September 6, 2024

September 6, 2024

Yesterday on our drive to Lindau, Germany we saw a blimp flying overhead. That is a reminder that the rigid airship was perfected by Count (Graf) Ferdinand Zeppelin in nearby Friedrichshafen. After checking out of our hotel, we drove thirty minutes west along the Lake Constance shoreline to visit that city's Zeppelin Museum. We were delayed a little because of difficulty finding parking in this downtown waterfront location. That is unfortunate because it turned out to be a gem of a museum with tons of models and historical artifacts. I wished we didn’t have to speed through it.

Man has always wanted to fly and lighter-than-air devices were experimented with for more than a century. Zeppelin’s long history of development here culminated with the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg. They were constructed of a rigid metal framework covered with fabric. Inside were passenger compartments and gas bags for lift. The museum has a full-scale mock-up of one section of the Hindenburg with examples of the viewing platforms and the interior cabin spaces. It was luxurious service, very much unlike today’s air flights. These dirigibles were designed to compete with steamships for transatlantic passenger service. The Hindenburg was as long as the Titanic but more than twice as fast. The Yankee Clipper Flying Boat that we visited last month in Ireland was a new competitor close on its heel.

Sadly after two years and 63 transatlantic trips, the Hindenburg burned up on May 6, 1937. It was spectacularly caught on film making it instantly infamous. Zeppelin hoped to use non-flammable Helium for lift, but America had a monopoly on this precious, rare, and expensive gas in its Amarillo, TX gas wells. In 1927 the US banned the export and Zeppelin was forced to use explosive Hydrogen. Plus there were other contributing factors. Either way, dirigibles were not the air transportation mode of the future. Interestingly this museum has many burned artifacts from the disaster.

Running late, we drove another forty minutes west to the Pfahlbauten, or Pile Dwelling Museum. A thousand prehistoric Stilt Houses have been found around the Alps. A hundred of them have been designated a World Heritage Site. Here a large Stone Age village has been recreated based on archeological discoveries at this site.

For us it turns out to be mostly a disappointment. We are short on time and most of the signage is in German with no English. We should have spent more time at Zeppelin. Still it is fascinating that Stone Age man would have made these stilt houses over marshy areas. I would like to know why. These residents would have been contemporaries of Otzi the Ice Man we visited in Italy. Perhaps he was a trader for the Stilt People.

We intended to take the nearby ferry across Lake Constance back to Switzerland. Oddly we couldn't get either of our GPS apps to take us that way. So we punted and drove west around the lake. Surprisingly we passed dozens of apple orchards. We also crossed the Rhine again on the way. Lake Constance is just a wide spot in the Rhine River gouged out by a glacier during the Ice Age.

At the Zurich Airport, we dropped off the car, and had a Caesar salad lunch in the terminal. In the late afternoon, we boarded a flight to Berlin. Our flight path took us over Lake Zurich and Lake Constance. We spent the night at a hotel in the center of the airport. For dinner I had a Curry Wurst. It wasn’t quite what I expected.