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Home Page > Travelogues > Germany > Bayern > Wasserburg (am Bodensee)

Wasserburg was one of the first places that Tom visited back in 2001, and one of the last places we visited together before moving out of Germany in 2005.  The former was almost coincidental, as Tom had decided to take a boat ride while touring Lindau am Bodensee and found himself at the dock of Wasserburg staring at the scene in the first photograph.  The boat route from Lindau was a regular round trip that took about a half-hour each way.  He did not disembark at Wasserburg, and instead just returned to Lindau.  So, when we decided to visit Lake Constance, Tom wanted to get back to Wasserburg and see what he might have missed.

We found that Wasserburg was a little residential village about six kilometers west of Lindau on the shores of Lake Constance.  The majority of the inland side of the village was unremarkable, in truth.  The waterfront was clearly the place to be.  This zone was known as the Halbinsel, meaning 'half island', a peninsula that jutted out to the lake.  This was the main tourist draw, and on both sides there were small harbors for the locals to launch their sailboats.

The Halbinsel was about a half-mile walk from the main parking lot that was fully enclosed in the trees.  The clear intent was to keep the traffic away from the waterfront.  The walk followed a small paved path that led to the scene in the second photograph, the sailboat docks and one of a series of little flower gardens decorating the outside.  As it was the early summer, the flowers were in full bloom -- mostly reds and pinks.  Behind me when I took this photo was Wasserburg's War Memorial, which was a large engraved stone surrounded by more red and pink flowers.  Beyond the docks at the left, there were a number of impressive mansions well hidden by the trees.  Several of these had their own private docks with little dock houses, probably for holding fishing gear.  The third photograph shows part of the town's marina with some of the private dockhouses in the background.

Continuing on the Halbinsel, we came upon the Wasserburger Schloss (or palace, the yellow structure) and the town church (the white structure) that made up the scene in the first photograph.  The palace was small and simple, and parts of it had been converted to a souvenir shop and ice cream cafe.  These buildings were only a portion of the structures that originally covered the Halbinsel.  We did not find out why those structures were no longer present, but some small tokens of their former presence were still scattered about.  A section of an old foundation was coverted to a small plaza where the sculpture of an old woman feeding pigeons sat, the scene enhanced by a number of other flowers.  Standing near the entrance of the Halbinsel was an old iron gate standing alone in the middle of someone's front lawn.  The gate was the original palace entrance gate.  None of the rest of the fence remained.  There were tours of the palace available, but we didn't have time to partake.  We were more interested in going out to the docks to capture the scenes of the lake.

The fourth photograph shows one of the typical Lake Constance passenger boats departing the Wasserburg dock.  The flag on the stern was an Austrian flag, which meant that the boat probably originated from Bregenz at the far eastern corner, about seven kilometers east of Lindau.  It was this type of boat that Tom rode on the top deck back in 2001.  It was from the same spot that we took the shot of the Schloss and church in the first photograph.  We took a fair number of photographs of the lake and the marinas on both sides of the Halbinsel.  As usual for a summer weekend day, the lake was filled with white sailboats.  The crystal blue sky also gave us clear views of the Alps to the east, and of Switzerland across the lake to the south.

In our opinion, Wasserburg was not really a destination, but a good quick stop on the way to somewhere else.  And a lot of people did just that.  The palace cafe was filled with people who came in from boats or who were biking along the Bodensee bike path that connected all the towns on the villages on the lake.  For us, it was an hour or so well spent.

Trips taken 25 June 2006 -- Page last updated 01 September 2006 -- (C) 2003 Tom Galvin