The Heights of Ulm

The Christmas market was centred around a beautiful church. Not sure if it was the highest spire in the world, maybe it's the highest one on a building classed as a church instead of a cathedral or something?

The Sparrows of Ulm

Sadly we weren't around long enough to figure out why sparrows are associated with Ulm, but it had a lovely Christmas market. Bonus points for illustrations of fairy tales we'd never heard of.

Red Cross and cooking engine

The Red Cross had set up in the town centre and seemed to be letting children look inside their ambulances, and we later found a converted fire engine that looked like it was now a mobile food van.

The usual

I tried to send some interesting photos of our trip to Ulm at the weekend, but it looks like the photos from the new phone are too large. You'll have to make do with the view from the balcony this morning (which cleared slightly, then closed in again mid-afternoon).

Keep it classy, Germany (NSFW)

Inside and outside the public toilets at whatever train station we ended up waiting for 1.5 hours at on the way to Ulm on Saturday after the train we were supposed to get was too full of ragingly drunk football supporters.

Well played

Coop knows how to tempt me.

Winter in the eye of the camera

Some more winter photos!

Winter closing in

We've had high winds over the last two weekends, complete with dried out and empty balcony boxes and flower pots being hurled across the balcony, along with mats and chairs. So I did a final harvest of salad leaves and made many, many trips to the green bin. Only two boxes left at the moment, some bee-attracting mix that is still flowering. None of the peppers or pumpkins were edible in the end, but it was fun. I'll try to focus a bit more and try again next year.

Last home-grown salad of the year.

The view the following day.

The Christmas markets are open already, and I had fun walking around one of the smaller ones near Bellevue with a new friend. It's icy out in the mornings and evenings, so might be time to get some new photos for cards - we'll probably run out of our stock this year.