This is part 12 of 16 of a journey through my home country: Germany.

I invite everyone to take a closer look at what I call home. I will show you sides of today-Germany you didn't know of - especially when you are not German.
A lot of "foreigners" (actually I don't really like this word) connect Germany with beer, cars, lederhosen and sauerkraut. I admit these are parts of Germany and important ones too (especially the beer and the cars), but they by far are not everything!

This article serie will show you the 16 countries of Germany, some quite similar to each other, some totally different. Sure, this serie will mainly feature photography, but perhaps I will link to other styles of art like modern German music or so.

Our journey leads us through (click the ones in italic to see that article):

_{Bavaria
Saxony
Brandenburg
Berlin
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Schleswig-Holstein
Hamburg
Lower Saxony
Saxony-Anhalt
Thuringia
Hesse
Baden-Wuerttemberg
Rhineland-Palatinate
Saarland
North Rhine-Westphalia
Bremen}

... or if you want to take a look at our southern neighbour, Austria, please read Exploring Austria by =Glasperlenspielerin.

Please, come and see...



Hi and welcome back...
I know, it's been a while. I'm a busy man - and my own computer is occupied, so I've to write this on my girlfriend's laptop... which I'm not really used to.
Okay, let's stop the small talk and start: today we'll visit Baden-Wuerttemberg, or -Württemberg, as it's written with the correct German Umlaut.
Baden-Württemberg is one of our two southernmost states, it's located south of last article's Hesse and west of first article's Bavaria. It shares much of it's border with France and with Switzerland. Among the 16 German states, it's third in both, area and inhabitants - which would be around 10.8 million.



The capital of Baden-Württemberg is Stuttgart, with merely 600,000 inhabitants not really big, but of importance not only for Germany, but the whole world. In this 1060 yeras old town, Daimler and Benz invented the automobile only 125 years ago - today it is home of the Daimler AG (Mercedes-Benz) as well as one of world's best sports cars manufacturers: Porsche.
Stuttgart is a city where old and new meet. Old buildings like the Stiftskirche can be found everywhere in the inner city, but all these gems of the medieval are flanked by modern buildings like, for example, the new Porsche Museum.
The city itself is surrounded by wineyards, as Stuttgart belongs to one of the biggest German wine-growing areas.



Baden-Württemberg mainly consists of small and mid-size cities, most of which are historically grown. No surprise the second biggest city is Mannheim with only 310.000 inhabitants. Mannheim is about 1250 years old, but was heavily damaged in WWII. So, when you visit Mannheim and see the grid layout of the streets (quite unusual for Germany!), you may think this is due to the war - no, the grid was designed in 1600, that's over 400 years ago! Still today, Mannheim is sometimes called Quadratstadt (square town) for this. Even the street's names are only numbers and letters, like A5 for example. Normally, German streets are named after important persons (Schillerstraße), other towns (Hamburger Allee), events (Straße des 17. Juni) or even animals (Adlerhorst). NOT numbers and letters...



An interesting city would be Karlsruhe.
Not even 300 years old, Karlsruhe is really young. Is is a planned, residential city which is built around the Schloss (palace) in it's center.
Today, Karlsruhe is considered the "city of law" in Germany. This is due to the courts located in the city, two of which are the most important ones in Germany: The Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court of Germany) is powerful enough that it's decisions have the force of a law and the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice of Germany) is the highest court of appeals in matters of civil law and criminal law, the court of ultimate resort.
That means: If you see your constitutional rights being restricted by a law, go to Karlsruhe. Same if you have problems with you neighbour and fight your way throuh all levels of jurisdiction.



Before I introduce you to the landscape, let's take a quick ride through the university towns of Baden-Württemberg. Those three towns are Heidelberg, almost 2000 years old (and with 1 million years old signs of human life in this area), 1300 years old Tübingen and 900 years old Freiburg. So, three of five classical and old German universitiy towns (the other ones being Göttingen and Marburg) are located in Baden-Württemberg.
Heidelberg is well known for it's university's recognized scientists and thinkers like Arendt, Habermas or Hegel, as well as the movie "Anatomy". Today, it still is one of Germany's most recognized universities.
Tübingen university is over 530 years old and especially known for it's research in medicine, natural sciences and the humanities. Notable persons having worked here are Braun, Kinkel, Dahrendorf, Schmid, Hölderlin, Alzheimer, Bonhoeffer, our president Horst Köhler and the present pope Benedict XVI.
Only a little younger is the university of Freiburg. She's counted to Germany's most excellent universities today and hosted minds like those of Adenauer, Weber, Hayek, Marcuse, Heidegger and Ersasmus of Rotterdam.



The landscape of Baden-Württemberg is mostly shaped by mountains and hills. Only the area around the Rhine is relatively flat - and one of the hottest areas in Germany's summers.
Unfortunately, pictures of the rhine are mainly shot a little north, but I will show you these in some of the next articles. So, only a very few pictures today:



The Rhine flows through the Bodensee, or Lake Constance, as it is called in English. The English name refers to the German city of Konstanz, that is located at it's shores. Yet, this name is not fair. The Bodensee is huge and several cities are located close to it. The lake also is the border between Germany, Austria and Switzerland, so Bodensee is a fine compromise as a name. It's three main islands, Mainau, Lindau and Reichenau are German, even when the borders running through the lake are based on no legally binding agreement - and therefore don't really exist.



The main attraction of Baden-Württemberg's landscape may be the Schwarzwald or Black Forest. You can really hear the evil wolf waiting for Little Red Riding Hood in this name.
The Schwarzwald is a wooded mountain range of 12,000km² with it's highest elevation at 1,493m, the Feldberg. The mountain Schauinsland (translates as: look at the landscape) is also very well known. The city of Freiburg I mentioned above borders the Schwarzwald at the west, as well as Baden-Baden. There are several idyllic routes through the Schwarzwald, leading to hotels and resorts or small villages, and the Autobahn A5 runs through the forest as well.
Oh, and one of this planet's biggest earthworms live here...



Let's come to an end, you've been waiting long enough for this article.
But before that, as always, some words about the people living here: As you may hear from the name, Baden-Württemberg is a state which was created after the war. It consists of the three older states of Hohenzoller, Baden and Württemberg. Basically, the dialects in Baden-Württemberg reflect these old borders, as some speak Swabian and some speak Allemanic. Both dialects are hard to understand for north Germans and even harder to tell apart. No wonder a famous ad-campaign for the state is "Wir können alles. Außer Hochdeutsch.", which would be "We can do anything except [speak] standard German.".
Baden-Württemberg are quite proud of their "swabian innovative spirit" and indeed, important inventions, small ones and big ones, have been made in this state. Also, this region is full of world market leaders, most of them still being owned by their founding families. One could say: Baden-Württemberg is one major center of industrial production, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. At the same time, it is said that the people of Baden-Württemberg are a little closefisted - but perhaps this is a need for good business.

Now, this was only a very, very short trip through Baden-Württemberg and I know I missed a lot (if not almost everything). But this is supposed to be a short, informative journal and not a travel guide. I hope you like the pictures - if you do, please give the artists a visit and/or a fav, they really deserve it.

If you have any questions about this station of our trip or Germany as a whole: please ask, I'll try to answer as quick as possible.
And if you have any suggestions about how to make this trip any better, please don't hesitate to write me, either.





Looking forward for your comments - and the next station of this trip...

PS: This journal can soon be read and faved as a news article!