Adventures

Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt

While we started the blog mainly to show some pictures of our travles, we've since realized that it's not only nice and beautiful abroad, but also at home. When we first moved here, we weren't too fond of the particular region we live in now, but we've started to find many places here that are actually really beautiful and/or special. And some of those places we are aware that we'd be visiting those if located in a city somewhere in one of our trips. One of the more obvious ones is the "Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt", the cities best known attraction. The "Hochzeitsturm" is also Darmstadts most iconic sight and used in many logos centered around the city.

The "Mathildenhöhe" used to be an artists colony for Jugenstil (Art Nouveau) artists, and the buildings there are mostly from that era. That's why Darmstadt is sometimes referred to as Germany's capital of Art Nouveau.

The plantain grove predates the artists colony but was stocked with sculptures during the artists exhibitons. There is also a russian chapel that was built well before the founding of the artists colony, but has been included into the overall planning. Right before it sits the "Lilienbecken", a pool with a mosaic depicting Lilies. They view from the "Lilienbecken" up to the russian chapel and the Hochzeitsturm is probably the most photographed motive in Darmstadt, but I haven't yet been able to capture a good picture of that.

Darmstadt is currently in the application process to make the Mathildenhöhe a UNESCO World Heritage Site – there's some information on that on their website.

You might have be able to notice that not all of those pictures were taking in one sitting.We've been to the Mathildenhöhe quite a few times, so the pictures are a bit mixed up. To be honest about that part of Darmstadt – at first I didn't really like the place too much, I'm not that big of a fan of art nouveau, but it really depends on the time of the year and day. I think the best time to visit is in the springtime or early summer, when everything is green, in the late afternoon. Around 5-ish or something. Then it can be really stunning.

Currently there's construction going on on the central Exhibition Building, and a big part of it is wrapped in framework and tarps, I think they won't be done until 2018. So if you plan on going there you probably won't be able to see it in its full glory until then.

All pictures of interesting places in Darmstadt can be found in the corresponding album.

Stockholm

Stockholm is only a one hour train ride away from Uppsala, so we spent one day visiting there. It is a city spread across several islands, with a beautiful old town district and many other things to see. One day really isn't enough to explore everything, but this will still be a long post with many photos. I didn't include all of them, so if you want to see more or want to skip the text and just look at the pictures, you can find them all here.

Once again we were incredibly lucky with the weather – it was a beautiful spring day, warm and sunny, and the flowers and trees now started blooming everywhere.

We started the day by visiting Skansen. Skansen is a open-air museum showcasing building from different regions and time periods of Sweden.

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Uppsala

We used the Monday after Valborg to explore Uppsala. We were really lucky with the weather, because the sun was shining brightly and it was warm enough to even take of the jacket and enjoy the sun. While the trees had been mostly bare when we arrived we could now see the buds on the trees. Spring really had arrived with Valborg.

First of all we went to see the Domkyrkan, Uppsala's Cathedral.

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Valborg i Uppsala

We spent the last few days in Uppsala, hosted once again by our lovely friend Helena, who also hosted us two years ago in London.

When booking our trip, Helena advised us to visit during Valborg, the celebration of spring. Uppsala is pretty much the capital of Valborg. They have a whole range of festivities going on around it. On the day of Valborg, we first went to see the "Forsränningen", a boat race of boats made from wood and styrofoam by the students that then race the down the river. Since it was fairly cold and windy I would not have wanted to be one of the people in the actual boats...

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Easter weekend at home

I spent the easter weekend at home with my parents. And in springtime, that region is honestly one of the most beautiful places in the world. During spring the yellow fields of rapeseed pop up everywhere and create a stark contrast to the fresh greens everywhere else.

So of course I used the long weekend for some time outside, and since I did take my camera with me this time to try out my new lens, I now want to share the beauty of spring with you.

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Springtime in Germany

It's springtime in Darmstadt. Everything is turning green and colorful and the sun is shining. I used the nice weather for a little walk through Darmstadt. I also came by the h_da-Building, which is lovingly called "the cheese grater" by the locals because of it's strange but fascinating facade, which has won some awards in the past.

Bensheim, Germany

Since this Blog is called "Adventures", not "travel", we decided we really want to share some more images and information about trips we take around our actual hometown. Those will go by the name of "localtourism", which we'll also use to tag them.

So today's trip went to Bensheim, Germany. A small town in the Region "Bergstraße". We really went there with no expectations at all, because we hadn't even visited the website. We just knew it was there, because we drive by the autobahn signs a lot. So today we finally went. And it ended up being a really nice afternoon.

We walked through the historic town center which is full of "Fachwerkhäuser", I think they're called half-timbered houses, and were stunned by the beautiful inside of St. Georgs Church. While not very spectacular from the outside, the interior was really well designed. Bensheims old town was not as small as expected and a lot prettier that we had thought. There were also quite a few nice little cafés that looked really inviting. Unfortunately, we could only try one ;) It was called "Cafe de Saxe" and they had great self-baked cakes there.

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New Years Eve in Strasbourg

This year we celebreted New Years Eve with a group of friends, and we had decided to head over the border to Strasbourg. We had wanted an apartment somewhere away from home to spend some quality time together.

Most of the time we spent cooking and celebrating, but we did get a glimpse of the city of Strasbourg as a cold, frosty beauty.

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