After breakfast, it was off to the local shops on a shopping expedition. In Essen, Eva had had a ‘singing’ egg which you put in with other eggs when you boiled them. It sang when the eggs were cooked. We were on the hunt to find some. Our first stop was a kitchen shop where we had no luck. On the way to the next shop, we called into a nursing home where Horst and Klara do some community work. It’s a huge complex and in addition to catering for the elderly also has an MS wing and a nursing training section. The facilities included a heated swimming pool and a gym – don’t see that sort of thing too often in Australia.
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| Half-timber building in Backnang |
At the next shopping spot we had better luck. Not exactly the eggs we were after but a fancy one (meaning much more expensive) which has a different song for the three stages of cooking – soft, medium and hard. The ‘soft’ song is ‘killing me softly’, for medium it’s a German song which goes something like ‘I want to be a chicken, I want to lay an egg, and On Sunday I might lay two” – very cute and we had to buy it even at 24€. We also got an antibiotics script filled for Jill just in case she needs it ‘down the track’. Fortunately, she has responded pretty well to the last lot and is much improved on what she was a few days ago.
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| Backnang from Tower Hill |
We parked in downtown Backnang. The old town is beautiful with many half-timber houses. Backnang is on the River Murr and historically has been a tannery town with all the pollution problems associated with such an industry. Now that the tanneries have gone the river has been cleaned up and they have done a wonderful job of rebuilding and refurbishing this part of the town so that it not too out of place with the older buildings a little further up the hill – Castle Hill. While there are remnants of older buildings, St Pancras church for instance, with its one remaining Romanesque tower (built in 1130), much of the town was rebuilt following a major fire (started by French troops) in 1693. The fire destroyed most of the town.
From there it was back to Horst and Klara’s for lunch and to wait for the man to bring oil for their central heating boiler for the winter – over 3,000€ worth!!! Fortunately, that should keep them going for about 18 months.
About 3.30 we were back into town. The first stop was at a small winery where they had just finished this year’s crush. Had the process explained to us in German (with Horst translating) – most interesting. We then drove to an old hand-operated crush (for grape juice) in a museum shed. Although the museum was closed we were able to see a video on its operation and view the press. You would certainly appreciate your juice after the effort that went into making it.
We drove back into town and parked on Tower Hill. We had a wander around town and ended up with a cup of coffee on the river bank. From there we walked up the hill for a view over Backnang and back through the new part of town.
As we were heading back to the car we came across a group of men playing Pétanque near where we were parked. There was a beautiful red sunset over the town. By this stage, it was getting quite cold so we headed back to Horst and Klara’s to somewhere warmer for dinner, a local Backnang wine and a chat.
