Saturday, June 7, 2008

Konstanz am Bodensee (Constance by the lake Constance)

I fell in love with Konstanz
That was my MSN nickname after I came back from the hiatus. Konstanz made me think that it is the most beautiful place in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Much more than Heidelberg or Baden-Baden. Surprisingly it is not a very sought after place to visit by tourists. However Konstanz can be covered in 1 day and its not like big cities like Hamburg or München. But beautiful places need not be big.

The used-to-be imperial Postoffice. Built between 1888 to 1891, it is the office of the Sparkasse (a savings and financial association in Germany)


Markstätte, the "main street" leading to the Kaiserbrunnen (imperial fountain)

Schnetztor - a gateway built in the 14th century to mark the boundary.

According to the tourism website of Konstanz, it was mentioned that this is one of the few medieval defense structure left remaining. However, what gave me the impression was that the Schnetztor looked like a replica because the bricks were so perfectly layed and the walls were not cobbled.

Rathaus Konstanz


the courtyard of the Rathaus - a wedding was taking place


A hotel along one of the alleys


What we liked especially were these pastel coloured rows of houses tucked away in these backyard alleys.


Along the Rhine river. The river leads to the Bodensee (lake Constance) after the bridge.

Auf der Seestraße (On the Lakestreet)

This place is in my opinion, the most beautiful place in Konstanz. The Seestraße is a walkway along the Bodensee, it was also where we set up our grill and had lunch. The great thing about Germany is that whenever the weather is good, we could just get a portable grill (costs only 2€ from supermarkets), buy our food and cook it at some designated parks or by the river. And the total cost is still cheaper than eating a meal outside!

Anyway it was a great place to do a grill because of the wonderful scenery. The scenery plays a very important role in the overall utilty of the grill. For instance, at Mannheim, whenever we go a grill, it will either be at the back of our hostel facing industrial factories across the canal, or along the Rhine river facing Ludwigshafen. But in Konstanz it's along the lake, with crystal clear, gleaming clean water as you will notice from the pictures below.

It was along the row of the beautiful buildings that we sat facing the lake and cooked our food.

Our lunch


After eating we took a walk down the Seestraße and were delighted by what we saw.. it is truly beautiful from every angle. At the end of the pathway we saw many boats parked at the edge of the lake. It appears that this place is a popular place to do water sports and these boats or yatches belonged to people who actually rent parking places here.

After that we crossed the bridge to the side of the harbour where it was also another happening spot. My attention was turned to the Imperia statue. It's 9 metres high, and weighs 18 tons. It is a statue of a woman that is scantily clad, revealing part of her breasts. Imperia was a prostitute who plied her trade. The statue's hands are stretched out, holding 2 men. They are the Pope Martin V and Emperor Sigismund.

Along the harbour, more fresh flowers

Eating an icecream by the waters.

I really like the icecream in Germany. Its one of the cheapest street snack around and the best icecream are sold by the Italians. However I heard from Seok that the icecream in Italy are much more expensive than in Germany.

The German Swiss Border

Actually it is easier to access Konstanz from Switzerland than from Germany because because Konstanz is located at the tip of southern Germany at the Swiss Border and it is actually enter Konstanz to access by trains calling at the Swiss station at Kreuzlingen (Swiss city facing Konstanz)


Zollamt means Customs Duty office. This was once the place where people who wanted to drive into Switzerland had to declare goods. Notice that in Switzerland the alphabet ß is not used. In Germany and Austria, we would use the ß in words after long vowels or dipthrongs, for example, for the word street, we would write Straße. However in Switzerland and Lichenstein, ß is being replaced with ss. That is why Straße appears as Strasse. However this ß does not have a capital equivalent. That is to say if were to write in blocks in standard German, it would be STRASSE instead of STRAßE.
Having an hour to spare before our train arrives, we took a walk into technically Switzerland and headed back, so you can see, we walked into German soil again.

If I have the chance again, I would really want to redo what I did that Friday afternoon. Have a grill along the Bodensee or just simply sit there and watch the world go by. Konstanz is really a beautiful place and its easy to see why I fell in love with it.

http://picasaweb.google.com/vintagebin/23MayKonstanz

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