Although our paramount goal and destination was Austria, our flight arrived to Strasbourg in Alsace (Eastern France), and from there we went to Ulm (Germany) by car. Having overcome all obstacles caused by our GPS (yeah, in fact, instead of helping us get to the place it actually mislead us several times!), we eventually got to Ulm from where we are going to get to Vienne the next morning.And since we are on our own transport, and hence can wander around any place for as long as we want to. The hotel in Vienna has been booked, so we check out the weather forecast (raining and cold…) – and decide we might as well stay in Ulm for a while.
So we go around Ulm and have a look at its centre and the university. In fact we like the place most of all other places we saw in Germany… on the one hand, it is big enough, and at the same time very cozy and nice. Its huge University is quite interesting in design and is surrounded by a huge park… Ulm is located on the hills – so it reminds us of San Francisco a bit. Danube divides the city into two parts – Ulm and Neu Ulm (New Ulm). That is where the border of Bavaria begins as well! So when you cross the bridge – you find yourself in a different Bundesland.
All streets of Ulm are crammed with parked cars. So we find it hard to find a parking slot. Finally we manage to find a vacant place – the last one, actually! – in a Deutschhaus 6 storey parking. After having spent about half a day in Ulm, we went to Austria, and our first goal was the famous village named… ‘Fucking’ that is not far from Salzburg, the birthplace of W.-A. Mozart.
So… we certainly took a photo of the famous board with the name of the village on it. And even got a warning from a guy who came out of one of the houses, observed us suspiciously and then said that he had had our car numbers written down and in case we stole the sign he would call the police. It turned out that the sign was being stolen many times!
Concerning the village’s… hmmmm… let us say – unusual name, the village was created – and named – more than a thousand years ago. So people just would not know that someday, this word that they have chosen to name the village would mean something different in other languages.
We continued our journey aroung Austria by car and went to Salsburg - but that is another story...
To be continued shortly.