Ulm

Few summer weekends go by when there’s not something going on in Ulm, and particularly on its central Münsterplatz which hosts the June Stadtfest and a famously grand Christmas market in December. But the city’s biggest annual bash is Schwörwoche (Oath Week) in late July, which centres on the Danube, and celebrates an annual mayoral address in which a pledge to honour the town’s 1397 constitution is reiterated. This rather solemn affair takes place at 11am on Schwörmontag – the penultimate Monday in July – but is bookended by a couple of livelier celebrations. The enchanting Lichtserenade (Light Serenade) in which candle-lit lanterns are floated down the Danube takes place on the previous Saturday, and the big event, Nabada, starts at 3pm on Schwörmontag when all manner of vessels and raucous crew navigate their way a couple of kilometres downstream to a fairground. Water pistols feature heavily in the celebrations – and local department stores discount them on the day.

The Danube is also the focus of other traditional frolics whose origins go back to the fifteenth century and are held every four years (next in 2013 and 2017): Fischerstechen (Fishermen’s Jousting) takes place on the river on the second and third Saturday in July and a Bindertanz (Coopers’ Dance) is held on a pair of July Fridays the same year. Finally, the banks of the Danube also host a biannual July event, Donaufest (even years), which celebrates the music and culture of the communities along the river’s length; Austrians, Hungarians, Serbians and Romanians arrive to sing, dance, and sell snacks and handicrafts.

Albrecht Ludwig Berblinger aka the “Tailor of Ulm”, crash-landed his home-made hang-glider into the Danube in 1811, eighty years before his pioneering countryman Otto Lilienthal took to the air. Ulm has since warmed to its tailor as an eccentric hero – a plaque on Herdbrücke marks the spot where he took off – but in his day Berblinger was mocked mercilessly. Worn down by ceaseless jibes, his business in tatters, he died bankrupt in 1825, a drunkard and gambler. Ironically, his design has since proved to be workable, and only the lack of thermals on the day caused failure and ruin.

One connection Ulm likes to celebrate, in memorials and merchandise, is its link to Albert Einstein, born here on March 14, 1879. Never mind that the great Jewish physicist lived here for only fifteen months and that he refused the town’s 70th birthday gift of honorary citizenship; paving slabs and granite pillars mark his birthplace on Bahnhofstrasse (later obliterated by bombs). More striking are Jürgen Gortz’s wacky bronze of Einstein with his tongue out, and the excruciating monument mounted on it in the form of one stone (“ein Stein”), opposite, which lie a 750m walk northeast of the Münster in front of the Zeughaus.