Heildburg

The first mention of this ancient German city was in 1196. It has been well preserved mainly because of a Allied General who had studied at the city's university and claimed it had no strategic bombing advantage. The university here is the 3rd oldest in Europe (behind Italy and France) and has roughly 40,000 students. The city itself is about the size of Jackson, MS....yet it has a wee bit more charm than our capital city!

We had a wonderful local guide Isabel, who despite her bag lady looks was quite amazing!

One of the last princes of the city was Karl. Turns out he was friends with Benjamin Franklin and saved the famous castle in the city from even more ruin by putting lightning rods on top of it! Apparently the castle had been bombed by the French, who ruin lots of things, and he rebuilt it only for it to be struck by lightning. Well ole Ben helped a German out by sending him his plans for the lightning rods! Another interesting fact about ole Karl...he had 255 illegitimate children.

Somewhere prior to Karl and after the first 3 or 4 Fredrick's there was a Prince named Fredrick that married a French woman named Elizabeth. For her birthday he built the following arch in ONE night and surprised. Included in the arch were hidden surprises...for each one she got a kiss and nine months later an heir. Sidebar: there was a school trip here where every kid was trying to find the surprises and all of them were taking pictures with their school issues iPads minis. Cool stuff!

A few more bullet points:

• Boys had to wear skirts until the age of 7 due to "accidents"
• Professors were paid per year with a cart full of wine barrels
• Catholic churches have crosses atop them. Protestant ones have roosters. If they have been both they may have both.
• Mark Twain spent quite a bit of time here. Check out his books The Innocents Abroad and The Tramp Abroad

A few in our group toured some gardens while a few more stayed behind and sampled more local beer and goods. I'll let you assume what group I was in!

We ended the night at an outdoor restaurant with ALL local food (despite how good that Texas burger looked) and are ready to head to the mountains tomorrow. I'm the only one in the group who has seen the Alps. I CANNOT wait for them to get their first glimpse...truly amazing.