Welcome to Tübingen, the youngest destination in Germany
The stamp of the university city of Tubingen, considered the city with the lowest average age of Germany , is of pointed houses and weeping willows that border the neckar river , of university colleges and of students who play hooky to sit on the fences by the water's edge and enjoy the privileged surroundings.
The University of Tubingen founded by Count Eberhard V , also known as the Eberhardine , dates from 1477 and is located just 40 kilometers from stuttgart . It is one of the most prestigious in Germany, especially in terms of Natural Sciences, Medicine and Humanities it means.
University of Tubingen
Notable personalities have come out of it, such as the astronomer Johannes Kepler and the philosopher Georg Wilhelm , who passed for "weird" until once recognized he turned out to be one of Germany's greatest poets and philosophers.
Romantic poet was also Friedrich Holderlin , in whose house on the banks of the River Neckar you can still see the tower named in his honor -turned into literary museum -, where he sadly spent the last years of his life suffering from mental illness.
That Goethe was also in Tübingen the bronze plaque that indicates the house in which he stayed, and the wooden blackboard hanging on the window it marks the spot where the great scholar vomited after one of his crapulous nights. On the other hand, Joseph Ratzinger -better known as Pope Benedict XVI - held the prestigious Chair of Dogmatic Theology from 1966 to 1969.
In addition, the University has instructed award-winning students laureate in the scientific field as Günter Blobel in Medicine, William Ramsay in Chemistry, or Karl Ferdinand Braun in Physics , among others.
Impossible to get bored in Tübingen
The cultural offer of this small city is enormous. Impressive libraries, an archeology museum, a toy museum, and musical instrument workshops , stand out among many other educational institutions.
In the northern area of Tübingen is the Kunsthalle, one of the most renowned art galleries in the region, initiative of the sisters Paula Zundel and Dr. Margarethe Fischer-Bosch, who raised it in the early 1970s in posthumous honor of the painter Georg Friedrich Zundel, Paula's husband.
There's nothing like watching the sunset over the Neckar River
The gallery combines modern and contemporary art and presents monographic exhibitions of precursor painters of modernism such as Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas or Pablo Picasso. A place that will not leave you indifferent is the Boxenstop Museum cars and toys.
Tübingen is also famous for the many Street markets which are celebrated throughout the course, the Provenzal, the Christmas and the Saint George and Saint Martin , among others.
The atmosphere of the Swabian city is totally university. of a population of 90,000 inhabitants, about 28,000 are students . Young people fill the streets, the bars, the Market Square and even the river, where they become German gondoliers and take tourists for a ride in their **“Stocherkähne” (gondolas)**.
They say that to be trusted as a gondolier in Tübingen you need at least two years of practice. Each end of course are eagerly awaited gondola regattas on the Neckar River. The winner will drink beer while the loser you will have to eat the same amount but… cod liver.
A privileged place to enjoy a good panoramic view is Hohentübingen Shloss castle , which today belongs to the university. Interestingly the medical doctor Felix Hoppe Seyler had his laboratory in said castle and taught classes to Friedrich Miescher, discoverer of DNA
Fun is assured
A different astronomical clock
In the Marketplace , of the Renaissance Town Hall and pointed houses topped with wooden beams, people sit on the terraces to savor a glass of wine from the Baden Württemberg region -to which Tübingen belongs- or a good mug of beer from the brewery located on the outskirts of the city.
The students do groundbreaking representations on the edge of the fountain of Neptune (1617), the work of the Renaissance architect Heinrich Schickhardt. And in spring, the famous Stocherkahn races occupy the river of a city with one of the youngest populations in Germany .
But the true protagonist of the square is the imposing town hall mansion from the 15th century, whose western façade boasts a beautiful sgraffito , artwork from 1876 . Its top the crown an astronomical clock , which the war stopped, beating again with its practically original mechanism in 1993.
They tell all this the marriage of astronomers Martin and Hannelorey Boetzel , experts in the language of the stars and especially in that of the clock, a language that they skillfully translate, explaining what this and that handle is for , what each sphere means and how the Tübingen clock has the uniqueness of a dragon-shaped handle , destined to predict eclipses both sun and moon.
The well-known hand is in charge of announcing both and, depending on the direction indicated by the tongue of the aforementioned dragon in the upper sphere, the moon hides or the sun hides.
Marketplace
the inside of the City hall also has fairy tale look . Its wooden walls are decorated by hand. Four replicas of the exterior clock decorate the rooms of the Rathaus and they are all connected to the main sphere built by mathematics professor and astronomer Johannes Stöffler.
Apollo and Minerva escort the sphere and curiously it is one of the few astronomical clocks, if not the only one, that has no religious motives . dragon hand, Chinese influenced , every night it swallows the sun and every morning it returns it to illuminate the earth.
Must-see addresses
Hotel Domizil: a charming place on the water's edge, with views of the old town from Tübingen and with all the comforts of the 21st century.
Uni-Cafe-Ristorante Unckel: a very lively tavern, always full of students who go to enjoy delicious delicacies and a good drink.
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