The Ulm Münster Steeple

On Sunday, I climbed to the top of the Ulm Münster Steeple, the tallest steeple in the world. I'm just now getting around to blogging about it. (But Matt, it's only been two days.) Wrong, hypothetical reader. It's been nine; I climbed it last Sunday.

To refresh your memory, this is the steeple in question.

And this is where my journey begins. Notice how narrow the stairway is. It's a tricky situation when I run into someone on his way down.

Whew, I've been climbing for a while. How high am I? Oh...

It's so spirally!

Getting higher. Time for another out-the-window picture!

This is the first resting spot. It's not really possible to sit down, but I get to walk horizontally for a bit instead of vertically.

I'm now here, at the arrow.

Everyone's so small!

Some of the German countryside, behind their uniformly pointed roofs. Okay, enough "resting," time for more climbing.

At this point, a wonderfully cheerful thought popped into my head: What if I slip? Think Samwise Gamgee falling down the Winding Stair in Return of the King, and add about 10 minutes and several broken bones. Okay! More climbing!

Now I'm at the next stopping point, which is roughly...

here.

Now this is a view.

(This is also a view, but it's different than the last one, and it's partially obstructed.)

(This view is different still, and even more obstructed.) This is the rest of the church.

Time to climb some more. This stairway is darker than the previous ones.

Ooh, this is a much better picture of the rest of the church, out one of the windows in the stairway. (Then why even include the previous one?) Because, hypothetical reader, I forgot I had this one, and I don't want to go back and erase it now.

Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Well, this guy is the hobgoblin of the Ulm Münster. Which, if you ask me, is a lot cooler than a little mind. This hobgoblin lucked out.

Finally, I'm done climbing! Time to take some pictures and--

Whaaaat?!?! More stairs??

I'm only here! Okay, calm down, Matt. What would Carl do? Okay, let's do this!

Now I'm at the top. Wow, what a sight! That church slightly to the left of center is St. George's, the Catholic church I go to on Sundays.

For those wondering, I'm now here.

The Danube! On the other side is Neu-Ulm. Halfway across the river is a little island. There's a coffee shop there that my PhD student and his wife took me to the first weekend I was here.

Another angle of the Danube. If you follow it far enough in that direction, you'll find the part of it I photographed a few weeks ago, and the Fort near which I got lost.

It's a loooong way down...

Check out how much taller the steeple is compared to the rest of the church.

My dorm is somewhere around that red oval.

That there, in the middle, is the Ulm "main street." I think it's called Bahnhofstraße.

There's the train station, towards the back. No, not that far back, that's the horizon. Closer...closer...there ya go!

When I took this picture, I could see a train waaaaaaaaay out in the distance. But it doesn't really show up in the picture. So instead, you get another cool picture of Ulm and the surrounding countryside. Although I think there's some wind turbines back there too, if you look closely.

After taking those pictures, I began the long journey back down to ground level. I counted the steps on the way down: 789 total. Wikipedia says 768, but I don't think they're counting the steps that go straight from the third resting spot to the final spiral stairway. Either way, it's a lot of steps. My legs were really shaky on the way down, which was mildly terrifying, but I made it all right. I was so proud of myself for getting the the top and back, that I bought myself an ice cream cone as a reward. Mango flavor! I even took a picture of it.

But don't tell my camera that, because it though I wanted to take a picture of the chair behind it.

Again, sorry for the long period of no posts on the blog. I should have another post up at some point in the not-too-distant future. Say, before August... Tchüs!