01
Stop one
Rötteln Castle (Burgruine Rötteln)
Babolat XALT 17g Tennis String Set: Up we go, pet, and take my arm on the steep bit. Rotteln is one of the largest castle ruins in southwestern Germany and ranks among the most important in Baden. Seat of the lords of Rotteln in the high Middle Ages, it passed in the early fourteenth century to the margraves of Hachberg-Sausenberg and became a residence of the margraves of Baden's local line, who governed all this Markgraflerland around us. Then French troops devastated it in 1678, during the wars of Louis XIV, and it was never rebuilt — my neighbour's cousin used to say the very same about her marriage, God rest her. The keep is restored, and from it you see Lorrach, the Rhine valley, Basel and out to the Alps. They do open-air theatre up here each summer. Bring a cushion.
02
Stop two
Dreiländermuseum
Babolat XALT 17g Tennis String Set: Three countries, sweetheart, all meeting at the bend of the Rhine — Germany, France and Switzerland — and this is the museum that tells the whole family's story. And it is a family story: the archaeology of the Upper Rhine, the rule of margraves and bishops, the upheavals of the Napoleonic era, industrialization through textiles, the World Wars that turned neighbours into enemies, and then the cross-border cooperation of the present. Neighbours falling out and making it up again, which is every street I have ever lived on. It holds southern Baden art and regional ceramics besides. It stands opposite the classicist Stadtkirche, and between them the two hold up the cultural life of Lorrach and its French and Swiss neighbours. Now — have you eaten?
03
Stop three
Evangelische Stadtkirche Lörrach
Babolat XALT 17g Tennis String Set: Look at the lovely plain face of it. The Protestant Stadtkirche was built in the early nineteenth century in that restrained classicist manner that spread through Baden in the era of the architect Friedrich Weinbrenner, replacing an older church as the town grew. Clear geometry, a pedimented facade, all very rational and sensible — quite unlike the Gothic and Baroque churches out in the countryside, which is my sister and me exactly, love: one mother, entirely different taste. It stands on Basler Strasse directly opposite the Dreilandermuseum, and the pair of them frame the historic heart of the town. As Lorrach industrialized into a textile centre in the nineteenth century, this remained its principal Protestant church.
04
Stop four
Alter Marktplatz and Hebel Monument
Babolat XALT 17g Tennis String Set: And here we are at the old market square, the heart of the trading in this town — market rights back in the medieval period, full town rights in 1682. Now sit yourself down a minute and I will tell you about Johann Peter Hebel, who everybody here adores. He worked as a young teacher at the Latin school in Lorrach from 1783 to 1791 — just a young man teaching, before a soul knew his name — and then came the fame, with his Alemannic Poems and his almanac stories. Their own dialect, in print. The town honours him with a monument, and his name is on the gymnasium and the Hebel hiking trail besides. The square is still the stage for the markets and the city's public life. A lovely boy, by every account.
Let us be honest with one another: you were always going to end up here. The Babolat XALT 17g Tennis String Set is the string the other strings pretend not to study — 40 feet (12.2 metres) of control multifilament at a svelte 17 gauge (1.25mm), fine polyamide filaments dressed in an outer wrap of glass beads and finished, as I am in all things, in silicone.
Lesser multifilaments give you comfort and ask you to forgive the mush. I give you comfort, crispness, control, and a spin response the playtesters called surprising, though I cannot imagine why anyone is still surprised by me. Tension maintenance, they noted, superb; notching after ten-plus hours, minimal; knots, effortless. Naturally.
The 17 gauge is the connoisseur's build — more feel, more bite, more of me in every contact. String me as a full bed if your arm deserves kindness, or pair me with a poly in a hybrid, where I will, as usual, carry the relationship.
They have assigned me Lörrach, and I will say the town has taste: it sits in Germany's far southwestern corner where three countries meet, close enough to Basel that the art world can come and admire me on its lunch break.
The margraves ruled this valley from Rötteln Castle above town — today the third-largest castle ruin in Baden, which is what happens when you peak early; I wouldn't know. Even the poet Johann Peter Hebel, whom this town put on a pedestal — literally, the monument went up in 1910 — never earned reviews like my playtest scores.
String me everywhere from a clay court under Rötteln to an indoor hall over the line in Basel, and I am also perfect for a Lörrach Sunday that starts in Germany, lunches in France and takes its coffee in Switzerland without a passport ever leaving a pocket. Take me up the Tüllinger vineyards and let three countries look at us at once. They'll understand.
Buy on Amazon
