On my way back home I spent a day in Stuttgart where I took this photo of a photo of São Paulo railway station. Something of an odd choice of souvenir you may think but there is a reason for it.

Next to the main station in Stuttgart they are digging a big hole.  That's where a new station is to go as part of a monumentally expensive and controversial redevelopment that knocks our pitiful tram project into the dust.  Google Stuttgart21 for the full story.

Anyway, along the walkway that fringes the hole and leads out of the existing station (a fine building) is a display of photographs of notable stations from around the world. São Paulo's is an impressive example but what led me to photograph it was learning from the caption that the station was built in Glasgow then shipped out and assembled on site.  Days of engineering glory.

After a pleasant lunch looking out onto the Scloss Garten, a green space in the middle of town, I got on a red double decker for a city tour.  The winter frequency of these tours is one an hour so I didn't get off at any intermediate stops despite the attractions of the Pig Museum in the old slaughter house (45,000 exhibits) and the vineyard walk (several hectares of vineyard within the city) and the Mercedes Benz museum.

Another trip will be needed when I might find someone to explain to me why wine is served in quantities of 110 or 210 millilitres.

On Saturday I went on a bus trip to Wurzburg on the river Main.  Back in the day it was terribly important and to judge by one of it's main attractions, the bishop's palace, there was plenty of money about.

You don't build something that size for peanuts even in an age where the peasants were lucky to get sixpence a day.  I quite liked the building but Baroque and Rococo are not styles that appeal to me so I found much of the interior decoration and furnishings somewhat OTT, all that heavily carved gilded wood and plush.

The place was badly knocked about towards the end of the war so there was a degree of reconstruction in the interior but I couldn't understand enough of what the guide said to know whether I was looking at an echt Tiepolo ceiling fresco or one done by a local house painter.

The town has a stone bridge over the river reminiscent of the Charles bridge in Prague with its array of statues.

On the hill behind the statue you can see the fortress that we also visited.  It's beginnings are very ancient.  The spot is clearly one you would pick for defence in the bad old days of marauding tribes. It has a well that goes a hundred metres down through solid rock to the river.  Those peasants had to work their fingers to the bone for their sixpence a day.

Nowadays their descendants are busy fleecing tourists, servicing the university's 20,000 students or making wine.  Amongst the university's clutch of Nobel laureates are Roentgen of the X-rays and Heisenberg of the uncertainty principle.

I felt obliged to try the wine and it eased my consumption of what my dictionary called meatloaf but I thought more like spam.  I can't say I've been smitten by the food on offer but I did eat well in Nuremberg so it is around.  The wine was tasty and I've bought a couple of bottles to accompany my upcoming Burns Supper.

 Back in Schwabich Hall the snow fell heavily yesterday and the younger element tossed snowballs about beneath my window.  When the fight was over I went for a stroll and after a coffee and a sachertorte came across this chum of Martin Luther.

He doesn't look the sort of chap who'd be terribly amused to find a snowball in his holy cup.

Yesterday was bright and sunny so after lunch instead of scuttling off to my bedsit I had a good wander around some parts of the town that I had not seen.  There's an unmanned railway station where not many trains are scheduled although in its day it must have been quite busy given the size of the buildings.  The booking hall is now an art gallery, closed yesterday.  It's not far away from a smart gallery endowed by local family made good, the Wurths.  Adolf's little screw making business has grown into a worldwide group with 65,000 employees and is still family owned.  In Swabisch Hall they make solar panels.  On the way here from Stuttgart I saw solar panel farms but no wind farms although I've spotted one since.

Here's how things looked in yesterday's sunshine and here's the view from my window in today's snow

If you were setting up a flute band you wouldn't call it the Bingo Flute Orchestra but a Japanese group of that name entertained the townspeople of Sawabisch Hall on the morning of the Feast of the Epiphany.  I imagine Bingo must be something else in Japanese.

There were about a dozen players and a choir of eight.  They played both western and Japanese music, adding an instrument called a koto for the latter.  It was a lovely concert.  Two of the girls had studied here which I think is the main reason the town was included in their European tour.

After culture came sport, the Three Kings Race around town.

Here I've caught the tail-end of the start.

Swabisch Hall sits in a river valley and rises steeply on either side but especially on the side these hearty chaps (and a few chapesses) were doing their pans in on.  Here they are peching up a hill.

When not covered in athletes and race paraphanelia the Markplatz or at least one side of it looks like this.

I went on a trip to Nurnberg yesterday. It's a much larger place but has a similarly ancient and beautiful old centre. The trip featured a visit to the oodles of cellars dug over the years and at four levels starting way back in the Middle Ages for the storage of beer.

Impressive but not all that interesting.  I'd rather have visited the Albrecht Durer museum.  What was interesting and not a little horrifying was to find that from the beer mash they distill something they have the effrontery to call whisky, and organic single malt whisky at that.

I've still to try it.

I arrived in Stuttgart on Sunday evening en route for my two weeks of studying German in the beautiful little town of Swabisch Hall.  It really is lovely and if it stops raining I'll post some pictures.

In the meantime here is my super efficient Deutches Bahn train broken down in the bundu where we waited an hour for the next one.

On top of spending Sunday afternoon hanging around Edinburgh airport and the night in an over-priced Stuttgart hotel and much of the morning waiting for a train this was tedious.

 When I got to the Goethe Institute more tedium while I was processed.  Tedious but thorough including as it did uncovering the depth  of my ignorance.  So early to bed for on early start : breakfast served from 7am in the institute caff.  Quite a decent spread. Then a welcome speech from the boss and brief remarks from administration people before being whisked off by a teacher.  There are over 80 students representing 40 countries.  I am the only Briton.  I am also undoubtedly the oldest but while the majority are twenty somethings there is a sprinkling of greyer heads.

In my group we are nine and the level is pretty much at the limit of what I can do but I'm sure I'll muddle through and learn something.  I spent the afternoon on a sort of treasure hunt so I can now for example tell you what you can buy on the third floor of Muller's department store and which bus goes to the swimming pool.

Tomorrow is a public holiday (those three kings) so no classes which explains why my two weeks extend into the Monday of a third week.