come soon.

Today I went for a little walk and saw the German museum (Science and Technic museum). It is built on a little island in the Isar river.

HAPPY EASTER!
Today it's Easter Monday and Pandamao went to this little town in the Oberpfalz to see her dad and she took me along.
We walked along the street and wondered what was going on in that little park opposite. When we came closer we saw that it was an "Easter fountain". In this part of Bavaria it's the custom to decorate the fountains with Easter eggs. There must be hundreds or thousands of eggs here. They really look beautiful.

I did some more sight-seeing today and went to the area where the Hofbräuhaus is located. The first photo shows the Orlando House and then I pose in the front of the nearby Hofbräuhaus. It is a huuuuuuuge beerhall.
I also met some local bears. We had a nice conversation about TVs and traveling the world but the Bavarian bears did not want to join. Seems, that they would miss their Sunday morning beer Stammtisch (regulars' table) at the Hofbräuhaus too much.

Then I took a look at the "Alter Hof", which was the first residence of the Wittelsbach dynasty, built in the 13th century.

I took a tour to Feldafing at the Starnberger See (Starnberg Lake). First I had to cross the golf course - in the background you can see the lake. Then I helped my host to pick some bear's garlic which grows there wild.

I took a nice walk along the lake side (Starnberger See). The sun was shining, it was a beautiful spring day and I could even see the Alpes.

I helped my host with her shopping - the shops are just around the corner at the Gärtnerplatz with a beautiful opera house.

As it was a nice spring day we all went out for a walk to Türkenfeld. It's about 45 minutes with the train outside of Munich. The colours of the tree leaves are beautiful, you only find this colour in spring time.

Our host is very interested in herbs so we helped her to search for them. We found lots of blooming wild violets and helped our host to pick them because she wanted to make sirup of them. If we would not have helped her she surely would have needed a long time to fill the small container.
Later we also found woodruff which will be dried and used for tea and food flavouring.

We went out for another walk to pick herbs at Türkenfeld. We found chickweed, deadnettle, chervil and lots of other herbs.

Yesterday we had sorrel soup for dinner (delicious!!) and today we used the herbs for chickweed salad, then deadnettle lasagna and wild herb quiche ... I could not resist and tried every single dish. For the quiche I helped to collect more than 10 herbs: chickweed, deadnettle, silverweed, yarrow, sorrel, stinging nettle, dandelion, meadow sweet, ribwort, beech leaves, daisies, chervil, violet leaves .... I think that's about all of them. And all of the dishes were really tasting great. 

I'm leaving to learn more about Finland!