Schwäbisch Hall pt. 1

On Wednesday we connected with our bus driver Sasha, a guy not much older than our students. He drove us out of Stuttgart to the headquarters of Würth Group, where we toured the warehouse floor and meet with the Chairman, who is a Kelley alumnus. This was the first time we met our German colleagues and their students from Hochschule Heilbronn - Schwäbisch Hall, who joined us for the tour. Following lunch at Würth, we accidentally drove in a circle before taking a road to Schwäbisch Hall which passed under the highest bridge in Europe. I don't even know how big it is, but it's certainly impressive.

We checked into Hotel Hohenlohe in Schwäbisch Hall, which was very nice. My room was on the ground floor so the view wasn't much. I looked out onto a lawn, some trees and a street with some historic buildings so it was fine, but not as fantastic as what I would have seen from an upper floor.

Very quickly we departed on a city walking tour with Jeanette's friend Heidi. We were running late, so unfortunately we rushed through the tour and didn't get as much time or information as I would have liked. Schwäbisch Hall is a beautiful Medieval city of about 40,000 people in an a scenic river valley. Only a couple of the original city gates remain, and one was right next to the hotel. We walked down along the river, across, past the apartment where Jeanette used to live, and up the hill to the Marktplats and the famous church. We quickly looked inside the church before the students met up with their German counterparts for the evening. Along the way, we learned some of the town's long history, primarily as it relates to their traditional production of salt.

That night, Jeanette, Clark, and I joined her friend Frank from HHN and Jason, our faculty colleague from HHN for dinner at the home of Jeanette's friend Helga Gunst and her family. The family includes Katya, whom we met earlier at Würth where she works, her brother Tom, his partner Tanja, and their son Till. Helga has a nice and neat German home with a beautiful garden overlooking the forested valley. It goes without saying that the hospitality was wonderful. We began with some sparkling wine in the garden, eventually moving inside for the home-made dinner. We enjoyed delicious Schwäbian dishes - the local ravioli in soup, and local asparagus with ham, pancakes, and Holandaise. There was plenty of wine, and good conversation highlighted by Frank's telling jokes in the Schwäbisch dialect, translated by Jeanette and hilariously reiterated by Frank in English. The point of the story was that some things are very hard to explain. Finally we went back to the hotel, tired after a long day but really happy.