Our obsession with the beautiful and ornate Guild Signs of Salzburg was all consuming. As if the city itself is not charming enough, these wrought iron works of art send Salzburg over the top.
The practice of creating descriptive and elaborate signs outside of businesses began in the Middle Ages, and now are featured outside established establishments, as well as the new. Even McDonald’s has gotten in on the game.
Some of the signs are so descriptive, it became a game between us to guess… CONTINUE READING >>
Our obsession with the beautiful and ornate Guild Signs of Salzburg was all consuming. As if the city itself is not charming enough, these wrought iron works of art send Salzburg over the top.
The practice of creating descriptive and elaborate signs outside of businesses began in the Middle Ages, and now are featured outside established establishments, as well as the new. Even McDonald’s has gotten in on the game. We didn’t go there.
Some of the signs are so descriptive, it became a game between us to guess what kind of business lay beneath.
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Nowadays there is an electric cable railway, or funicular, to take people up the rocky face of the mountain. It’s glass encased and goes STRAIGHT… CONTINUE READING >>
Hohensalzburg Castle is one of the largest, and best preserved medieval castles in all of Europe. The Reckturm Torture Tower was the highlight of our castle wanderings, with a name like that, how could it not be tickled?
Getting to the castle on the mountain looked to be quite a daunting task. No wonder it had only been attacked once since it was built back in 1077. But luck and modern convenience were on our side. Nowadays there is an electric cable railway, or funicular, to take people up the rocky face of the mountain.
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Perhaps the most unique attribute of Wangen is its fountains. There are several well preserved hold-outs from centuries past, but the stars of the show… CONTINUE READING >>
Perhaps the most unique attribute of Wangen is its fountains. There are several well preserved hold-outs from centuries past, but the stars of the show are a series of seven “Figure Fountains” installed in the 1980s and 90s. These are not even slightly traditional, in a conventional European fountain way, instead they are off-beat, whimsical, and in some cases, more than a little sarcastic.
The whimsical fountains alone are reason to come to this charming Bavarian Village. But the reasons to stay are many.
Sometimes dumb luck is our best tour guide. That is certainly how we stumbled upon… CONTINUE READING >>
Sometimes dumb luck is our best tour guide.
That is certainly how we stumbled upon Wangen im Allgäu.
We wanted to get a real feel for small town Germany, so we skipped the big city, Munich, and pulled off the Autobahn in hopes of finding a traditional village.
Far from experts, since this was our first visit to Deutschland, we still think it would be hard beat what we found.
Following the signs to the “zentrum,” the center of town, we spotted the Hotel Rössle and pulled in to see if they could put us up for the night.
Not only could they, but they furnished us with an excellent guide book to Wangen’s Old Town attractions and a recommendation for the best nearby German grub. With a few hours until feeding time, we headed out to see the sights.
Perhaps the most unique attribute of Wangen is its fountains.
There are several well preserved hold-outs from centuries past, but the stars of the show are a series of seven “Figure Fountains” installed in the 1980s and 90s.
These are not even slightly traditional, in a conventional European fountain way, instead they are off-beat, whimsical, and in some cases, more than a little sarcastic.
While walking into Old Town, our first watery encounter was St. Anthony’s Fountain. The saint is seen sitting on a bench overseeing a smattering of pigs.
Since this was once the site of the town’s Saurmarkt, where swine were bought and sold, there is more than a little touch of irony.
At first we didn’t see how this could be called a fountain, but then we noticed a small trickle of water feeding into a little pool that three of the piglets were drinking from and frolicking in. Perhaps the most fun was finding all the little stray piggies hiding around entire square. Very clever.
Our next encounter was even more surprising.
Approaching the statue of The Repressed Allgäures, a bronze rendition of six men lying one on top of the other, we were spritzed from out of nowhere by a small stream of water.
We were fast learning that these really aren’t ordinary fountains.
This one was downright cheeky, one of the men’s mouths spit a stream of water across the street every so often.
In this particular region of Germany, known as Allgäu, the locals, Allgäures, are said to be so uptight that a local saying goes something like: “Stack six Allgäures and the one on the bottom will be just as repressed as the one on the top.”
We didn’t find this to be the case,
but this and several other witticisms are printed on the base of the fountain anyway.
Who knows, perhaps the fact that Wangen means “cheek” in German inspired the artist.
As we were walking away, a sneaky young mother walked up planning a big surprise for her little boy, attempting to place him in the line-of-fountain-squirt.
Instead she received an unexpected dousing. Cheeky indeed. The boy, who was well out of range due to his diminutive stature, was still somewhat disturbed by the entire affair.
