Travelog for: Brinda

In the early evening we enjoyed the lights of the sunset.

Today we drove to Münzesheim to visit the Japanese Garden, which belongs to the therapy centre against alcohol and other dependencies. All buildings and works of art are made by patients of the therapy center based on antique models. The garden is about 5.000 m² large, it is open for patients and visitors. You will see a roof made of blue bottles, put into the concrete with there bottom to the outside - it's an interesting room, fascinating. Wall and floor are covered with blue tiles. Just enjoy the photos.

Today we have lovely weather. So my host decided to show our new guests some nice places in Bruchsal. Some other toyvoyager friends joined us. You surely know some places already and maybe remember my explanations too, but to tell the truth: I forgot some of them myself too, so don't be too sad, if you think, that everything is rather new for you.


At first we walked through the Bürgerpark - citizens park- , which was created at the end of the 1980s. It is home to three monuments, which are dedicated to Bruchsal's twin towns and to victims of the Second World War and the Nazi regime.






Here you see the medival keep of the old castle. It's the only building of this time in Bruchsal.




Then we walked to the "new" palace of Bruchsal.
Schloss Bruchsal is one of the most beautiful Baroque palaces in Germany and the only episcopal Baroque residence on the Upper Rhine. The foundation stone was laid in 1722 by Cardinal Damian Hugo von Schönborn, Prince Bishop of Speyer, who made the palace the centre of his absolutist dominion. Read more here: Schloss Bruchsal.

Here you see the tower of the church St. Damian and Hugo, where my hosts usually go to service on Sundays.




The left building is the church, so you see the the tower is at another place. The church inside was also baroque, but the most part of the palace and so the church were destroyed during the Second World War. The rebuilt it in the 1970s, but not the church inside. It is modern style now - to disappointment to most visiters.




The palace garden: Today, the palace garden continues to provide an atmospheric setting for open-air concerts and the Bruchsal Summer Festival of Music and Drama.

At first we went to the pond, where usually are many ducks. Today it was so crowdy, that we stayed away a bit just to take nicer photos.





Here is the rose garden. It was a bit difficult to take photos here, because of the sun





This is a chestnut avenue with really old trees. It was also such an old avenue on the other side of the park, but they say, that the trees were too old. So the planted new trees, which are still a lot smaller.



I collected some chestnuts for a nice photo. I hope you like it.




Here is a photo of the back side of the palace main building.




This is the front side of the palace main building. This building houses the the magnificent dome, Marble Hall and Prince's Hall. The staircase designed by Balthasar Neumann is considered to be an architectural tour-de-force and has been described as the "finest staircase in the world". There also is the German Museum of Musical Automata, which thanks to its acquisition of more than 100 valuable instruments from the Carlson collection of Königslutter, is now among the largest such collections in the world.




I read a long long text about the palace, much too long for writing it here.




That's the left wing of the main building. There is the chamber music hall.




We walked to the Damian Gate now. Today, the local art society "Das Damianstor" stages various exhibitions of contemporary art in the sections of the building directly above the gate arch.




We took a look at the long Schönborn street, which leads through a part of the palace area.




And then something happened. Petra and the others went on and I decided to jump out of the bag. I fell to the ground and there I stayed, shocked. Thank God, Petra and the others came back to me as soon as the realized, that they missed me. What a relief, when I was back in the bag again.






We walked to the Amalienbrunnen, so called Schneckenbrunnen (snail fountain), which is in front of the county court. To be true, I didn't read the whole text here.
Here you see me with one snail.




Next to the fountain we took a look back to the main building and the wing with the chamber music hall.




Now we had to walk some stairs up and a street up to come to the Stadtgarten - city garden. It's the third large park besides the Bürgerpark and palace garden.




I saw a nice old house. I'm sorry, but the light was a bit difficult for taking photos.




