Tübingen; Friday, 19 September, 2025

As it was an early flight I’d stayed overnight at a hotel near the airport, so I only had to get the very last night bus of the night into the terminal rather than one much earlier. I had a smooth journey through Heathrow and onto the flight which involved a long bus ride across half the airfield as despite being a Terminal 3 departure the plane was actually parked up by Terminal 5.

The flight was smooth and we ended up a few minutes early into Stuttgart and with a quick trip through immigration I was soon on the U-Bahn into the centre of town and then through the long corridors of the temporary access ramps into Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof which is still, after more than a decade of work, undergoing rebuilding to become a through rather than a terminus station.

The advantage of the current set-up is that the train has to reverse at Stuttgart, rather than being able to run through, and that meant it arrived nearly 10 minutes before it’s departure time so I was able to get on and grab a seat for the hours journey in a very wide curve around the hills and back up the Neckar river to Tübingen.

Exiting the station, I was greeted with perhaps one of the most impressive views from a Hauptbahnhof in all of Germany – the city’s castle high on the hill overlooking the city and in front of it the Anlagensee, a large lake and park, which makes for a very pretty welcome to the city.

I walked the short distance to my hotel and was able to drop off my bags before I headed back out for a wander around the city, starting by crossing the Neckarbrücke into the Old Town, the view of the old buildings rising up from the banks of the river, with the city’s main church high above them is the standard picture postcard view of the city and they’re pretty much all taken from vantage points on the bridge. Having taken quite a few photos, I continued into the old town climbing up the steep road to the Holzmarkt, the market and square area in front of St Georges Church.

The whole city centre was very busy as there were a weeklong market and event taking place across the city, culminating in a bike and road race on the Sunday, but the centre of town was filled with market stalls and crowded with people – almost like a very warm Christmas Market.

I continued my walk through the town and ended up by the Schloß Hohentübingen, once a major palace, today it houses large parts of the University of Tübingen, one of the best ranked universities in the country, as well as a number of museums. But you can also walk around much of the site, including the inner courtyards and the outer defences.

I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the castle before it was time to head back down into town and find somewhere to grab a bite to eat – which wasn’t too difficult given the number of market stalls dotted around the Markt and Holzmarkt serving various different delicacies from both the local region and quite a few from France as well.

Dinner completed I headed back to the hotel to freshen up before waiting until after the sun had set to go for an evening wander through the city – though it turns out that the castle isn’t floodlit at night, so there wasn’t so much to see as I’d hoped for, at which point the realisation that I’d been up since long before dawn and had walked a fair distance today caught up with me and I decided it was well past time to get back to the hotel and a well-earned early night.