So a couple of weeks ago I went back to Germany for the first time since I lived there as a youngster.  I'm tempted to say "it looked smaller", but really it looked pretty much the way I remember. 

Except for the autobahn.  First, there are many more speedlimited regions on the autobahn than I remember; second, the Germans appear to have given up on trimming the verge and much of the roadside has a distinctly neglected and overgrown look, even around rest stops.  This would have been unthinkable when I lived there. 

Apart from that, the country remains as naturally beautiful and as blessed with architectural beauty as I remember.

I loaded a small sample of some pics I took into my gallery, feel free to take a look.

For reasons I won't explain here, I did not have my camera with me on the night my colleagues and I went to dinner at this place:

[url]http://www.burg-windeck.de/[/url]

Burg Windeck sits on a hill on the edge of the Black Forest overlooking the town of Baden-Baden.  The fortress dates from the year 1200 AD, and consists today of two large towers commanding the top of the outcropping surrounded by a massive wall, beside which sits a small gasthaus and winery.  It doesn't look it in the picture on this website, but the vine-covered slopes drop away from the castle walls at a VERY steep incline, and the dining room perces right at the edge of the cliff, giving diners a dramatic view of the vinyard and the valley beyond.  On a clear day, which sadly the evening of my visit was not, you can see into the hills of France from this vantage point.

Anyway, a couple of times a year, Burg Windeck hosts a "medieval market", which sounds very much like a weekend tent faire.  One of my co-workers on this trip is a fellow rennie, and he and I have vowed to schedule our next trip over to the German home office to coincide with one of these weekends.  I imagine we'll have to ship our steel over before hand - can you imagine trying to get a rapier and main gauche through airport security these days? - but IF I manage to pull this off, I may have much more interesting photos from my next trip.

That's all for now