Now on a mission to see all of the fountains, we were lucky they were in close proximity of each other. We found The Red Tape Fountain that takes a poke at the government, The Sparrow Fountain jabbing at religion and The Donkey Fountain that depicts the Aesop fable of the peasant, his son and a donkey walking to town.
Down by the river, The Bath House Fountain has a wife struggling to wash her husband’s hair. Last, we came upon The Seeker After Truth.
This thinker is leaning on a pile of books depicting the classics from the likes of Socrates, Homer, Plato and Dante, along with holy books like the Torah, Bible and Koran.
Atop the volumes he is contemplating the magical Latin Sator Square, whose meaning has never been fully understood.
We certainly understood one thing though, it was suppertime. Our hotel hosts had highly recommended the Gasthaus Lamm, which happened to be right between the inn and Old Town, so we happily took their advice.
This truly was a typical gasthaus, or what might be called a beer hall. Pure Germany, bring us a couple steins of suds please Fraulein.
As soon as we had crossed the border into Germany earlier in the day, David started thinking about Schnitzel and Spätzle, and this looked like just the place to score the real deal.
He didn’t order Wiener Schnitzel, because in Germany that will always get you a piece of veal, he went with the schweinefleisch schnitzel.
He was not disappointed, a huge slab of pork, smothered in gravy, was served next to a heaping mound of spätzle.
Spätzle literally translates to “little sparrow,” but is actually a soft egg noodle common in most of the Germanic countries.
In general, the place on the plate that dumplings always occupied in Bohemia, was filled nicely by spätzle here. These are not menu items for the fainthearted, a meal like that will put down even the hardiest of travelers. Our next stop was bed.
The next day just happened to be market day in Wangen, so we got to combine the rest of our sightseeing with the food, fun and frivolity of a small town market.
Dominating the Marktplatz, the plaza where the market is held, is the Old Town Hall. Originally a part of Wangen’s fortifications, it dates clear back to the 1400s. Its quintessentially Baroque architecture looks straight out of a story book.
At the base of the tower, there is an arched gate leading out to the rest of town.
Two other medieval towers survive as landmarks in Wangen as well. The tallest, The St. Martin’s Gate, is adjacent to the church of the same name.
The church and tower are among the oldest structures in town.
At the opposite end of the old walled city is The Women’s Gate, or Frauentor, also known as The Ravensburg Gate.
While these are all referred to as gates, they could better be described as clock towers with passageways through their bases.
The road that connects all of these gates is Herrenstrasse, literally “Rulers Street,” because this was where most of the town’s movers and shakers lived.
It has been the main drag on any given day for some six centuries, but on market day, it was really rockin’.
Accordion music filled the air while we browsed through booth after booth of local produce, cheese and especially sausages. This would seem to be a very sausage centric society.
That was fine by David, he gladly ordered up a Bratwurst mit brot for some walking food, and we headed back over to the Saurmarkt to snap a few photos of the little brass pigs at St. Anthony’s fountain.
Seemed only fitting, since we were as happy as pigs in slop.
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The food, fun and frivolity of a small town market. David learns to “milk” mustard… CONTINUE READING >>
We combined the rest of our sightseeing with the food, fun and frivolity of a small town market. Dominating the Marktplatz, the plaza where the market is held, is the Old Town Hall. Originally a part of Wangen’s fortifications, it dates clear back to the 1400s. It’s quintessentially Bavarian Baroque architecture looks straight out of a story book. At the base of the tower, there is an arched gate leading out to the rest of town. For more: https://www.gypsynester.com/wangen.htm
This is how many people I dealt with while getting my annual mammogram. How did something so personal turn into an assembly line? As if getting my boobs pancaked and my skin yanked so tight that I felt it all the way up to my ears isn’t bad enough. I get to be treated like a cow in a roundup.
Before I go off on a complete diatribe, I want to be fair. I’m ALWAYS a wreck at mammogram time. My mother died of breast cancer. The final ten years of her life were hell as the cancer spread to her lymph nodes, her spine and her brain. I learned to administer shots. I watched as her brain fluid was removed from a shunt in her… CONTINUE READING >>
Ten people. TEN.
This is how many people I dealt with while getting my annual mammogram. How did something so personal turn into an assembly line? As if getting my boobs pancaked and my skin yanked so tight that I felt it all the way up to my ears isn’t bad enough. I get to be treated like a cow in a roundup.
Before I go off on a complete diatribe, I want to be fair. I’m ALWAYS a wreck at mammogram time. My mother died of breast cancer. The final ten years of her life were hell as the cancer spread to her lymph nodes, her spine and her brain. I learned to administer shots. I watched as her brain fluid was removed from a shunt in her head to make room for the chemo to go in. I know too well the consequences of a mammogram that reveals something bad.
To add insult to injury — in a brilliantly stupid move — I booked my mammogram the day after I went to roller derby camp. My breasts were the only part of my body that didn’t hurt. I guess I didn’t want them to feel left out.
