Altenburg

Way back last September (yes, I know it was a long time ago, but we're catching up slowly...), Calin and Susanne called us up and asked if we wanted to go for a drive somewhere. We ended up heading to Altenburg, a city about 70 km east of Jena, and somewhere that we'd never been.

And so we spent a few hours there, in a city known for the invention of the card game skat. If you don't know what I'm talking about, ask a German. There are symbols of the four suits (different from the hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades found in a "poker" deck) painted all around the city, and a fountain showing symbols from the cards. Apparently cards are still produced here as well.

Here you can see the large town square, where we began our afternoon stroll.From there we went to the Schossberg, or palace hill, to visit part of the local castle. We went up the watchtower there, which had a brick ramp instead of stairs, apparently to make it easier to bring supplies up to the watchman who lived at the top. (At least that's how I remember it - there are downsides to writing this stuff up 6 months after the fact.)
At the top we were able to check out the view on all sides...

...from the various windows surrounding the tower.
From there we headed back down the hill, and headed towards the two ponds in the city center. One of them had an island in the middle, which housed a small zoo that we went to visit. Here you can see a couple meerkats. (A linguistic aside: the name totally sounds like it comes from a Germanic source, probably dutch with those double-"e"s, but in German they're called Erdmännchen, or "little earth men". I checked the dutch name, but then they're called stokstaartje, or "little stick-tails". There's a complicated explanation for how we're using the wrong Dutch word, found on Wikipedia.)
And there were some monkeys...
...and a pissed-off peacock that only I got to see while I'd temporarily lost the others.
In the meantime, Jeremi was making friends with some very friendly goats.
I loved this little pheasant-type bird which is native so somewhere in China, because it just looked so Asian, like an animal that you might see depicted in east-Asian art but assume that it's highly stylized, because no bird really looks like that, right?
And yet another Asian-looking bird.
There were also wacky Asian porcupines with incredibly long black and white quills.

Then the zoo was closing, so we headed back into the city to look for some food. Here's the view from the bridge that led to the island-zoo.
The city was quite pretty overall, particularly complemented by these incredibly lush planters. There were five or six of them lined up all in a row, each with a different selection of plants.

I also saw, for the first time ever, an ice cream vending machine set up outside a closed ice cream shop. Germans really do love their ice cream (which is one aspect of the culture with which Susanne heartily agrees).
We ended up heading back to the city square and eating at the restaurant in the Rathaus, or city hall. These restaurants usually offer reliably-decent German fare, but this place was really a step above normal. The food was still typical traditional Thüringian dishes, but they were really good. (Just going to show that the problem with German food is not the actual dishes or ingredients, just that the preparation too often is lacking.) Even their super-dull schnitzel, fries and peas (see Calin's plate, at right) was better than usual. All in all, a nice afternoon.