This weekend, we had planned to go to Stuttgart for a winefest. Great plan; we showed up and smoothly caught a train to Stuttgart. Unfortunately, the winefest was a bust. We got there, and it was more of an expensive tourist trap with four euro glasses of watered down wine than the winefest we had all pictured in our heards. We shortly left that, and after realizing that none of us knew of anything else in Stuttgart to do, and all having other things back in Tuebingen that could be done, jumped back on the train back home for a quiet day.

The next day, Kiel, a fellow UNC student, and I headed to Bebenhausen. Bebenhausen is a small town to the north of Tuebingen that used to house a walled monastery. Much of the monastery survives in surprisingly good condition. Kiel and I hiked over there through some paths through the woods, coming out of the woods onto a grassy hill that looked over Bebenhausen in the valley below.

From there we headed into the town, and were immediately impressed. The whole town is an amazing tangle of paths and roads, winding their way through the ancient walls, houses, and gardens. The whole place is amazingly open as well, with very little closed to visitors.

We spent several hours in the town, aimlessly wandering the streets and taking in the sights. When I say Bebenhausen is small, I mean it–I suspect that less than 250 people live there. And yet, we managed to make several hours out of it, and still felt rushed. There was just such a wealth of things to see there. Every time you turned around, you’d see something else you wanted to look at, from the ancient town wall with its arrow loops and battlements, to the dormitories, to the courtyards, to the church itself. It was a wealth of exploration.

It was also a wealth of photographic possibilities. I took many photos there, too many to fit in this post. Go look a the photo gallery and take a look at some of the ones that didn’t make the cut here.