Vagn and I left Magdeburg Thursday early morning, and headed for Konstanz, a city in Southern Germany on the border with Switzerland. Vagn wanted to visit the aero fair in Friedrichshafen, and I thought my friend should of course see it. There were many small charming cities on our way, like Hettstedt:
Terrain was becoming more hilly, as longer south we were flying. The hills were covered in forests, with small patches of villages here and there:
We flew by different industrial areas, in one place there was lots of metal om the ground; we couldn’t really figure out what it was. Our best guess was material for railway construction:
The Hohenwarte reservoir on the photo below with a curved concrete gravity dam built in 1936-1942. There was severe flooding in 1890, and hence a need for a dam.
During the construction, a village of Presswitz sunk, and 250 residents were relocated. The dam has a height of 75 m, its length is 412 m. This dam is the fourth largest in Germany, with storage capacity of 182 million cubic meters of water.
A castle on top of a hill:
The outskirts of Stuttgart:
A church on a top of a quite high hill, and a cemetery on its right side below. Imagine to berry someone so high up for the last goodbye! But the view from there must be magnificent…
Gliding site on top of the Farrenberg mountain, 2.690 ft. It has a 1 km long runway. What a lovely place for gliding!
Just one more beautiful hilltop with colourful fields around:
Sigmaringen Castle by the river Danube on the picture below. It is a medieval castle from the 11th century, rebuilt in 1893 after a fire. It is still owned by the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family, although they no longer reside there.
And finally we reached Konstanz. We didn’t believe it would be possible to make it, because the weather forecast promised low cloud base. We prepared plan B, C, and D in case we had to land somewhere else. I was monitoring the weather during our flight, and could see it was better near Stuttgart. We changed our route, and entered Konstanz from the north-west.
Reichenau island on the photo above, welcomed us to Konstanz. Reichenau is a World Heritage site, known for its Benedictine Abbey that was founded there in 724 A.D. The island has an area of 4.3 km. We continued on left downwind to the runway 27 on EDTZ:
Heavenly view of Konstanz and the Rhine river from the left base RWY27:
And a good landing:
Konstanz Tower, and the air traffic controller at work:
We were very happy to reach Konstanz! Many aircraft were landing after us. We chatted a bit with other pilots; there was one ultralight from The Netherlands, and one from Luxembourg, the rest were from other corners of Germany.
We took a train to the town, and found the place where we were going to stay – an area of Konstanz called Paradies (English: Paradise). It is a very nice and quiet residential area close to the historical downtown of Konstanz:
We rented a two-bedroom apartment in one of those buildings; it was newly renovated, light and very comfortable. Early evening we had dinner at home; late evening Vagn went out for a drink with other pilots; I thought I needed my beauty sleep, and went early to bed.
The day after Vagn was going to the aero fair in Friedrichshafen, and I was going to see Konstanz, go shopping, and relax.
