Bodensee
I am adding blog posts from my trips to Germany for the exchange. This story is about our trip to the Bodensee 2014
Thursday morning we left for the Bodensee with all of our students and our hosts. It was an experience in public transportation. We first caught a train to Friedrichshafen to stay at a Jungendherberge. (Youth hostel) We were not the only ones there so some of the other groups were a little loud but it was a different experience for us. The rooms were like a college dormitory room but the key was the clean-up when you checked out. You take the linens to a cart, sweep the room, and dump any trash. It is to be ready for the next person that stays there with no additional work. It is this technique that keeps the prices reasonable. We spent Thursday at the Zeppelin Museum. It was amazing to see the size of the airships. It would have been a great adventure to take them across the ocean. The engines required were huge. They used Maybach engines and they even had a 1938 Maybach car in the museum. After the museum, we checked in at the hostel and returned to town for a nice dinner. We had dinner on our own but many of the kids chose as did the teachers to have dinner on the lakeshore of Lake Constance. It was a beautiful sunset and made the day complete. Speaking of food we had lunch at a church festival for Corpus Christi. Great Bratwurst and cakes.
On Friday we went into the city of Lindau. This gave us an opportunity to visit the lighthouse for the port at Lindau. I am deathly afraid of heights but I made it to the top and it is only of the adventures I would have with heights. We visited three churches in Lindau dating back several hundred years. We saw St. Martin’s, St. Stephen’s, and The Old Lady of Notre Dame Cathedral. It was a great contrast in style and decorations between the Protestant church and the Catholic Church. St. Martin’s serves as a memorial to the soldiers that died in the war. We then went to Bregenz in Austria a little way down the coast. We went up the Pfanderbahn. The name of the mountain was Pfander and the gondola rose thousands of feet above the base of the mountain. Did I mention that I was afraid of heights? For someone with that affliction, a gondola ride up a mountain is quite an exciting 10 minutes. We spent some time on top of the mountain looking into Austria, Switzerland, and Germany and the lake. I was able to look out as we descended and get some great pictures.
On Saturday we went to the town of Meersburg and had a tour of the oldest surviving castle in Germany. It was built in the 7th century. It was a look back into time and how castles were designed. The best defense was very high walls. Did I mention that I am afraid of heights? The walls had to be over 6 or 7 stories tall and you could look out the windows down to the town below. Again, another lovely strain on my heart. We then rode a ferry to Konstanz. After a short walk, we got on the train for a return visit back to Sasbach and a well-earned rest