Tübingen - The Alternative International "Venice"

Tübingen… What should I say about this rather small town located an hour by train from Stuttgart. This is the kind of place where you won’t find yourself if you are just as random tourist travelling around, which is kind of unfortunate actually. I started to like the town after very first steps outside of railway station: I had a free pretzel (there was bus strike so the gave people pretzel for free to keep them happy :D) 

Arriving into a town around the area where train station is a bit modern but as especially as soon as crossing the bridge over the river and arriving city centre is built from hilly narrow roads surrounded by old buildings and a castle on the top being the “guardian of the city” over a city. Especially in the summer city shows its best sides even that on these days I faced mostly light rain but luckily I’m not made of sugar. Tübingen is a student city with the university of around 25-30 000 students including many international students all over the world studying in various fields like theology, history, archaeology etc. other arts.

During my inter rail trip the football world championships have been on. So far I’ve seen Netherlands game while being in Groningen, France playing while I was in Rouen and highlight of the evening was German playing as I was now in Tübingen. It was a semi-final game so the pressure was hard but the game turn out to be historic one: German won Brazil 7-1 which is the highest score in the semi-finals on word cup ever so it turned the whole town crazy after the game. People gathered on the streets, drumming and singing songs, cars driving as people were waving flags out of windows… And this was just victory to reached place in final so wonder what happens if German win the world championships…

I spend almost two days with Jacqueline and Simone as they were showing for me places around in the city. There were markets during the day on town square, the usual stuff (vegetables, meat, cheese etc…). Then there was school kids, maybe around age of 6 years who were doing their school project having a questionnaire for people about what they buy from market etc. They wanted to ask it from me, Simone just translated the questions even that those small kids tried to speak English for some sentences what I do really appreciate that they were brave enough to try. While going around market it was time to have traditional lunch of that region, “maultfaschen“ (translated in filled pasta pockets). They are kind of tortellini but much bigger and with more filling and were served with a homemade potato salad and beer of own brewery.

You still probably wonder why the headline was the international “Venice.” There is the river called Neckar that flows through the city and on that river people have boats called “stocherkahn” (for themselves and also for tourists) that work as same principle as in Venice. You move and steer the boat by using a pole and in that way you can sail along the river (which is even more enjoyable on a sunny day than in rain…). 

Anyway I decided to take this experience a bit extreme level, it happened that while I was hopping into a boat I kind of slipped and find my way sitting on a ground holding myself with my hands on quite deep riverbank made of cobblestone trying to avoid dropping into the river completely. Luckily I managed to do that and pull myself up in a way that I only dipped myself into a water bit more than just ankles. As a result my feet and shoes were anyways completely soaked so only thing I could do (of course after actually managed to jump into the boat) is to buy new shoes and then I was again good to go to the next destination.