Maulbronn Monastery and the Celtic Museum
My first full day in Germany, my uncle and his family took me to some sites in the Stuttgart area. The first stop was the Maulbronn Monastery, in the town of Maulbronn - northwest of Stuttgart. The legend goes that some monks were wandering looking for a new site for their monastery and they would build it where their donkeys stopped to drink water. So the donkeys stopped to drink from a spring at this location and there is now a fountain built at that spot. We spent the morning milling around the grounds. My little cousins were more interested in eating the wild grapes or running around and getting into trouble.
The next stop was a Celtic Museum in Heilbronn - north of Stuttgart. A short distance from the museum is the actual (reconstructed) burial mound. Farmers plowed their fields over this "hump" in the landscape until eventually some artifacts were recovered. The burial mound was excavated and the treasures (or replicas) are now housed in the museum, along with a replica of the contents of the burial mound to scale. This is a really neat stop for anyone interested in anthropology or archaeology.
