Autumn air and atmosphere

Would you like to have breakfast with me???

And afterwards take some photos together???

;-)

"Unter den Linden", the "inn in the meadows" at Rothenburg, Germany,
is our favourite place on a Sunday morning for this plan.

The breakfast buffet is gorgeous, but - psst - don't tell it anybody else, otherwise it'll be too overcrowded the next time you and I go there.

And: it's a great place to contemplate and to take some moody photographs, especially in autumn time.

The open-air pub of "Unter den Linden" is directly located at the bank of the river Tauber; which is quite a flat little creek 10 kilometers after it's origin. 

"Foliage boots" on the river...

Angelika, the tenant, and her team know how to decorate modestly but in a good style at once
and so you find seasonal bouquets everywhere in and outside the small inn.

So, when do we meet there in Rothenburg???

;-)

Sunday stroll around Rothenburg

When have you been to Rothenburg o.T. in Southern Germany last time?

One of Germany's most popular tourist destinations is only half an hour travel time away from our hometown. So every now and then my sweetheart and I take advantage of the proximity of time and place and pay a visit to Rothenburg.

Last Sunday we did this trip together with two good friends, had a great breakfast at our favourite "inn in the meadows" UNTER DEN LINDEN first and thereafter we had a very pleasant stroll along the Tauber Valley path beneath Rothenburg.

So please accompany us on our stroll through the phantastic springtime nature of this splendid location.

It's blowball time...

...and time of the chestnut bloom.

And - surprisingly - we had an encounter with "wild beasts"...

...the herd of "Taubertal Alpakas" - Tauber Valley alpacas....

...bred far away from their habitat Andes Mountains to delight their owners and visitors and - of course - to use their precious wool.

Short prior Pentecost you can find many peonies in our local gardens and parks.

We name this beautiful flower "Pfingstrose" - literally translated to "Pentecost Rose".

I hope you enjoyed our common stroll along the river Tauber - and the precious items we found along the track.

CU (See you) at Rothenburg next time!?!?!

;-)

Sunday afternoon stroll in January

The winter 2014 in Germany is rather dully and grimly at the moment.

So far no snow or ice in the lowlands. Even the hills in the uplands haven't seen much snow this season of the year.

Currently the colour of the hill tops meanders something between a dark olive green and mud brown, depending on the incidence of light.

Incidence of light? What kind of light is he talking about??? We used to have sunshine even in wintertime here in Germany, but that was ages ago... ;-)

Generally speaking I would say the whole landscape is wraped in different shades of grey - and these shades of grey are far away from being erotically at all... ;-)

Yes - GREY - is the new (?) and dominant (!) colour of the winter season 2013 / 2014 here in Central Europe.

At the weekend the best bet is to stay at home, to lie on your sofa and pull the blanket above your head...
...or: you take your camera and try to find some fresh (grey?) air and some (other!) colours outdoors.
That's what we did on Sunday afternoon, after we overcame ours weaker selves.

Our Sunday stroll started at Bronnbach Abbey, located in the north of the valley of the Tauber, in the north of the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

That's approx. 40 km away from my hometown.

We walked on the bike- and walkway along the river Tauber.

A first surprise and fortunate coincidence was our discovery of an old piety column out of the 18th century.

We have many of these piety columns and wayside shrines spread over the whole region.

That's the reason why our part of the country is (also) known as "Madonnenländle" - the (small) region where you find many pictures and statues of Madonna and many other saints.

This piety column was made from sandstone and built up in 1738 - so nearly 300 years ago!

And still in good condition, although sandstone is not very solid.

The first unexpected colour "explosion" we found in the middle of the grey was a shrub with bright red berries.

As far as I know / guess these are the berries of the Viburnum opulus - the guelder rose in winter time.

In the meanwhile we left the valley and climbed on of the hills above the river Tauber.

Behind the village of Reicholzheim we walked on the plateau of the hill, where the landscape looks like this.

Again we found vestiges of the past - this time an old station of the cross.

Quite unusually the stone crosses - again made from red sandstone - were embedded into a stone wall.

Continuing our way back to Bronnbach Abbey we found other colours and structures that attracted our attention...

...an impressive old oak...

...and a knobby old and moss-covered apple tree along our way.

The beautiful green colour of the moss we were able to photograph several times, especially in shady and moist areas of the wood.

On closer consideration / observation of the countryside we even spotted the beautiful structure of a scythed and ploughed corn field with its golden stubble.

That's always my experience:

No weather is too bad or no landscape is too dull - with a camera in your hand you become an explorer and you see and capture colours, structures or things that stay generally invisible for others.

To become an explorer you just need to conquer the force of gravity sometimes,

which is highest when lying on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon... ;-)

Finnish lake district in Southern Germany?

More than two days of continual and heavy rains are behind us.

Sunday morning the rainfall stopped in the region where I live.

The rain raised the water levels of our local brooks, creeks and rivers continuously, so that they passed over their beds and flooded the land around.

During a short rain break on Saturday afternoon we made a trip through the valley of the Tauber,
our small local river.

In the hometown of my parents I had to check if the water penetrated into the basement of my parent's house, but fortunately everything was OK. But many houses close to the river had less luck and needed the support of the volunteer fire brigade to pump out their cellars.

Our little river Tauber, whose bed has a normel width of 8 - 15 meters, now looked like a lake district with a width of up to 500 meters in some places.

But all in all our region wasn't in such a hard luck like many regions in the south and southeast of Germany, in Austria and in Czech Republic.

There they have a once-in-a-five-hundred-years flood and that's a real desaster for hundreds of thousands of people after they already had a flood of the century in 2002.

Driving back to my hometown we took photos of some flooded allotment gardens, where the strawberries or the flowers looked like little islands within a sea of brown water.

Back in Bad Mergentheim, we checked the flood mark at the Wolfgangsbrücke,
the bridge of Saint Wolfgang.

Here the situation was tensed, but not too critically.

Even without stop sigh no cyclist had the with to follow the bikeway.