Southern Germany

I’ve got a lot of ground to cover, both figuratively and literately so I will just jump right in.

On July 22nd I traveled to Dotterhausen in Southern Germany to sample the Posidonia Shale for part of my dissertation. I manage to convince Mike, a friend from my MU days who is now at the MPI, to come along and help me. The trip was 6 long hours of driving, but we managed to make it to Gormaringen, the village where we were staying, without too much trouble.

I really shouldn’t under sell the drive, because it was amazing. The sights were great; green rolling hills, castles, etc; we basically cover the length of the country! Above all of that though was the fact that I had my first autobahn driving experience. I set my own land speed record of 200 km/hr or ~120 miles/hr. However this did occur while I was being blown away by a BMW SUV. In my defense I was driving an Opel sedan.

As rocks go, the Posidonia Shale is pretty famous. If you’ve seen an ichthyosaur (one of these…
http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/ichthyosaur.jpg

it’s highly likely came from this rock unit. The Posidonia also contains ton or other fossils and even ancient driftwood. The cement company that utilizes the quarry has a great museum that houses fossils they find in quarry (the ones that they don’t blow or crush into bits that is).

Geologically the Dotterhausen quarry was impressive. Ammonite fossils (cephalopods, similar to Nautilus) are everywhere. Just by walking around you crush museum quality specimens. Although my task was to collect shale samples for chemistry, I did collect at least 20 ammonites (now you all know what you are getting for Christmas…just kidding).

While we weren’t working in the quarry Mike and I discovered a great beer hall/restaurant about a block from our hotel; it was so good we ate dinner there both nights we were in town.

The sampling took two days and on our last night Mike and I went to the city of Tubingen for a night on the town. The city was beautiful. Tubingen’s city center is pretty much what you’d expect a medieval Southern German town to look like; narrow cobblestone streets, timber framed and stone buildings.

We ate dinner at a restaurant that was in the city center set on top of a hill close to the castle. They specialized in making Maultaschen, a meat filled pasta (sort of like a German ravioli). They definitely were worth the trip; mine were filled with cheese and trout. Mike made sure that I had a beer while walking around town because it’s legal in Germany. We then commenced to pub hop until we caught the bus back to our hotel sometime after midnight.

The next day, Saturday, we repeated our scenic, but long trip back to Bremen. The trip was made longer by us being a little worse for wear from the night before and also we managed to get lost in Stuttgart. Despite this minor annoyance though, the South German trip was a total success and a great time. I definitely need to go back.

And believe it or not I got up the next day and flew to London.

Next up London Part I.