Without Lifting A Finger

snail. , a photo by ch i r i bir i be l a on Flickr. Another perspective (again: not mine). I guess at least two people other than myself thought this tunnel interesting. We were racing to Holderlin's tower--and we had to get back to the car before the meter ran out. A beautiful spring morning. Only wish we could've stayed longer. We were on our way to Zurich.

Lines , a photo by chrys on Flickr. Not my photo. Didn't think to take one. But I was thinking of this today, about how it'd be a bit spooky at night.

By the time we got through customs and got the rental car we had very little time to "investigate" between Stuttgart Airport and Zurich (our first big pitstop). The only mini-stop we made (other than a gas station near the German-Swiss border to buy the Swiss autobahn sticker) was Tubingen, and most of our Tubingen energy was spent in getting to and from Holderlin's Tower along the Neckar. Holderlin's Tower along the Neckar Holderlin Plaque  Holderlin Graffiti at the Museum Door

T Ü BINGEN, JANUARY Eyes talked in- to blindness. Their  -- "a riddle, what is pure- ly arisen" --, their memory of floating H ö lderlintowers, gull- enswirled. Visits of drowned joiners to these plunging words: Came, if there came a man, came a man to the world, today, with the patriarchs' light-beard: he could, if he spoke of this time, he could only babble and babble, ever- ever- moremore. ("Pallaksch. Pallaksch.")* * Pallaksch A word that H ö lderlin, spending his last years in the home of a T ü bingen carpenter, was given to uttering in his dementia; it could signify Yes or No. [Poem Translated by John Felstiner; the explanation of Pallaksch is also from his "Notes" in Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan ]  

Tübingen_009 , a photo by Rob124 on Flickr. A friend has convinced me Tubingen is a must-see. I most certainly want to see Holderlin's Tower. We'll drive from Stuttgart down to Zurich (stopping at a few other must-sees on the way). Time will tell.