Blog: ” Steiff Museum in Giengen” and the cave “Charlottenhöhle” , 21st September 2024.
Our eventful “Bear”-Excursion to Giengen
On a wonderful warm and sunny (late) summer day we started our excursion by train to Giengen in the east of the Schwäbische Alb.
Giengen is the birth place of Margarete Steiff, who together with her nephew Richard is known as the creator of the famous Steiff Teddy Bear and many other animal friends. The visit to the Steiff Museum is a dreamlike trip back to childhood times. We had so much fun to learn about the Teddy Bear story, see many exhibits, hugging huge bears, taming tigers and even riding elephants! And the shop was certainly a challenge to everybody not to stress our budgets too much!
After a lunch break in the sunny park the tour continued by bus a few kilometres to the Charlottenhöhle, one of the longest show caves in Southern Germany! Discovered in early 1893 and already a few months later formally opened to the public by Queen Charlotte of Württemberg it is a great experience for everybody! Walking for more than 500m along an ancient riverbed through impressive halls, narrow channels and along miraculous formations you get deeply impressed by natures power! And the guides could make us feel the bears patrolling the cave a few hundred years ago – so maybe this is where the idea for a teddy bear came from!
The final part of the day was the sunny mid-afternoon hike through the beautiful landscape of the Schwäbische Alb to the next train station, where we took the train back to Ulm. We all enjoyed these new impressions of culture, history and nature!
