28th March - Sprachkurs Field trip

 My favorite day here so far...

Every sprachkurs group gets to take one day-long field trip. The class I'm in, being the best group (aka we have the highest German proficiency, and we are just awesome ) went on, what I very much believe to be the best field trip.

 Most of the classes took trips to the Mercedes Museum or to a castle in a suburb of Ludwigsburg, or to a beer garten. And not to say that those are boring things, because they are definitely not, and in fact they are things I would like to see myself, HOWEVER, we could do that just about any day. AND our teacher, Anne, being an artsy free-spirit adventurous person, decided she wanted to take us hiking up a mountain, and at the top we could spend some time drinking before making it back down.
So in short, that is exactly what we did.
But, the long version of our adventure is much more exciting, and unfortunately I don't think I can capture the feelings I had that day in words, but I will do my best, so bare with me.

First let me describe Anne, the 2nd of our 2 teachers. She is the one who we saw sing at the "Lange Nacht der Museum" a week or 2 ago.
I truly think that if Oona had a relative in Germany, it would be Anne. She told us that early in her career she was a fairly well known artist in Stuttgart, and then decided to move to Barcelona where she realized she was a nobody, and to get by, she unhappily started teaching German- while barely knowing any Spanish. Eventually she came back here, and has been teaching for 12 years I think she said, but we are her last class ever, because in the next few months, she is taking a job as a course coordinator or something like that. Which means, that not only are we the best class, but we are her last class- so I think we are pretty special, and I feel like she really tries to and succeeds in connecting with us.

Anyway, Anne loves hiking and biking and being outdoors, and so she decided a trip to the nearby town of Kircheim where there is a Burg (fortress on a mountain top) would be the best field trip.
There was much debate after looking at the weather forecast as to whether the trip would even be possible for the planned day, because it was supposed to be cold and snowy. But, a vast majority of us in the class were in favor of going, and so we did.

 I opted to wear jeans, t-shirt, winter coat, gym shoes, my only pair of gloves/mittens, and my hair in a ponytail with my bangs bobby pinned out of my face.
 2 comments I received on my appearance that day:
      -" Did you do your eyebrows? They look thinner." - from one of the Spanish guys
     - "You look different today."
Both to which I responded " ...thank you???  ...My hair is just out of my face today"

It was about a 30 minute train ride to Kircheim followed by a short train ride through the cute little town to get to the beginning of the Mountain.

The first part was so pretty, despite the cold and foggy weather, and we walked through an area that reminded me of an orchard the way the trees were spread out.

And then I ran into a problem. The landscape became naturally terraced, in other words, imagine a grass staircase made for giants. The ground would be at about a 10 degree slope for 10 meters, and then very suddenly jump up a meter (by jump up, I mean it was like a 45 degree incline over a few feet of space). The boys in the class were all able to just get a good start and hop up to the next level. I made it up the first one ok, and then after that any time I tried to scramble up, my shoes would slide right through the snow and I would be right back where I started.
 There were 8 of these terraces, and on the top one, there was a very steep incline to get to a road.
By this time I had learned that it was more effective if I just crawled, and I only made it to the road with the help of 2 Finnish people.  >.<
 Later I realized that the whole problem was that my shoes, even though they were gym shoes, were INCREDIBLY slippery.

And so thank goodness that once we reached the road, there was a paved path for about a kilometer before reaching a forest path that although windy and varying in slope, was not too snow covered or slick. At this point, our group of 14 students plus Anne, split up into a small group of us who wanted to continue on the paved route, and the adventurous, well-shoed group who chose to continue hiking though the forest.

It was an extremely good workout regardless of the route choice, and I was mostly exhausted by the time we made it through the Fortress gates at the mountain top, and it was such a relief to sit down at the little restaurant with the whole group and relax. A few of us had soaking wet shoes and socks by the time we got there, and secretly took them off and stuffed them underneath the heater in a corner to dry somewhat during the hour we rested there.

I must say that the food was FANTASTIC. I ordered something that is a swabian version or mac& cheese. If it weren't such a pain in the ass to get to the mountain top restaurant, I would go there again next weekend. I couldn't finish all of my lunch and so I asked the waiter to pack it up for me to take home, and thankfully it was wrapped in a little paper bowl and in a few layers of tin foil, because my backpack (where I stored it) took a beating on the journey down the mountain.
 

You see, as we were paying for our meals and drinks, we were discussing how it would be awesome to go sledding down the mountain instead of walking. I was the one who brought it up, I think because of how many times I kept falling. Someone commented how we had no sleds, and jokingly I said, well hey, we could just steal these menus, at home people use cafeteria trays and it works pretty well.
At this point, Anne got really excited and said: Oh! We could ask for some plastic bags!
And being the awesome lady that she is, she very politely asked the waiter if we could buy some plastic bags from the restaurant. He said "no, but I can give you as many as you need." AKA, we got free "sleds"

The sledding area was still about a kilometer away (some what further down too) from where we were, and winding downhill through the woods in my shoes felt like rollerblading, except that I had no breaks. It was amusing but also terrifying. And I fell 3 times on one staircase. (It did however help me get down quicker)

But eventually we made it to the sledding hilly part, and I was so relieved.

