Day 11: When you just have to concede defeat

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We arrived in Stuttgart as a stopping point on our way to visit Fritz. There didn’t seem to be a ton to do directly in the city of Stuttgart, but it had a lot of parks to walk around the next day in the surrounding area. The one thing we wanted to attempt is going to the highest point of the city (Birkenkopf). This is 511 m and is near city center. It is the highest point in the city is they took the ruins and rubble from the buildings during WWII and piled them to create the top of the hill. We had recently been talking about what cities did with all their destroyed buildings so it seemed ironic to end up in a city who had used its ruins. We had heard of others that were simply left in ruins (the French city of Oradour sur Glane), others rebuilt most of the city but left remains of specific buildings and some rebuilt everything. Now if you know anything about our past travels, typically the climb to the top of a hill would seem like child’s play. However, we mess it up. There was the one hill in Santiago that took 3 attempts including a stumble onto a hillsman’s property and his angry dogs, the attempt in Dominica to reach the highest point of their hiking trail and now Birkenkopf. Many turns up and down a hill, always a little closer, but a little off. We then stumbling across a couple stairwells that took us up and to what appeared to be makeshift houses in between the stairwell and the permanent houses led us to the beginning of a what appeared to be the trail. However, it was too late to make the final assent. The more depressing thing than not being able to find our way to the highest city point was that it took us a good hour to find our way DOWN back to town. One of those days to just admit defeat. We laugh that we are still alive today with our directionally challenged self.

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