December 22, 2000
Our daughter had spent a semester in France as an exchange student with her university, and we were excited to finally get to share in the experience with her. Bob was particularly excited about French cuisine.
December 20-21, 2000
We had taken the southern route near the Alps and the Austrian border on our way from Neuschwanstein to Salzburg, and on our way back into Germany we took the Autobahn from Salzburg to Ulm, bypassing Munich, which was a bit of a disappointment, but my mother said we were short on time and stopping in Munich would slow us down too much. We also would have liked to stop in Dachau, which was just a few miles off our route, but again, my mother said no--there wasn't much to see.
As far as I know, my mother never visited a Nazi concentration camp. If she did, it was one of the many things she didn't want to talk about.
Two of our most memorable experiences of the trip happened in Ulm, and I'll get to those later. Ulm is a city of about 126,000 situated on the Danube River. Founded in 850, it is noted primarily for two things: being the birthplace of Albert Einstein in 1879 and having a Gothic church with the tallest steeple in the world (530 feet).
Our hotel was right by the massive cathedral, which my mother said is the largest Protestant church building in the world, but it actually ranks 4th in the world and 2nd in Germany behind the Berlin Cathedral. Still, it is a massive 5,950 square meters (or over 64,000 square feet) inside, seats 2,000, and is, indeed, the tallest church (of any denomination) in the world.
