Essen und Wandern im Esslingen

 

 

I think this was the view from either the main floor deck or from the third floor room (Johanna’s) where we stayed in Esslingen for three nights. Esslingen is just a few minutes from Stuttgart, Baden-Wurtemburg’s largest city (600,000+ people). Way off in the distant we could see two castles on the hills. We drive thirty minutes there and then hiked for several hours up to the castle’s beer garden.

 

Jojo’s house sits on a piece of land on a hill in the town but behind the house was a hill that in former times was a vineyard. Her family owns a section of the land sloping down the hill in addition to the land where the house is built. Several hundred years ago, a crop blight struck the vineyards killing off most of them. Soon after this a law was passed to limit the percentage of land that could be planted with one crop. Apparently in the hills around Esslingen you can still stumble across old building foundations from the vineyard days. We learned all of this from Jojo and her family who were great tour guides.

 

After a BBQ dinner of Putenschnitzel (turkey slices), lamb and steak, Baerbl, Wolfram, Sue and I headed out for a scenic dusk walk overlooking Esslingen and the Neckar River valley. Here’s the German flag proudly flying in someone’s backyard. Our exchange students always comment on the number and pervasiveness of American flags flying in Minnesota. Are there a lot? Sure, in front of public buildings and some houses and everywhere around the Fourth of July and Memorial Day but I don’t think I notice it that much.

 

This might have been the only evening that we wore sweatshirts. Wolfram served in the German Army as a doctor in the eighties and maybe nineties and possibly he is still a reservist. He did some time in Kosovo. These guys are from Allgau, a region in southern Bavaria. We heard a lot about the fortitude of the Allgau people.

 

Sunset

At the end of our walk we stopped in at the Jager Inn, a local Hotel/Restaurant/Bier Garten. We enjoyed a local brew. Think global, drink local.

 

From the kitchen deck we could see airplanes in the distance landing at Stuttgart’s airport.

 

This is a good view of the backyard annex with the Hutte (small hut) and the picnic tent that we set up for dinner.

 

We watched this neighbor climb this really tall ladder to do some painting. The next day I saw him sticking his pain roller out from the third floor window to reach some of the higher spots. The window shutters seem pretty popular on German houses. They roll up like blinds from the inside but the are on the outside of the window. In Neuenburg we slept with our windows open but with the blinds closed. Air still passes through.

 

These flowers were from a park next to a small lake in the center of Stuttgart.