Last week, Jan told me I should pick somewhere for us to go this weekend, so I looked around at places that are near here and chose Schwetzingen. The reason? They currently have an exhibition on The Magical World of “Figurentheater” (the only translation I can find for Figurentheater is “puppet theatre”, but they had examples of paper and shadow theatre as well so I’m not sure what to call it). The exhibition is on until 27 January 2013 but this Saturday only they had someone coming in to do a talk on the making of a marionette, from the idea to the acting of the story. Naturally I wanted to go (yes, mentally I’m probably about 5!).
It wasn’t snowing when we arrived in Schwetzingen, but as you can see from the above photo, there was still some white stuff lying from previous days.
The marionette talk didn’t start until 2pm, so our first stop was the castle, which is included in our Museum cards (which I got for my birthday last year). You could only go inside the actual castle as part of a tour, and the next one was at 1:30 pm (which would have prevented us from going to see the puppets), so we just went into the gardens instead.
I’ve heard they’re supposed to be beautiful, but right now they’re mostly just white. And all the plants are dead. There was an exhibition in one of the wings of the castle though, so we went to have a look at it. Art work by Miro. Can’t say I was particularly impressed.
On the square outside the castle there’s a sculpture called “Die Spargelfrau” (The Asparagus Lady). Apparantly Schwetzingen is on the German asparagus route… Germans are weird 😉
I liked the little dog best. His collar says his name is Nico.
It was 12:30 by this time, so we decided to grab some lunch. There was a brewpub right on the castle square – Brauhaus zum Ritter – so we went there. A Ritter is a knight, by the way. We chose a table with a view of the castle and ate some lovely German food. And, of course, drank some of the beer.
Once we’d finished lunch, it was time to head down to the Stadtmuseum (town museum) to see what we’d actually come for. The talk was really interesting and afterwards we were allowed to play with the puppets. Most of the audience were adults (only 3 kids were there!), so I’m obviously not the only childish one 😉
Then we went to have a look at the rest of the exhibition. We had a go at the shadow theatre. Here’s my attempt to do the alligator:
Jan tried his hand at the elephant, but to me it looked more like a bird. What do you think?
Making shadow creatures is more difficult than it looks!
I would have liked to play for longer, but the kids wanted a go so we moved on to the other exhibits.
Naturally I had to take a photo of this owl puppet!
Back in the town centre, we found the Evangelical church.
Close to the church, there was this stone sculpture that Jan thought was cool. There was no plaque or anything to tell us what it was supposed to represent though.
A little further on, we came across the Catholic church. If there’s one thing all German towns seem to be full of, it’s churches! I can think of six in Karlsruhe off the top my my head, and I bet there are more.
The sun had come out by this point, so I actually managed a photo with some blue sky on it 😀
Moving on, we spotted this peacock lying outside one of the town council’s buildings. I wonder where he belonged?
Schwetzingen is not the prettiest of towns, although it does have a few nice buildings. There’s also not a huge amount to do. If you’re going to visit, I’d recommend doing so in summer when you can take a proper long walk through the castle gardens. There seems to be a lot to look at there, but a lot was closed or inaccessible in the snow. Maybe you could even take a picnic. We certainly intend to go and look at those gardens when the weather’s more suitable for walking around!
Confuzzledom 
Peacock?! How cool! Ps. I’m in Austria now following your list of to does!
I hope you’re having a good time!
Oh, beautiful pictures. Lucky you seeing a peacock! I once bumped into an owl sitting on a roof in the pedestrian centre of our town, also it certainly did not belong there, but I felt so lucky to have spotted it… I love castles,,, and picnicks which would certainly be great there in summer!
Ha! I take every opportunity to be 7 again as well – gratefully 😉
Have a good week!
Svenja
Jan thinks the peacock probably belonged somewhere in the grounds of the castle.
I would love to have a picnic there in the summer 🙂
Ooh, I would have loved the puppet talk/exhibition too – the owl puppet is so cool, although naturally I also love the paper theatre! (And yeah, I’m with you on the bird vs. elephant matter!) Can’t believe you didn’t like the Miro exhibition though – I went to the Miro Foundation here in Barcelona in September and just totally loved it!
It was all a bit too abstract for me. I kept looking at pictures thinking “My six year old brother could draw that!”. There were a couple that were ok, but overall I wasn’t impressed. I’m not an artist though – maybe I just don’t understand 😉
haha! I know what you mean, but I just loved it! there were some of his weavings and sculptures there and they just amde me smile A LOT!