Having saved sixty euros (a trifle, but nice), I boarded the train. These cute regionals of Baden-Württemberg look like black and yellow striped bumblebees. They have places for bicycles, which is important in the heat – air conditioners and almost no controllers walk, but you can still run into them.
Three cities are located one after the other: Ludwigsburg, Bietigheim-Bissingen and Besigheim. With due diligence, normal weather and indestructible curiosity, all of them can be “spud” in one day, using one ticket, since it allows you to travel within the 3rd zone all day on trains and buses. I visited only the last 2 in two days, which, again, I regret now, but then I simply did not succeed in another way.
Well, that’s enough verbiage. Let’s hit the road.
Besigheim.
It takes about 20 minutes to get there.
We leave the station and go straight across the bridge to the old town. Already here it is clear that something extraordinary awaits ahead, some kind of quintessence of beauty.
It is not for nothing that it is called “The most beautiful wine city in Germany”, but it is also part of the “Half-timbered road”. In Besigheim, I was going to stay for the entire stay, I was in active correspondence with the owner of the apartment, but circumstances turned out so that I had to spend the night in Stuttgart.
This is really the “icing on the cake” of an incredibly picturesque region, and despite the fact that, in principle, at a brisk pace, the city can be explored in 3, maximum four hours, I took a walk there for seven whole hours, and if I found my way to the vineyards surrounding the town, like the wild hair of the tonsure of a Catholic monk, would have left at sunset.
It seems to me that people come there from the surrounding towns just to dine in a pastoral atmosphere. I just caught this time, because again I got to the city under the chime of midday bells and carillons. But I could not force myself to eat, despite the delicious smells of the kitchen.
Nevertheless, the temptation: to sit in a wonderful place in a fairytale town, surrounded by people who gave off an aura of joy and contentment, turned out to be irresistible, and I settled down at a table with a glass of something incredibly light, with red currants and white wine, and icicles jingled merrily, echoing my mood.
Having finished exploring the city by four o’clock, I was already going to neighboring Ludwigsburg, but remembering that his palace was soon to be closed, I changed my destination to Bitingen-Bessingen, and this was the right decision, but I wanted to walk along the Neckar and there I am lost.
First, I spent about an hour targeting a slow heron and some large beige ducks on the opposite bank, then I was attacked by a swan flock: specifically, they began to pinch my orange sneakers. Maybe they mistook it for the beak of a large bird?