My first visit wasn’t terrible, just very impersonal. It felt a whole lot like a bureaucrat’s idea of the quickest, most efficient way to herd women through their yearly indignity. The person I made the appointment with was not the person I checked in with. Once checked in, I was sent to a phone booth in the lobby to call a centralized area of the hospital that dealt with insurance before moving on down the line.
I was given a fluffy robe and a locker. After a quick stop in an interior waiting room, the boob smashing was performed by a really nice technician. In the end, I was told that a doctor would take a look at the results and I would receive a phone call in a few days. In, out, done.
A week later, I get the call. Something was wrong. I must return for further tests, possibly an ultrasound. The woman at the end of the line obviously had a sheet of paper in front of her outlining the proper way to kindly defuse panicked patients. The answers to my (what I thought were reasonable) questions went something like this:
“Ma’am, I don’t have that information, you’ll have to speak to the radiologist when you come back.”
“Yes it’s a possible cyst, but don’t worry, 90% of the time it is not cancer.”
“All I know is that something was seen and they want to run further tests.”
And the like.
By the time I returned for “further tests,” I was a total wreck. I had spent most of my time thinking about my mother’s ordeal, the horrendous pain, the unbelievable indignity, the treatments that had rendered her unrecognizable.
I thought about the day she posed for her last picture with her grandchildren — the former model smiling for the camera, her head so swollen from steroids she had to wear a neck brace.
By the end, my mother — a relentless degree-gatherer — lived in a world of hallucinations and oatmeal.
I didn’t come in for “further testing” in the best frame of mind.
A whole new crop of folks were there to greet me. I told each of the receptionists that I would like to see the radiologist and my mammogram results prior to any more testing. It was very important to me to see what they saw.
I was escorted back to the mammogram room and the technician began her spiel. I interrupted, and asked once again to see the radiologist. I was told that I could see the doctor when we were finished with the mammogram.
I insisted. The technician’s response was unbelievable, she rolled her eyes at me — ROLLED HER EYES — and said, “That’s not the procedure here.”
Very near tears, I again insisted.
After more eye-rolling and arguments about “the way things were done here,” she finally relented and stormed from the room. Left alone, I went from near-tears to embarrassed full-on-bawling.
Mortified by my lack of self discipline, I entered the radiologist’s office in full blubber mode. The doctor explained to me that an area in my left breast was a cause for concern. She showed me a dense area that the initial mammogram couldn’t see properly and wanted to see some different views. Armed with this knowledge, I was able to continue the tests feeling more at ease.
The second round of X-rays were sheer torture. Any kind of composure I had regained was ripped out from under me. Sensing that I was an emotional wreck, the eye-rolling technician had become very kind toward me as she twisted my left breast nearly upside-down, clamped it between two glass panes, and hand-cranked the gnarled mess down harder to obtain a better view.
My skin from my chest through my neck to my forehead was so taut I thought it would split. It hurt like hell — and back came the tears.
After releasing me from the vice, the technician assured me that she “made it go away,” meaning the new views were clean and I had nothing to worry about. I forgave her the eye-rolling escapade and thanked her profusely.
In the waiting room, I sat trying — once again — to regain my composure. This was getting embarrassing — which just exacerbated the situation. Now that I was alone, I started imagining how everyone beyond the waiting room doors were talking about the crying crazy lady they had on their hands. Not helpful.
A new woman (person #9, in case you’ve been counting along) entered the room and told me that the radiologist, after looking at the new results, wanted an ultrasound performed. What? I told her that I would like to see the new X-rays. I was escorted to the ultrasound room.
After a short wait, a very sweet ultrasound tech (#10) greeted me and asked me to lie back on the table. I again asked to see my X-rays. #10 said the radiologist would be there shortly to go over the ultrasound with me and we should just get started.
I said I’d rather wait until I could see what we were looking for. #10 left the room and returned with the radiologist, sans X-rays .
At this point, I was told it was unnecessary to see the X-rays, as they didn’t show anything conclusive. The ultrasound was ordered because of my family history.
What? Why did I have the second mammogram? How much was this going to cost? Is this just more “procedure” to jack up the price? Who can I talk to about this?
I gave up. I was in no emotional state to argue anymore. I felt like I had no control over my medical choices, no rights as a patient, was mad with no outlet — and felt helpless as hell. I cried unabashedly throughout the entire ultrasound.
In the end, I did receive a clean bill of health. Hopefully I’ll be finished fighting my insurance company before I have to go through this again next year.
to be the case,
A whole new crop of folks were there to greet me. I told each of the receptionists that I would like to see the radiologist and my mammogram results prior to any more testing. It was very important to me to see what they saw.