I love this lime tree




This fountain is called Ferdinand Keller Brunnen. It was built in 1912 and is dedicated to the Bruchsal innkeeper Ferdinand Keller. The building behind it belongs to a grammar school.




The Belvedere is on the edge of the Stadtgarten. It was built by Leonhard Stahl in 1756 as a hunting lodge for Prince Bishop Franz Christoph von Hutten. The location was chosen so that the lodge would command an unspoiled view of the palace, town and Rhine rift valley beyond. Today the Belvedere is used as a venue for concerts and theatre productions.






Next to the Stadtgarten is a place, from which we had a wonderful view over Bruchsal. Do you see the church with the two towers? It is a baroque church St. Peter, which is close to the place where I live right now. The white/orange building close to me is a part of the older people's house.






The place were we stood was next to that Wingerthäusle - vineyard house. We tried to take a photo of the sign with me, but it was too dark to read it. So we just took a photo with hand and camera, but nevertheless you will see the house as white dot above the stairs of the Andreasstaffel







Here you can read about the stairway, if you want to.




The Huttenstraße is one of those streets with really old buildings. Many many buildings were destroyed during Second World War, so you don't see many old buildings in Bruchsal.




Behind my back you see another part of the older people's house and the building with the little tower belongs to another grammar school, the Paulusheim.




After a long walk I'm nearly back home again. Here are some other older houses and the baroque church St. Peter.

I visited the school were my host teaches pupils of grade 3. She didn't want to take photos while the kids were there, so you only can see the chairs and tables and a pumpkin decoration for the window.



On the table you see the worksheets for a plan for the week.

Yesterday was my Fabian's 20th birthday and today we had a big cake for afternoon coffee. This cake is called "Schaffeltorte", which means something like washtub cake, because it has so many different colours like the colours of mixed laundry and white foam on the top.

Today we packed bags and sat in the car to drive to a place called St. Peter in the south part of the Black Forest. Partly we drove on the autobahn and partly on roads, which led us through towns.

Finally we arrived at our holiday flat. It is really nice with kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. At first we all fell in the bed to have a rest. Do you know, who had no place for a rest? Yes, was our host, because we were in her bed



Sankt Peter is a town in the district of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald in Baden-Württemberg in Germany. There is a beautiful cloister church, which we wanted to see at first.




Then we walked through the town and found this funny fountain.




Back at the flat again we enjoyed the wonderful view out of our bedroom.

On our way to the mountain called Feldberg we saw the Titisee. It is a lake in the southern Black Forest and it is said it got its name from Roman Emperor Titus. It covers an area of 1.3 km² and has an average depth of 20 m. It think, it is really nice and I would have liked to go there too to have a closer view and get my feet in the water.




Later we took another photo out of the window.

Today we drove to the highest mountain of Baden-Württemberg and also our Germany outside the Alps, the Feldberg. The Feldberg has an elevation of 1,493 metres. For the most part the Feldberg area contents a nature reserve due to its subalpine vegetation. This reserve is the oldest and biggest one in Baden-Württemberg and is in charge of a full-time ranger since 1989. Since 2001 it's the responsibility of the Conservation Centre Südschwarzwald to look after the reserve. Within the Haus der Natur ("House of Nature") there's a permanent exhibition of nature conservation. It offers an extensive program with events in the reserve. Since 2005 there's also a new nature trail.














The Feldberg offers one of the most extensive panoramas of Germany - especially in winter at weather situations of inversion. In the west, on the other side of the Upper Rhine Graben you can see the entire Vosges Mountains from the Ballon d'Alsace up to Mont Donon and Mont Sainte-Odile. Beyond that you can also look up to the southern Palatinate Forest occasionally. In the north one can see the Hornisgrinde; in the north-east there's the entire range of the Swabian Alb including the Lemberg mountain, up to the left there's the Hegau volcano region.

In the south one can see the Alps from Alpspitze and Zugspitze in the east up to the Allgäu Alps, Verwall Alps, Silvretta, Säntis, Glarus Alps, Urner Alps, Bernese Alps and Mont Blanc in the west. Besides there are the Jura Mountains on the right next to the Alps.







