Ulm – love at second sight

South of the Danube, winter can be brutal. Snowdrifts block roads and even railways. Icicles are as thick as oak branches. At least that's how I remember that winter in Wangen, near Lake Constance, in the late nineties.

As soon as the frost eased a bit - it was only minus five - and as soon as they cleared all the roads, I decided to pack my son in the stroller and take the train to Ulm.

Admittedly, Konstanz, on the other side of the lake, was the only major city closer than Ulm. But to get there, you had to take a ferry. I imagined the icy wind from the lake playing in our ears and immediately decided on Ulm. Winter between the Alps and the Danube is idyllic only when viewed from a heated carriage.

I remember Ulm for two reasons. Around the cathedral, whose bell tower was then the tallest in the world, an icy draft cut my admiration short to a few seconds.

The bridge over the Danube lasted us even shorter. I saw the river on which I was born over 1,400 kilometers downstream as a gray-black strip between two whites. Only my palate remembered Ulm in good taste. Hot chocolate in a place whose name I don't remember cheered us up a bit. I went back to Wangen, not knowing that my next stay in Ulm would be almost three decades later.

SEEING YOU AGAIN

This time it was summer. July, which in its abundance of heat and light reminds me of August. I arrived in the afternoon, stayed in a hotel near the train station and the old town. I immediately went out to greet the cathedral. Although, the correct term is not cathedral, but minster. The root of that word is monastery. That is often the name given in Germany to important churches that are not episcopal seats.

The church no longer holds the world record for the highest height. Last October, it was surpassed by the Christ Tower on the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. The Ulm beauty has nothing to complain about. Being the world champion for 135 years – since 1890 – is no small feat.

The foundation stone of this church was laid in 1377. At that time, Ulm was a Catholic city. It remained so until the emergence of the Protestant version of Christianity. In a referendum held by the citizens of Ulm in 1530, seven-eighths of the votes went to the Evangelical doctrine. Since then, the cathedral has been the main church of Ulm's Protestants. With its Gothic aspiration to height, it does not hide its kinship with famous Catholic buildings.

It is a fascinating fact that at the time the decision was made to build the church, Ulm had only 10,000 inhabitants. The city was never the seat of a bishop. That is why there is one facade bell tower, a better expression would be a tower, and not two as in episcopal churches. This building has always been the church of the local citizens. They financed its construction.

In 1543, political tension between Protestants and Catholics and a lack of funds halted construction. The bell tower remained at a height of 100 meters for over three centuries.

As soon as the city achieved prosperity, construction resumed.

This time I made up for what I missed that winter day. I went into the church.

Here, man is small. I suppose that through his own tinyness in the sacred space, he would sense the greatness of the invisible Creator.

A brochure at the entrance highlights the biblical quote: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders’ labor is futile.” The Lord seems to have been involved in the construction, albeit for a little longer than the people who started it imagined. The Lord has all the time in the world. It is recorded that on June 30, 1377, Mayor Luc Kraft and his wife Elizabeth descended into the hole that had been dug to lay the foundation. They covered the stone with gold coins. Others followed their example. Thus, the initial financing for the construction was secured.

The last architect, August von Bayer, decided to add another 10 meters to the bell tower. This brought it to 161,53 meters, surpassing the 157-meter-high Cologne Cathedral. The people of Ulm will tell you that this is not true - the Cologne church was supposedly not the reference point. It was here that in 1890 a choir of 320 people sang Felix Mendelssohn's oratorio dedicated to the Old Testament prophet Elijah, celebrating the completion of construction after centuries.

WHY IS IT GOOD TO LIVE HERE?

I'm going out into the glare. I'm curious why, according to a survey by a public opinion research institute, Ulm was chosen as the best city to live in Germany in 2024. The competition is strong only in the south of Germany. I considered Konstanz on Lake Constance, Regensburg on the Danube, Freiburg in the lap of the Black Forest, or Nuremberg to be more beautiful destinations.

That's why travel is there, to question the ideas about the world that are caught in the web.

Another truly impressive building in the center is certainly the old Town Hall.

I sat in a restaurant on the square behind the building. I looked at the facade, which, like a historical comic strip, depicts important events from the city's chronicles. I watched the fountain, people resting in the shade of trees or hurrying on their way. This moment is like a cup, full of sparkling summer, rustling Swabian dialect and inner peace. It's good to be here.

The town hall is also the threshold of the old town's Fisherman's Quarter. Ulm also has its own clear, fast-flowing Blau River, which splits into two branches in the city itself, joins again and flows into the Danube. Real German stilt houses loom over the water. I've seen something like this before. Wooden beams above the green water. Colmar.

The Fisherman's Quarter was actually a district inhabited by fishermen and tanners. Alleys with houses that, even after several hundred years, proudly display their supporting beams as facade decorations.

The mills on the river provided power for tanneries. Today, the bridges and restaurants on the banks have an idyllic appearance and attract visitors. Historical chronicles mention the unbearable stench of animal skins drying on the balconies.

Now this area smells like food being prepared in restaurants. I like the freshness that the Blau River brings from the hills on a hot day. Its name in German means Blue. But it would be wrong to reduce the name to its Germanic substrate. The Celts called it Blava. From there, the word blue is not far away. The water that I look at in amazement is actually green.

The houses were built mostly between the 15th and 17th centuries. They were often built on pillars driven into the water. Over time, the pillars gradually gave way. Some of the houses became crooked.

