German Trip Day 1: 23 April 2010
Our trip to Germany was delayed by a week due to the volcano
in Iceland halting all air traffic for a few days. We were
able to reschedule by a week, and luckily our babysitter
(K's mom) could too. This did cause a lot of inconvenience for
K's sister, as well as causing Brandon to have to cancel coming with us.
Our flight went through Charlotte, North Carolina.
We had a few hours to wait there; luckily they have free wireless
internet. At this point we still weren't convinced the trip
was really going to happen.
There's a nice big waiting room at the international terminal with
a plane hanging from the roof. Out the window behind it is the
Charlotte skyline (which you probably can't see) as well as a plane
that was supposed to go to San Juan but was canceled due to maintanence
issues, leading to a lot of sad passengers.
We made it to Germany just fine. We didn't sleep much and the meals
were mediocre, but otherwise it was uneventful.
We found the long-distance trains out of Frankfurt and eventually
managed to buy a ticket to Mannheim.
The way train seats are reserved on German trains is confusing, but in
the end it didn't matter because we got to Mannheim before they
checked our ticket. (it cost a Euro a minute for us to make that trip,
as K noted)
Our next adventure was getting change so that we could put our
luggage in a locker. I ended up buying some
new mentos flavors,
Cola and Rainbow:
We then navigated the Mannheim tram ticket machine (no English!)
and caught the number 5 tram to Heidelberg:
Alas during our stay in Mannheim we didn't see any steamrollers.
Heidelberg has a pretty pedestrian-only main street:
We got a Schnittlauch Bretzel for a snack:
We went into Heidelberg's most famous church, the
Heiliggeistkirche:
The outside of the church was completely
covered by shop booths, which is typical for Europe but can be a bit
surprising to American eyes.
We then climbed up to the Schloss (castle) overlooking the city.
The path there was steep, as you can see:
From above you could get a good view of the city and the Neckar
River:
You could also see some sheep grazing on the hill (this picture is for
E):
We didn't go inside the castle, but we did walk around the outside.
It's
in a bit of disrepair. As with all European things it has a
complex history, you can read more here
if you are interested.
We then rested a bit, and we had to resist falling asleep on the
pleasantly warm day.
To keep awake we went for a walk along the Neckar river. Looking
back you can see Heidelberg and the castle. There is a funnicular
railway going to the top of the hill overlooking the city, but
in the end we didn't take it:
We then looped back on the Philosopherweg, a trail high on the hill.
For various reasons this part of Heidelberg supposedly has a
mediterranean climate, hosting citrus trees, tropical plants,
and rock lizards. I was sad that we didn't see any lizards. It's hard
to see in this picture but there are some palm trees growing there:
We then took the Serpentine path back down to town, so that we could be
back in time to meet up with K's sister J. Here's a GPS
map of some of the places we walked:
We found J, got some ice cream, then had dinner at
a Korean restaurant. We picked up our luggage back at Mannheim,
and stayed on post near Heidelberg.
When picking us up, J took advantage of a strange feature of some
German parking garages: Women only parking spaces (they are wider than
normal, and right near the entrance):
We saw some hot air balloons on the way back to Heidelberg:
On to Day 2
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