There is a deep valley in north-eastern direction which contains the Feldsee, a lake of glacial origin at about 1,000 m altitude.




At the top of the mountain (where the weather has been measured since 1915) is a weather observatory that has been in operation since 1937 and carried on by the German meteorological service (WMO code number: 10908). Next to the observatory there is a weather radar.

Then we drove to the Schluchsee, which is a reservoir lake in the district of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald, southeast of the Titisee. The Schluchsee, with its height of 930 metres above sea level, is the highest reservoir in Germany and also the largest lake in the Black Forest.

On our way back to St. Peter we had a short stop at this nice chapel.



It was a bit difficult to take a photo with me, because there was a gate and my host's arm wasn't long enough to get me and the background focussed.

Back at our flat again, we had some tea and cake. Then we went on a walk around the town. This time we walked up to the opposite site, which we could see from our bedroom. We really enjoyed to walk a bit after driving a lot.




If we remember well, this field is called Lehrerfeld, what means teacher fields. If it has something to do with our host's work?






We read the signs and saw, that St.Peter was about 1,2 km away in both directions. All together we walked a bit more than that, we think about 3 km - not really a lot.

Today we heard, that the weather will be not so fine in St. Peter. So we thought about the activity for the day a lot, before we decided to drive about one and a half hour to Schaffhausen and go to the Rhine Falls. The Rhine Falls (Rheinfall in German) are the largest plain waterfalls in Europe.

THey are located on the High Rhine between the municipalities of Neuhausen am Rheinfall and Laufen-Uhwiesen, near the town of Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland, between the cantons of Schaffhausen and Zürich. They are 150 m (450 ft) wide and 23 m (75 ft) high. In the winter months, the average water flow is 250 m³/s, while in the summer, the average water flow is 700 m³/s. Now just enjoy the photos

On our way to Donaueschingen we came through Zollhaus again. We had seen before, that there was a nice old steam locomotive and decided to have a short stop there to take photos. We read the text about the locomotive and started to laugh, because we all thought, that the name of the locomotive sounds really funny: Sauschwänzle - pig's little tail. Later we read on wikipedia, that because of the twisting route of its central section, it is popularly known as the Sauschwänzlebahn (pigtail line)

It seems to be a "river" day today, first Rhine and now Donau - Danube. Donaueschingen is about 30 km far from Schaffhausen. The city lies in the Baar basin in the southern Black Forest at the confluence of the Brigach and Breg rivers— the two source tributaries of the Danube— from which the town gets its name. At school we all learnt, that the confluence of Brigach and Breg is the Donau (Danube), but there is also the source of the brook Donau, which is called Donauquelle, located next to the garden of the palace of the Princes of Fürstenberg.














Donaueschingen was first mentioned as "Donaueschingen" in 889[citation needed]. In 1283, Rudolph von Habsburg granted the countship of Baar and Donaueschingen to Heinrich von Fürstenberg. The right to brew beer was also connected with this grant. This is the source of the Royal Fürstenberg Brewery.




Though the Princes of Fürstenberg were nominally mediatised and dispossed as absolute ruler of the principality, they still own huge property in their former lands, including their palace with the surrounding parks and gardens. The Schlosspark (palace gardens) which used to be public and the only park accessible to the citizens of the town since 1806 recently became off-limits again. The Princes of Fürstenberg were also the owners of the only extant manuscript of the Nibelungenlied until they sold it in 2001. The ancestral brewery has been sold as well.

Next to the brewery we found this beautiful half-timbered house.




Here you see the catholic church St. Johann again. It is a baroque church, built between 1724 and 1747. The two towers are considered as landmark of the town.




The altar was built in 1751.







You maybe remember the photo that we took next to the Donauquelle looking up at the church? Now we look down at the Donauquelle, palace and palace garden.