Alpine Summer

This wasn't really one of my field trips, but I was allowed to go along with Dr. Norwood's travel writing class. The main thing in Ludwigsburg is the gigantic palace in the center of town. We took a tour and had another great tour guide. Everything is orderly and measured precisely in the palace. This very much exemplifies some of the stuff about Neo-classicism that we are reading about in the Lit class; they harkened back to the idea of reason governing everything, and thus things needed to be symmetrical and perfect. The front apartments of the palace were all arranged in a line and, from one end to the other, the span was exactly 100 meters. The palace is a mirror image with a perfect line of symmetry right down the middle.

















I took lots and lots of pictures. So many that I ran out of room on my memory card (( and hadn't thought to bring the other one just in case )), so I'm going to have to get some from some other people that were there too.






















It was particularly interesting that there were two churches in the palace. This is because the duke and the land were both Protestant, and then a new Catholic duke came into power. He converted the old church into a Catholic church. Later, another Protestant duke came into power and he built the second church onto the palace instead of yet-again renovating. So, due to the passage of time between the two constructions, they had extremely different aesthetics. One was neat and clean and orderly, while the other exemplified the Baroque movement with (( what I consider to be )) too much ornate decor crowding the walls and ceilings.

















The train ride back was interesting. Luke and I were the only students going back from the trip to Schwäbisch Gmünd, so the two of us ended up talking with Dr. Norwood and Dr. Johnson the whole time. It's really funny because, in many ways, Dr. Norwood is like a student here, too. He speaks some German, but not much. He's been to Germany, but not for a very long time. However, Dr. Johnson lived here quite recently (( from what I can tell )) and is pretty well fluent in the language.