Güntzburg Altstadt

It’s funny how visiting one place always seems to lead to visiting another.  You make a list of places you want to visit and when you make an effort to make the list smaller with a visit to a place on the list, you discover another place and the list gets larger (or at least stays the same length).

So it was a couple of months ago when I went to Munich with some work colleagues to lounge under (real) palm trees in a (fake) tropical swimming pool.  As we were barrelling down the Autobahn as Germans do, we passed one of those brown signs that seem to be the international standard for pointing out things of interest to travellers and tourists.  This particular sign said something like “Historic Güntzburg Altstadt, 5 km ahead” and so I duly pulled out my mobile phone and marked it on my GPS map for later reference.  One place ticked off of my list, another place added…

Güntzburg's pretty High Street

So this morning when I awoke and saw that the sun was shining (after several days of absolutely appalling wind and snow) I knew that I had better rush off for my “Sunday exploring” while it lasted, and Güntzburg seemed a good choice.  When living in Germany as an avid explorer and amateur historian, it is always good to keep an eye out for towns ending in “burg.”  Burg is the Germanic word for castle or fort and in fact it’s where we get our borough and burgh (as in Edinburgh) in English.  It derives from the Germanic word for berg, which means “hill” as in prehistoric times hilltops were used as basic fortifications.  So any place ending with “burg” is a potentially historically interesting place, provided it hasn’t been pulverized by WWII bombing.  Unfortunately this was the fate of most –burg towns, but luckily there are enough of them that some survived intact, and Güntzburg is one of them.

The local bank

It’s only a 15 minute train ride from Ulm, so I have to wonder why I didn’t go there before now.
Güntzburg was originally founded by the Romans in about 70 BC on the River Donau (Danube) as the Donau was a part of the Limes – a line or fortifications that protected the northern part of the Roman Empire in Germania.  Many towns in this area owe their existence to the Romans (although Ulm, where I live, isn’t one of them, having been founded much later).  It’s quite impressive as you approach it by train as it sits on top of a small hill that is quite visibly higher than the surrounding countryside, as this provided a strategic advantage for its citizens – remember the etymological lesson about the words berg and burg above?

Lots of little alleys

It’s also quite interesting to note that Güntzburg has a very nice and modern railway station, which is clean, utterly free of graffiti, well built and nicely incorporates its original historical station buildings.  You may wonder why I am mentioning this but anyone reading this who has travelled extensively by train in Germany will know that the Germans win a number of awards for building the world’s must depressing, ugly, graffiti covered and soul destroying stations of anywhere in the world.  I have no idea why.  Even in the nicest of towns when you get off the train you feel as though you have just disembarked in the Bronx.  But not Güntzburg!  Top marks to the Bürgers (citizens) of Güntzburg for their top railway station!

The local artists have been at work

So I wandered up the hill to the altstadt (old town), which is mostly intact, although the town walls are long gone.  You can still pretty much see where they were based on the contours of the hill on which the town sits.  It’s a typical German altstadt, with lots of back alleys and small streets that are closed to traffic – and some equally small ones that aren’t, something that I always consider ridiculous!  The usual suspects were there – the rathaus (town hall), multiple kirchen (churches), painted buildings and odd half timbered mediaeval building.  There’s not much to say about it that wouldn’t be the same as any other similarly sized altstadt (oh that’s a convenient excuse for the fact I’ve become bored with writing this entry!) so I’ll let the attached pictures speak for themselves.  I will say however that I shall definitely have to come back in the summer time when it is warmer!

One can only wander around an altstadt for so long on a chilly Sunday afternoon when all of the shops are closed, so after a nice meal in an old gasthof (inn/pub) I caught the train back to Ulm, where I found that the Donau had burst its banks due to the melting of the huge amounts of snow that had fallen over the past couple of days!

The flooded Donau!