One of them is known as the Crooked House. It houses a hotel whose entrance reveals that it has entered the Guinness Book of Records. No other hotel in the world is so crooked.

From here, fishermen would go out onto the Danube in small boats and return with their catch. They also became skilled in shipbuilding. The shallow wooden boats with box-like superstructures became known as Ulm boxes because of their shape. For centuries, people and goods were transported down the Danube all the way to the Black Sea in such boxes.

I peek at the tables of people in restaurants by the river. Most often, the tables are filled with specialties of Swabian cuisine, which, along with Bavarian cuisine, has become world-famous. Along with that, there are mugs of the local beer, the Golden Ox.

Street names in German cities that have preserved their medieval cores can be amusing. Pig Square. Fisherman's Square. Father's Alley. Kod Engleza. Volovska.

BELGRADE IN ULMU

It was the Danube, which connected countries and empires that no longer exist, all the way to the Black Sea, that was important to Ulm. Traces of it can even be seen on the facades of the houses.

A historical mural depicting Belgrade is located on the facade of the famous “Beautiful House”. The house served as the seat of the masters and elders of the powerful guild of Ulm shipbuilders and fishermen. It was built in the 16th century but was completely renovated in 1616, and was extended half a century later. Locals say that the name “Beautiful House” is actually ironic – because its interior architecture supposedly does not have a single right angle. Today it is a protected cultural monument.

The mural was commissioned by the guild master Johann Matjojs Scheifele in 1717. It was painted the very next year, in 1718, immediately after the end of the siege of Belgrade. It was created to honor the participation of Ulm shipowners in the Austro-Turkish War (1716–1718).

They used their box ships to transport imperial troops and supplies down the Danube directly to Belgrade to aid the army of Prince Eugene of Savoy.

I see Zemun and Belgrade from the early 18th century. The walls of Kalemegdan, the contours of the then upper and lower cities, the bell towers and minarets that bear witness to the change of Ottoman and Christian rule.

After the Habsburg victories, the Danube Swabians were systematically settled on the Pannonian border with Turkey. Their history is recorded in a local museum. But a monument on the promenade along the Danube reminds us that this part of the German people was not a favorite of fate. After several hundred years, the descendants of the settlers along the Danube were expelled to the land of their ancestors.

DANUBE FESTIVAL

I came to the city on a literary job, at the invitation of the editor of the literary program of the International Danube Festival, Olivera Stošić Rakić. We know each other from the time when she worked in the same job at the Belgrade Cultural Center. She and her family have been in Ulm for eight years.

The festival brings together artists from the Danube countries. I managed to see the opening, two literary and one musical performance. And to talk to a local politician who welcomed the Belgrade students with warm words on their way to Brussels.

Olivera says that Ulm is special in that the city's institutions and citizen participation in public affairs are a tradition that goes back centuries. She cites the example of the construction of a church. A sacred space for 20,000 people was created, and this was imagined by the people of a town that at the time had less than 10,000 inhabitants.

Olivera happily states that one of her favorite spots in the city is a small monument at the site where Ulm women defended their right to work in the 14th century: "About the time the Battle of Maritsa took place, Ulm was left without most of its men, including butchers, who died in one of its many wars. Their wives took over the running of the butcher shop. Since the city law at that time prohibited women from engaging in artisanal work, Ulm's butchers fought for this right in the streets - it was one of the early feminist protests in Europe, so to speak."

Olivera was born and raised in Vojvodina, in Knićanin, which until the end of World War II was a Swabian village - Rudolfsgnad, so the Swabians are no strangers to her. "It seems to me that in my family we have always been aware of the controversial fate of the Danube Swabians. Today, among other things, I work as a guide at the Central Danube-Swabian Museum in Ulm. And when nostalgia intensifies, I go to the banks of the Danube and imagine its Vojvodina and Belgrade banks. Therefore, for me, the river is more a metonymy of connection than a metaphor of separation."

SHOW THE WORLD YOUR LANGUAGE

During those days I hung out with Oliver, but also with Bosnians. I met people like Faruk Šehić, whom I have known for decades. The conversation in Ulm was a continuation of the conversation in Zvornik, where we had recently met.

Incidentally, the bridges over the Danube connecting Ulm and Neu-Ulm are also the administrative border of two German provinces. I crossed them several times a day.

There is a festival atmosphere on the banks. There are also swimmers under the bridges.

I used to sit by the bank and watch the Danube. To imagine its flow through cities and languages. My son was born in Regensburg. On the same river, as I was in Zemun. Once it was in the same, Roman Empire. Empires are fleeting. But when someone is born on the Danube, they understood that two millennia ago, they understand it now.

In this city, which I returned to love after all, the children of liberal politician Robert Scholl grew up. Sophie and Hans were executed in Munich as members of the White Rose resistance group to the Nazi regime.

On my penultimate morning in the city, I walked along the northern ramparts, where a row of houses had been built. I had rarely seen a medieval fortress so beautifully transformed into a living space. My goal was a monument to a man who knew how to mock the media circus that followed him.

Ulm is the birthplace of Albert Einstein.

The monument is in a quiet part of the city, less visited by tourists. Einstein's life stations are connected to other cities. He became a pop icon in America. The painting that served as the template for the monument was created in Princeton in 1951. Einstein loved it. He sent copies of it to his friends. In this gesture, he saw resistance to the powerful, to state tyranny, to the spirit of the times.

Now his petrified smile and the tongue he stuck out to the world are a legacy to his hometown. I wink at Albert and head towards the Danube to say goodbye to Ulm.