Ulm. Ulm is special and dear to my heart, much like Freiburg is in so many ways. In April 1998, I boarded a plane by myself, arrived in Frankfurt hours later and then took a train to my new temporary home in Ulm. Here I worked for a concrete pump manufacturer, Reich Baumaschinen, for four months as a intern and did all sorts of exciting jobs at the company like translating manuals or delivering machine parts. I also got to use a company car my entire stay in Ulm and took it on several adventures to nearby cities. When I arrived in Ulm in October 2012, it felt like coming home. Some things had changed, but not much. On this fall morning I took an 8:00 am express train straight from Freiburg to Ulm and arrived in the early afternoon with enough time to check in to my pension and walk around the city some before a pre-scheduled Skype call with my boys. As I walked from the train station to the middle of the city where my pension was, I took photos along the way. Street acts on the pedestrian street performing for money. The local police station. Beautiful in black and white and a place I never discovered until this trip.
But, the creme de la creme of Ulm is the Ulmer Münster (church) with the tallest steeple in the entire world (530 feet). It is literally awesome to just stand and look straight up at it. You can see the steeple from miles and miles away and its size is breathtaking. The church sits in the middle of the city and has shops and restaurants encircling it. I’ll show you several external shots of the building in my next post, but for this point, I am focusing on the inside of the steeple. I ran up most of its 768 steps as fast as I could since I was limited on time. I wanted these photos, but I wanted the call with my boys even more! Construction on this Gothic style church was started in 1405 and ended in 1890. So, take a journey with me up the steeple and see what I saw through my lens on this fabulously foggy fall day. Just looking at these photos brings me back to the moments I took them and I can’t wait to finally frame a few of them so I can see them all the time.
