Southern Germany

I don’t know for sure, but I am highly confident these traffic speed cameras in Germany were specifically designed to be intimidating. Here is a highly visible speed camera in a residential area of the southern German city of Konstanz:

I’d much prefer if Germany and Switzerland did what France did quite some time ago: abolish the speed cameras and, where speed is a real safety issue, add street bumps to the streets.

I took this snap a while back while driving through South Germany, sometime just after May. It’s what the Germans call a Maibaum – roughly translated as maypole.

I would not even pretend to know the ins and outs of maypoles in Germany – I think the traditions change a bit depending on where you are in Germany. In general they are erected to celebrate the various trades (plumber, carpenter, etc.), they are erected by the local fire department (who else has a big ladder?), some people tell me the tree at the top must be higher than the highest point in the village – and in this snap, you can see a set of flags hanging from the tree, each flag corresponding to a trade.

Type in Rheinfelden into Google, and you’ll be surprised. There is a Rheinfelden, Switzerland; and there is a Rheinfelden, Germany. The two cities of the same name in the two countries of different names are divided by the river Rhine.

Anyway, I took this snap in the downtown area of the German Rheinfelden:

Continuing the series, the water fountain in the center of the south Germany village of Rheinfelden is so spectacular, if I showed you the full picture first, your brain would explode.  So we took things slow, part by part, in small doses.

Now the time has come to display the full magnificence of this incredible fountain!

Continuing the series, the water fountain in the center of the south Germany village of Rheinfelden is so spectacular, if I showed you the full picture first, your brain would explode.  So let’s take things slow, part by part, in small doses:

I spotted this magnificent willow deep within the Unterer Schlossgarten in Stuttgart:

Interestingly, the willow tree is the origin of the chemical salicin, discovered to have pain-relieving properties and now the basis of the well known drug aspirin.

Continuing the series, the water fountain in the center of the south Germany village of Rheinfeld is so spectacular, if I showed you the full picture first, your brain would explode.  So let’s take things slow, part by part, in small doses:

Not really sure about the historical significance of this lion, hidden deep, deep within the bowels of the Unterer Schlossgarten – and I don’t feel really inspired to find out.

Continuing the series, the water fountain in the center of the south Germany village of Rheinfelden is so spectacular, if I showed you the full picture first, your brain would explode.  So let’s take things slow, part by part, in small doses:

The water fountain in the center of the south Germany village of Rheinfelden is so spectacular, if I showed you the full picture first, your brain would explode.  So let’s take things slow, part by part, in small doses:

In this case the forest is the Schönbuch forest, just south of Stuttgart.

And in this case the tower is the Schönbuch Turm, located at the highest point of the forest, and providing a spectacular view to anyone brave enough to climb it.

Here is the sign you‘ll see along the way to the tower:

And here is what you‘ll see when you come to the tower:

And finally, this is a view from what it looks like at the top!

Everyone knows that trees can grow big nodules called burls. A burls is when root cells in the tree start to grow in an unexpected place, like a trunk.

And everyone knows that trees can grow galls. A gall is similar to a burl, but it is caused by a fungus in the tree that causes the tree to grow something like a wooden wart.

But in a recent trip to Unterer Schlossgarten in Stuttgart I was shocked and terrified to see a real human brain growing in a tree!

Could it be that this tree was planted on the site of an ancient cemetery – and by an unbelievable stroke of luck, some of the dead brain matter was absorbed into the tree where it became re-animated and started growing again.

I wonder what the tree „thinks“ about all this?!

Continuing the series, another snap of one of my favorite sites in all of Europe

Not a lot of people know it, but even though it dates back to the Roman times, Stuttgart got its start in the Middle Ages as a stud farm (that‘s where the name came from).

If you know where to look, you can still find bits and pieces of that horsekeeping past, buried around obscure places within Stuttgart that most tourists are never likely to go:

While enjoying the famous Unterer Schlossgarten deep, deep within the bowels of Stuttgart I happened across about a zillion migrating geese, and almost all of them were wearing bands like this one:

I think hardly a goose – except maybe a crazy goose – would be inclined to wear a bracelet, but an absurd question remains: who would invest time putting bracelets on the legs of around a zillion migrating geese?  And for what purpose?

If you find yourself in Stuttgart, I can heartily recommend Unterer Schlossgarten, a wetland in the heart of Stuttgart.

For those tourists who do travel here they are richly rewarded by spectacular nature and impressive art, as this snap shows:

As artistic a snap as I thought I could take of one of my truly favorite sites in all of Europe, the view of Stuttgart’s Schlossplatz in the summer:

As artistic a snap as I thought I could take of a chestnut growing on a tree in the city park.

Continuing the series, as artistic a snap as I thought I could take of the wonderful but mind-blowing Southern German monastery of Zwiefalten,

Continuing the series . . . as artistic a snap as I thought I could take of the breathtaking Zwiefalten Monastery in Southern Germany,

I spotted this in the Southern German town of Stuttgart-Vaihingen,

Yes, that’s Zwiefalten – not Zweifalten – and you can see some earlier snaps of this mind-blowing Southern German monastery that I took here. In fact, even the insects surrounding this place must soak up the goodness, because on a recent trip I spotted an insect almost as big as a man’s head. I also spotted a fish in a small brook that was almost the size of an American alligator.

If you step inside, there is a very real risk your brain will explode. And as you can see from the outside, the stunning sights are hardly less interesting:

As impressive a snap as I thought I could take of the magnificent Zwiefalten Monastery nestled deep in the South German Baroque village of the same name: