Austria Trip, Part I - Wednesday to Friday

Thursday

Overnight, the south of Endland has suffered its heaviest snow storm for 20 years. The radio warns against making unnessary trips, tales of roads blocked with abandoned lorries, airports closed, and so on. Despite all that, today is the day I set off to drive to Linz in Austria. My decision to set off is based on the discovery that there is very little snow east of Milton Keynes, and the knowledge that my Land Rover is little affected by such conditions.

Emma usues my drive to Harwich to get a lift back to Cambridge. She is working hard on her dissertation and also has preparations for her next lot of job interviews. Our journey only takes about 20 minutes longer than it would have done usually. We have time to call in the Student Travel agency and get lots of brochures for Emma's possible summer travel, and have dinner together. The last three weeks with Emma at home have been really nice - not sure when (or if) we might ever have such a long period together again.

The ferry to Hook of Holland departs at 11:45 but we can board around 9:00. I pretty much make straight for my cabin and settle in with a couple of books - I have brought with me four or five books connected to my work, but not directly so. For instance, Robert Darnton's The Case for Books. A mixed night's sleep - awake several times and hard to get back to sleep with the boat pitching around.

The morning's drive through Holland is really nice. The roads are so quiet (as they so often are on the Continent compared to Britain), the landscape has a small covering of snow and the canals are all frozen. A pale, watery sun tries to break through on several occasions. Most of the time I can see several kms over the flat landscape.

By Dusseldorf, the weather is a little worse. The odd flurry of snow, poorer visibility. I push on in three hour segments with 30 minute breaks between. Listening to long sequences of single artists - today was PJ Harvey, a firm favourite of mine for long distance driving. I reached Heidelberg around 2:30pm and was surprised to find the hotel reasonably easily. I am staying at a small "boutique" hotel north of the river perhaps 2km from the centre. I took a tram down to the centre and spent an hour or so walking round. It was bitterly cold and also I was not feeling 100% and may be going down with the same cold that Linda and Emma have recently had.

Heidelberg has such nice looking secondhand bookshops!


Friday

No new snow overnight and awake early enough to have some breakfast at the hotel. Then on my way towards, ultimately, Linz. Weather ok initially but getting slightly worse as I move towards Stuttgart. I decide to make the detour to Weil de Stat despite the roads being much worse. And good that I did to for the visit to this town was an absolute treat and one of the best things I have done lately.

Snow started falling just as I arrived and there has clearly been some recently. In the market square, the statue of Kepler has a light dusting. Behind him, the town's museum is close for the winter and re-opens in March. But the Kepler museum, sited in the house where Kepler was born, was open and was just brilliant. For the first time ever I have found myself coverting the objects in a museum and wishing they were mine. Early editions of Copernicus and Ptolemy and a fine collection of Kepler first editions, including De stella nova (available from a dealer in New York for $75,000 at the moment) and the Rudolphine Tables ($175,000).

This is the first time I have knowingly stood in a spot where I know for certain Kepler had been. I always feel quite a sense of the historic at these times (like I often do in Oxford at various locations) No one else at the museum - indeed they hadn't had a customer for several days. I am able to buy a couple of catalogues, but there are no Kepler-related amazing things for sale

Even the antiquarian bookshop in the town named after Kepler doesn't have anything actually by him. I would have liked to have found Volumes 16 and 17 of the collected works, but no such luck.

The Kepler Statue in front of the Town Museum (sadly closed for its "winterbreak" till March, but the scene of much Kepler-related celebrations in 2009)

Kepler's birthplace - now the Kepler Museum, despite Kepler having left the town when he was six!

A brass version of the embedded polyhedra from "Mysterium Cosmographicum" -the tightly packed centre

A rather neat drawing of the orbits of the outer planets

A copy of "The Rudolphine Tables" - if an original, worth about £125,000

"De Stella Nova"- first edition. I seriously considered seeing if the lid came off the display case at this point

"De Stella Nova" again

And a third time!

The front room upstairs

Kepler's lifetime travels shown on one graphic image - very impressive. Kepler never saw the sea it seems

Downstairs room one

The "Kepler Antiquariat" Bookshop - sadly no Kepler books for sale

The "Kepler Chemist"

Kepler's House tucked away in the corner of the main square

The road to Tubingen

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After the wonders of Weil de Stat, I decided I would carry on to Tubingen. It seemed so close on the map! But the roads were far more snowy and progress was slow. I also got rather lost on the edge of Tubingen and was extremely lucky to find the actual way to the centre and a place to park when I got there. Tubingen is not pushing its Kepler links in the way that Weil de Stat was, though I did spot a Keplerstrasse and there were postcards of Phillip Melanchthon in the town's museum. The highlight was perhaps the market square where, in 1591, Kepler had performed a female role in a play about John the Baptist and had subsequently caught a cold

A bookshop in Tubingen - it says that the Osianders have been booksellers in Tubingen since the late 1500s - are they related to the famous preface-writing Osiander?

Pictures on Tubingen Townhall

Tubingen Market Square, where Kepler appeared in a play in February 1591 and became ill as a result

The "Holderlin Tower", where the poet Holderlin spent most of the last 35 years of his life

The road back to Stuttgart

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From Tubingen I settle into the long drive to Linz via Munich and Saltzburg. The roads are good again and I make decent progress, kept awake near the end by Gallon Drunk played very loudly. Rather surprisingly, I was able to find the hotel fairly quickly, having accidentally passed the Theatre were the opera is on and the road where Kepler's house is, as I looked for it.

Actually a very good, modern hotel - very much a business hotel - and very cheap for what I have. A quick meal in the bar downstairs, a hot bath (luxury), a quick call home, and in bed by about 9:30. A real treat of a day