I got my bags back on a roll heading out there and I'm ready to go looking real good

in my passport photo.

Amateur Traveler episode 559. Today the amateur traveler talks about inventors,

Asparagus, castles, gardens, and bicycles as we take a bike trip through Baden-Vertenberg in Germany.

Welcome to the amateur traveler. I'm your host Chris Christensen just back from

Germany just about to lead off on my next trip. I'm only home for two days

so there's not much time let's talk about Germany.

So no guest for today's show instead we're going to be talking about my trip my

recent trip to Germany I did a bike trip in the region of Baden-Vertenberg. If you're not

familiar with Baden-Vertenberg, that's one of the German states. Basically, the whole

southern part of Germany is one of two states. On the east it is Bavaria and in the west,

including the Black Forest, it's Baden-Vertenberg.

And so the capital is Stuttgart, but I didn't go there.

I went to instead to four different cities. Mannheim, Schvezigan, Heidelberg, and Carl Zruh.

And we'll talk a little bit about more of each of those. But first in terms of why I went, so was a press trip and it was to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the bicycle

and the bicycle was invented in Monheim and Monheim was a first stop on this trip. I should say that I don't always go on

press trips. It actually cost me money to go on press trips because unlike a

freelancer who makes their living on the articles they would write, I

make my living doing software and so when I'm traveling I'm not

making money. And so I only choose places that I think will be interesting or trips that I think

will be interesting. And I was interested in this because I hadn't been to any place in the region of these

four cities that I went to except for Heidelberg. In fact Heidelberg hadn't originally been on the

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