ChocolART Festival in Tübingen
Last Sunday night I was telling Matt what a busy week I had coming up. “What do you have? How can I help?” he asked because he is always wanting to make my life easier. I started laughing because while yes, my week was busy, it was also all really fun things. Lunch with a new friend, book club, and the biggest chocolate festival in Germany. Very much (not) stressful things 😆. Meanwhile, Matt did actually have a very stressful week on tap with important meetings and presentations and his physical fitness test he didn’t feel prepared for (but did amazing — his ease with fitness blows my mind and I wish it would rub off on me).
The Chocolart Festival in Tübingen happens just before their Christmas market kicks off each year and it was so fun to go and experience with friends. Tübingen is a university town that has signs of human development back to the 12th millennium BC! And much later on, Roman traces date to 85AD. Between 1470-1483 St. George’s Collegiate Church was built and Tübingen became one of the most influential learning places of the Holy Roman Empire. This church was one of the first to convert to Martin Luther’s Protestant Church although it maintains and carefully defends several Roman Catholic features, such as patron saints. It’s a fascinating city and one I really want to learn more about with a walking tour.
Every street from church and main square boasts perfect half-timbered houses mixed in with different architectural styles through the centuries from Byzantine, to Romanesque and Gothic.
This is the City Hall. My friend told me that when people are married here they come out on this little balcony to wave afterward.
The altar piece in the back ground was so beautiful. The inside panels show the Passion of Christ. It was painted in 1520.
I hadn’t seen something like this before — tombs of royals and nobility at the very front of the church. I didn't know it but I wasn’t supposed to be in this area so this is the only picture I got. I think they allow tours into the church to learn more so I will for sure be doing that.
But the star of the show for this visit was the chocolate and it didn’t disappoint. The vendors were generous with their samples and I loved all the really good food options. I bought a hot chocolate so I could take the cute mug home to add to our collection of Christmas market mugs. If you haven’t had European hot chocolate yet, it is very much not the same as hot chocolate in the US. It is literally cream with melted chocolate in it. It has to be kept in a container that is constantly mixing so that the chocolate and cream do not separate, and it is really thick. Yes, it is so delicious, but a whole mug was a lot! I could have just had a shot of it and felt totally full. I sacrificed and drank the whole thing to get that mug home with me.
These chocolinos were delicious, mildly sweet and with lots of interesting flavors like Quince with Yuzu and well as classics like raspberry and strawberry.
As we walked back to our car, my friend pointed out something on the pavement that I will keep an eye out from now on.
Beginning in 1996, German artist Gunter Demnig started placing handmade concrete and brass stones into the pavement across Germany. These are called a “Stolperstein,” or literally a stumbling stone. Each one is a memorial to a Jewish life that was taken during Nazi Germany and has inscribed on it the person’s name, date of birth, name of the concentration camp to which they were taken, and their date of death. What is even more powerful about these stumbling stones are that they are placed at the exact location of residence of the person named on the stone.
These memorial stones have stretched into other parts of Europe like Spain, Bratislava, and Prague.
