Vacation: Act I, Scene IV

The next day we left Schwangau and headed down the Deutsche Alpenstraße, a scenic highway through the Alps between Füssen and Lake Constance. The weather wasn't bad, but it wasn't so good that we could see the Swiss or Austrian Alps. We eventually made it to Meersburg, a town on Lake Constance where Germany's oldest castle is located. It was very important that we go there, because Meersburg has no train station, thus it would be difficult for us to visit normally, since we are still carless.




Anyway, the Meersburg Castle wasn't all fancy-pants like Neuschwanstein or Hohenschwangau. It was old, dark, a little bit musty and chock full of armor and big, nasty, sharp & pointy weapons.


Even the dooknobs seem to say "don't mess with Meersburg".



In addition to the big, nasty & pointy weapons, there was a big bee (presumably with a nasty, pointy stinger) inside.

Dad & I took a quick tour of the Zeppelin Museum, a small but nice museum jammed full of all sorts of zeppelin-related things. Dad really got a kick out of the old radio gear, some of which was made by Telefunken, which I find interesting because whenever people ask me where I work, nobody has ever heard of the company I work for (despite the big blue sign that glows in the night...), but when I tell them "It was formerly Telefunken" (after my company bought the spin-off from Telefunken), they all say "oh, ok" and nod their heads like it makes sense. I think half of them just say it because they know they should know where it is, but don't really.

Anyway, after all that, we hopped onto the ferry that took us to Konstanz, where Hotel Gerda (our lodging for the next 2 nights) was located.



After a harrowing parking experience that required 2 drivers, 3 directors and at least one plasterer, we wandered Konstanz for a while, introduced Dad & Jan to Turkish food, saw some kid lure a swan out of the lake and feed it from his hand, and Jeannette got to ride a big metallic horse with an infinite number of feet.* See for yourself:





*I count 6 feet, maybe there are 8. Either way, 6 and 8 are even numbers, but that is an odd number of feet for a horse to have. And since the only number that is both even and odd is infinity, the horse must have an infinite number of feet. You just can't see all of them, for some reason.**

**I can't take credit for this logic. Unfortunately, I don't know who orginally proved a similar thing.***

***It had to do with Alexander the Great's infinite number of limbs and the color of his horse.****

****A few minutes with Google would probably lead you to the original source.