I may suck at hiking, but I kick ass at sledding.
The only person who had a better sledding run than I did was the Spanish guy Edu, because he inadvertently went right through a mud-slush puddle, which I witnessed and found rather humorous, and fell over at the bottom of the hill.
I will also note that had it not been muddy underneath the thin snow layers, the plastic bags would have been unnecessary- every time I fell, I slid a good 12 feel down anyway.

 
 

So by the time we made it back to a bus stop- to take us to the train station- my pants were completely soaked with snow, and slightly muddy, Edu was covered in dirt, and one of the French guys somehow managed to get just the back of his pants smeared with mud. 
It was an hilarious event. Even more so, to see how the normal people on the bus an train started awkwardly at our energetic and horrible looking group.

I learned that day why Finish people love Saunas. There was nothing more I wanted walking back to my dorm from the train station in cold, wet, and therefore stiff jeans, and soaked winter coat and wool mittens, than to be in hot room, with relaxing steam.

Instead I settled for buying a 0,50 Euro cappuccino from a vending machine and taking a hot shower.

Even so, it was such a funny, and tiring day, and it also made me realize that in our class, we are all friends. I had gotten so used to college classes with giant lectures where I barely talked to anyone. And so, I think, that is the most important thing I will have gained from my Sprachkurs.

25. March - trip to Heidelberg!

 On Tuesday, one of my class mates asked me to organize a trip to Heidelberg for Sunday. So basically I said, OK I'll send a facebook message to a bunch of people asking if they want to go and telling them when and where to meet, but someone else has to figure out the train system and how we buy tickets.
 That worked out pretty well. There were supposed to be 6 of us going, but 1 of them missed a train to the hauptbahnhof - the main station where we were leaving from- and another went out partying the night before and didn't want to get up so early.

Sooo, 3 of us were on time and met at the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof at 8:30am to catch the 9am train. A Greek guy- Micheal, a Spannish guy- Edu, and an American- that's me! We were supposed to be meeting a Finish guy named Erro there, so Edu called him when we arrived at the staion, and apparently woke him up, but he made it to the Hbf in 26 minutes, with just enough time to run with us to the station platform to board the train to Heidelberg.

We were supposed to be on the train for 45 minutes, then get off at the station "Karlsruhe-Durslach" or something like that BUT, as we were getting off the train there, someone said they thought it was the Karlsruhe Hauptbahnhof we needed to exit at, so we jumped back on the same train to the Karlsruhe Hbf, which was the next exit. However on the way, we realized that it actually WAS the first Karlsruhe station we needed, so we planned to change trains at the Karlsruhe Hbf, except that as we were getting off our train, I realized that the sign said that it was headed back in the same direction it came from. Soooo, once again we hopped right back on the train and finally got off at the right exit, with 15 minutes until the train to Heidelberg arrived.

Aka, this was our plan for the journey there:

 Stuttgart ------ Karlsruhe-Durslach,+  Karlsruhe-Durslach---------Heidelberg

And this is what really happened:

Stuttgart--------Karlsruhe-Durslach-------Karlsruhe Hbf---------Karlsruhe-Durslach, +
 Karlsruhe-Durslach-----Heidelberg

Soooo finally we got to Heidelberg. We looked at a map in the bahnhof and decided that the "Altstadt" was the place to be, which was just a couple miles east of the train station.

The most bicycles I've ever seen in my life, all lines up in front of the train station

 

The bus routes were marked on the map, and it looked to be just a simple path to get there with Bus 33. It just so happened that as we were exiting the main station, we saw Bus 33 pulling up to the bus stop! Perfect timing, right?

 

 After about 10 minutes we discovered that this particular bus 33 was going in the opposite direction of the one we wanted to go in >.<  Apparently the bus stop we should have waited at was across the street.
So after 20 minutes of sitting on the bus discussing options of how to get back on track to the Altstadt, we got off the bus at a stop that connected to an S-bahn, which we had to wait 15 minutes for, and which took us right back to the Heidelberg Hbf where we started.

Then after more carefully examining the transportation routes, we walked to the right bus and ubahn station and waited 15 minutes for what we thought was going to be a ubahn and instead turned out to be a bus- which we missed.

After that, we just said Screw it, and walked the 3 kilometers to the Altstadt.

 

The statue was reading something.

Making friends with the statue! Left to right: Me, Statue, Edu, Micheal

 

Since it was a Sunday,  there were not very many things open except for a McDonalds and a tiny flea market in one of the city squares.
       

