Today, with nearly everything in Radolfzell closed on Sundays, we chose to explore a town that's only 20 km from where we're staying: Konstanz. To reach it, all we had to do was use our Bodenseecard (sic) tickets, valid for four days anywhere on the Westlicher Bodensee public transportation network and free to visitors like us, staying in the area. Presumably it's an initiative to encourage the use of public transport; I'm impressed. So Trains 11 and 12 of our trip were on a Swiss train known as the
Seehas, which I assumed meant Lake Hare, haring along the shores of the lake. However
eine Seehase is actually a kind of fish, a
lumpsucker in English!
One can get terribly side-tracked while doing the background research for blogposts.
The train stopped at many intermediate stations, and just before the terminus we crossed the Rhine where it exits the
Bodensee and becomes a proper river. On the wall of the Torturm der Alten Rheinbrücke we read an inscription in Gothic Script saying that, at this spot in 1548, the burghers of Konstanz had fought off a Spanish army ... This part of the world has a complex history in which the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Empire feature repeatedly; my knowledge of European history is all too vague.
We mostly explored the old town, which is full of winding alleyways and interesting little shops. There's also a good coffee place, packed with students today, where we had a long sit down. At the end of the main thoroughfares on the old town hill are towers with arched gates through them, reminiscent of those in Swiss towns. Being so close to neutral Switzerland in the 2nd World War, someone here had the wit to suppose that if the lights were left on at night time, the allied bomber pilots would assume that this was Switzerland. The ploy worked, and, unlike Friedrichshafen, this city was not destroyed by bombs. Count Zeppelin was from Konstanz, although the manufacture of Zeppelin aircraft took place in Friedrichshafen. Anyhow, we found the Count's place of birth, colourful murals decorating it.
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| Zeppeilinhaus, Konstanz |
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| Self portrait by August Deusser |
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| Elizabeth Deusser, portrayed by her husband |
We also discovered the
Kunsthalle, with free entry on Sunday, another bonus. The special exhibition here was of paintings by an artist of my grandparents' generation,
August Deusser, 1870-1942. He seems to have experimented with all the styles of art that were fashionable during those years, particularly Impressionism, but also
Blauer Reiter expressionism. Deusser had an obsession with cavalry and horses, which he painted in his early and late works and throughout his career. He came from Köln, so the exhibition included several landscapes showing the Kölner Dom, one striking one showing upright, uniformed military men on horseback with the cathedral in the background. Another repeated subject was the arched bridges of railway viaducts.
As artists' wives often do, his wife Elizabeth seems to have taken good care of him, and she took care of his artistic legacy too after his death in Konstanz during wartime, making sure that his paintings were preserved across the border, in Switzerland.
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| Painting of Köln by August Deusser |
Today, with nearly everything in Radolfzell closed on Sundays, we chose to explore a town that's only 20 km from where we're staying: Konstanz. To reach it, all we had to do was use our Bodenseecard (sic) tickets, valid for four days anywhere on the Westlicher Bodensee public transportation network and free to visitors like us, staying in the area. Presumably it's an initiative to encourage the use of public transport; I'm impressed. So Trains 11 and 12 of our trip were on a Swiss train known as the Seehas, which I assumed meant Lake Hare, haring along the shores of the lake. However eine Seehase is actually a kind of fish, a lumpsucker in English! 
The train stopped at many intermediate stations, and just before the terminus we crossed the Rhine where it exits the Bodensee and becomes a proper river. On the wall of the Torturm der Alten Rheinbrücke we read an inscription in Gothic Script saying that, at this spot in 1548, the burghers of Konstanz had fought off a Spanish army ... This part of the world has a complex history in which the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Empire feature repeatedly; my knowledge of European history is all too vague.
We mostly explored the old town, which is full of winding alleyways and interesting little shops. There's also a good coffee place, packed with students today, where we had a long sit down. At the end of the main thoroughfares on the old town hill are towers with arched gates through them, reminiscent of those in Swiss towns. Being so close to neutral Switzerland in the 2nd World War, someone here had the wit to suppose that if the lights were left on at night time, the allied bomber pilots would assume that this was Switzerland. The ploy worked, and, unlike Friedrichshafen, this city was not destroyed by bombs. Count Zeppelin was from Konstanz, although the manufacture of Zeppelin aircraft took place in Friedrichshafen. Anyhow, we found the Count's place of birth, colourful murals decorating it.
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