Day 308: Ice Age Caves

Time for another World Heritage site, and indeed the main reason we'd come to Ulm! Just outside town is a multi-location World Heritage site known as the Caves of Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura. Essentially, there are six caves where art objects from ice age humans have been found.

Most stuff was located in the town of Blaubeuren about 20 minutes on the train west of Ulm, but the museum didn't open until 2pm (!!), so we hung around our hotel room until midday. I passed some of the time talking to family on Skype.

Headed off on the train, and made one of the caves our first stop. They're all located in fairly out-of-the-way places, as you'd expect. This one required about 25 minutes of hiking uphill through the snow to reach the cave entrance. It was of course closed as we'd expected (some you can go into but not during the winter, others are still active archaeological digs), but it was still interesting to see. The cave was actually very small, no larger than a parking space really, though I guess it would've been larger in days gone by.

So we walked back to the station and then over to the museum, which took almost an hour as the museum was the opposite direction past the station. Arrived around 2:30pm and took turns going through while the other waited in the cafe. It was quite fascinating to see some of the objects that had been discovered - figurines, jewellery, even flutes made out of bird bones or mammoth tusks. All of them around 40,000 years old, which is incredible. They had a recording of a recreation from each flute, which was quite good to hear, even if it did sound a little like a kid's recorder concerto.

Since we'd started at the museum around 2:30, it was dark by the time we finished, so we hurried back to the station and grabbed the train back to Ulm just after 5pm. Decided we'd head directly to the Christmas markets for dinner, then spend the evening indoors again.

Enjoyed our time there again, though as we started the walk home, Schnitzel couldn't walk. He was standing in a very hunched over position, back legs wobbling, and very unsure of himself. Not wanting to risk an injury, we picked him up and carried him home where he was very subdued and off colour. Shandos and I both think it's probably IVDD, a spinal injury that's very common in dachshunds. By coincidence, we have a vet visit lined up for tomorrow in Nuremberg anyway, so we'll get an expert's opinion! Until then, we'll just have to stress.Read more