Another day, another cultural visit. With our time in Germany quickly approaching its end, we want to try to fit as much into our days as possible. In order to do so, we visited Ulm today in the morning and early afternoon. Ulm is a city under half of the size of and located about a 30–40-minute train ride west of Augsburg. In order to catch this train, we had to meet in the lobby at 8 AM and walk over to the Augsburg Hauptbahnhof. When we got there, we learned that our train was cancelled and that we had to wait 20 minutes for another one. The student assistant from the University and our friend, Maxi, commented that cancellations and delays are typical of the German train system. That sounds like the Pittsburgh Port Authority!
Anyways, after finally arriving in Ulm, we met our tour guide and headed over to the Ulmer Münster, a massive, gothic cathedral at the center of the city. In fact, it closely resembles the gothic style of Cathy, or the Cathedral of Learning, on Pitt’s campus. This is what led my friend Gaby to give it the title of “fake Cathy”, which is the title of today’s post. What is special about the Münster is that it possesses the tallest church tower in the world (similar to Cathy being the tallest educational building in the Western Hemisphere) – and people are allowed to climb it! Before we could do that, our friendly tour guide took us through the enormous interior of the church. We saw multiple beautiful stained-glass windows, shields and crests mounted on the walls, and even a towering organ on the wall of the front of the church. It was interesting to learn that it was an honor for German nobles to have their shields mounted in the cathedral. Additionally, I enjoyed learning about the civil engineering aspects of the building. For example, when inspectors realized later after the structure was built that it was not stable, they built decorative arches on the outside that diverted the weight of the roof to the side foundation of the building rather than having it rest on the columns in the center of the church. After this tour, we climbed the steps up to what we thought was as far as we could go. It turns out that construction was being done on the upper part of the tower, so we only got to climb about 400 of the 768 steps. However, that 400 step climb left us all out of breath. This was unfortunate, because there was no breath left for the gorgeous view from that middle level to take. Anyways, the exhaustive climb paid off when we could see an ariel view of the city and a faint view of the Alps in the southern distance.
After the Münster, we ventured to the portion of the Danube River than runs through the city. This river actually exists as the border between Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, with Ulm being in the latter state. There was a wall surrounding the part of the city that the river was on, and we were able to walk on it. The views were amazing, and everything was just so serene. Also, the city has two famous leaning buildings. One is a hotel that leans over a canal within the city and the other is the Metzgerturm, which is a city gate in front of the old butcher’s slaughterhouse. It has to be held up with some cables mounted to one side of the tower. So, Ulm is similar to Pisa, Italy, and I’m not sure if that is a flex or an embarrassment to civil engineering. Let’s just go with a flex, because we don’t insult civil engineers here!
We ate lunch at a place in Ulm that had the largest personal pizzas ever. My pizza could have fed at least three people, yet I ate almost the entire thing. After taking yet another delayed train back to Augsburg, I went to Starbucks to work on my final presentation. Later tonight, some of the group is going to a highly recommended Mexican restaurant in the city, so I’m excited for that. Overall, today was a good day, and while I’m excited to go home and see my friends and family, I’m getting sadder and sadder that this trip is coming to an end.