Two months, day thirty-seven: Lauffen am Neckar

The Germans say that “after eating you should rest or take a thousand steps.”

Mr Host plays the bassoon and was playing in an orchestra for the Easter service in a town called Oedheim this morning, and as he is currently unable to drive following a non bassoon-related incident on skis, Hostess was in charge of driving and I was invited along for the ride. I have not been to an Easter service in many many years, certainly not in another country. The last time was probably in Paris in about 1998. There were many smells and bells, a lot of Handel, and quite a lot of standing around, waiting.

After the service came lunch, and then following a little snooze which went on longer than was reasonable in polite company, Hostess took me for a little walk around Lauffen which was bright and cheerful with blue skies and warming sunshine. In Germany there is an expression — Nach dem Essen sollst du ruh’n oder tausend Schritte tun — that stems from the belief that by having a digestion walk after food, you are getting fresh air and moving your body, ultimately speeding up the digestion process. The name for this insanity is a Verdauungsspaziergang; a walk that you take to get you moving and help you digest your food more quickly, rather than — and this is my preferred option, as a rule — slipping into a blissful food coma in a lovely comfy warm place.

Lauffen is famous for its wine, and the production and transmission of alternating-current electricity (no, really). In and around Lauffen there are many, many vines, and Lauffen is now the second-largest wine-growing community in the Württemberg wine-growing region. Most of the wine produced is red, and approximately 25% of the land in the region (about 570 hectares) is covered with vines.

Electricity was first transported from Lauffen in 1891, from a water-powered generator installed in the cement works to the International Electrotechnical Exhibition in Frankfurt. Officially, the first transmission of three-phase electrical energy took place on Tuesday, August 25, 1891 at 12 noon on the occasion of exhibition, although there had been a successful test run the day before.

It was a short guided tour as both Hostess and I were feeling somewhat portly after lunch. We walked from Hosts’ to an ice cream parlour on Bahnhofstraße where we mused on not being able to sit at the tables because we’d paid for ice-cream to take away, rather than eat in. Full of health, we then waddled around the church and across the bridge to the small island in the Neckar were the town hall is placed in the middle of a nature reserve.

From there colourful, windy streets led us down to the canal and then finally across the dam over the river to walk back to Chez Hosts where light snackings occurred (mostly cake) to make up for the calorie expenditure of our thousand steps, followed by sleep, just in case she had any more insane ideas.

A photograph of an old wooden door in a beige wall. The door has coloured chevrons.
Door of the day.

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