Day 14 - Heilbronn

Friday morning June and I strolled the hotel property a bit before Juergen, Sabine and Marlis met us to take a walk around the local lake, Breitenauer See.  

The plan for the day was to take a quick walk for exercise and then head downtown to see Heilbronn and meet a bunch of other 'out of towners' for a guided tour of the city. 

At the hotel, a tractor appeared with a flail mower and began mowing around the trees.  It is clearly old but ran like a champ. It is good to see the Germans like their old tractors. 

It is a Schuler, they still are in business today. 

Breitenauer See is a man made lake.  Sabine said it was drained for 2 years to irradicate invasive species. I wish we could do that with Lake Champlain, but it is a bit large for that. It was a nice walk of about 4.3km (2.7mi). 

After our walk we took two cars into downtown Heilbronn. It is only about 30mins. Juergen ran some errands and the girls, June, Sabine, Marlis and I went to downtown for a walk around. It was another beautiful day and the city was active but not too crowded. 

We had Currywurst for lunch, I think it was even better than what we had in Berlin. Of course we then had to have coffee before our tour. Juergen met us for coffee. 

We met our guide and the other out of towners in front of the Town Hall. There is no way we will be able to remember, much less pronounce, the names of Juergen and Sabine's friends but despite the language barrier we enjoyed their company. It is a bit humiliating being the only couple that did not speak German or at least one additional language..but we are the dumb Americans. 

The Heilbronn Town Hall facade has a 16th-century astronomical clock that has been running for over 500 years. It is an impressive piece of engineering. 

We enjoyed the tour and the guide did much of it in both German and English, so we did not miss it all. Heilbronn was completely destroyed during WWII. When they built it back they did not build it as it was, they did restore the historically significant buildings, but the rest of the city was planned for the future, wider streets etc. 

We ended our tour of Heilbronn on top of the tower overlooking the city, sipping local wine.  It could be worse. 

After our tour we passed through the center of town where they are holding their annual wine festival from the 7th to the 17th of September, yes...we nailed it. This is German wine country and all the local Wineries setup booths with their wine. We did sample a few. 

We eventually moved onto dinner at Heilbronn Brauart.  It was an interesting place, it is a non functional brewery, but that does not seem to dampen their business. We had a great meal.

We made as stop at a bridge on the way back to fetch our vehicles. Sabine and Juergen placed a locket on Goetzenturm-Bruecke bridge, the Heilbronn love bridge. 

A very nice way to commemorate their 30th anniversary. 

It was a full fun day, we retired to our hotel looking forward to the celebration tomorrow.