A McDonut!!!

But Heidelberg has some great architecture and beautiful streets, so we just kept walking on.

some weird statue thing and a statue of some guy at a university building

 

 

 

 

 

We turned down a street onto one of the smaller city squares, and all of a sudden we had an amazing view of the schloss way up on a hill, and all 4 of us just gazed in amazement at it for a minute before figuring out that we could actually go up to the castle.

 

Our plan had been to find the castle gardens and have a picnic there, because it's free to go there everyday and they are open everyday.

I had not however realized that the castle sits on a mountain top, and that it is very very old looking. Nor had I realized that there is a special cable car type train to take you up to the top.

It was also a pleasant surprise that on this particular Sunday, the "Berg-bahn" (train to the mountain top) and castle offered FREE entrance!!!

views from the castle!

 

 

 

It was so beautiful, and the castle was much more impressive than the one near Tuebingen that I saw on Saturday. In the Heidelberg Schloss (castle) we got to wander around freely, and although there still were not very many rooms open for viewing, there was a 3 story tall spiral staircase to exit one of the rooms in the castle, which ended up in the church on one of the lower levels!

Inside the main gate

 

super old part of the castle!

 

 

 

 

                (Above) 3D wall art? a buck's head with a body

 painted on the wall. That's a bit scary

This is the 2nd creepiest (FRFy) statue I have seen in real life.

2nd only to a mannequin at the Museum of Science and Industy.

 

 

Really great spiral starcase! I wanted to go up, but it was blocked off so that visitors could only go down. But still it was super awesome!

 

There was also a sign with an arrow that said "Zum grossen Fass" in the castle courtyard. That means "To the large cask" as in wine cask. We had no idea what that meant, but I was super curious and so I followed the arrow to an awesome café place in a lower level of the castle, where indeed there was a very very large wine cask!!!
AND There was an even BIGGER one!!! So ridiculous that I couldn't even take a picture of it. The chamber was definitely built around the cask, and there were 2 flights of stairs to get to the top of it!
 
That's old world Germany, I suppose :)

 

 

We left the castle without having a picnic, due to the frigid temperature that day, and instead decided to head down to the Neckar River bank and find a restaurant.

castle courtyard

 

walking down a street toward the river

 

All the guys got typical Germany specialty meat dishes. I however tried something called Maultaschen for the first time. It's a special kind of Southern German pasta/dumpling. They're usually filled with spinach and cheese, sometimes meat, and are rolled up dough pockets. Kind of like pierogies or raviolis. Either way, I very much enjoyed the meal.

The walk back to the train station was uneventful, but a nice walk all the same.

Large church

 

along the Neckar River

 

Some weird monkey statue thing!

 

 

And thankfully we made it to our train on time- a direct train this time, and all of us stayed awake on ride back!  I also saw someone really laugh so hard they cried, like visibly were crying!

 It started with everyone making fun of me for always accidentally saying "bucks" instead of "euros." Edu apparently didn't know what a buck was, and so I put my hands on my head like antlers and said, "it's a male deer." And then he didn't understand what a deer was right away, but after a minute said "Oh! A bambi!" to which I replied "Yes! Bambi's father was a buck!"
So then Edu tried to clarify that "bucks" is like some slang word they used in spannish (at least where he is from) for money that is also the name of an animal. And so I asked what animal it is...

Now most people, if they didn't know the name of an animal is a certain language would probably try to describe what it LOOKS like, right? As in, if I were to say "a bird that people eat at holidays. They're brown, and have a red thing on their face, with large feathers..." you would think "oh right, you mean a Turkey."    Yes? Simple.
 
Well instead of describing a Turkey, Edu said "it's this animal..." And started imitating the noise a Turkey makes. ...
I've not been around Turkeys long enough to even know what they sound like in real life, and I'm guessing neither had Micheal or Erro, and all of us burst out laughing.  And none of us knew what animal it was supposed to be.
Then Michael asked "is it a pigeon"
 
And without a pause, Edu replied "no that's this..." and imitated a pigeon noise.

And at that point, Erro started crying.

Which just fed our laughing more, and made the rest of the ride back quite amusing.

So,  despite the rough start, and the unpleasant weather, the trip to Heidelberg is a day that I can definitely laugh about, and that makes me think it was a good day. I like those.

23.03 - Hohenzollern Castle + Tuebingin !!!

The castle had SPECTACULAR views. It was UNBELIEVEABLE. I'll let the pictures do the talking for the most part.

The tour was actually rather disappointing by comparison. We couldn't take any pictures inside and we only got to see about 5 rooms, which was one floor of one wing of the castle - Lame!

But it was still soooo neat to be there.

There was however a treacherous and exhausting hike up to the castle- many many stairs and steep inclines.

Following the castle adventure, we went to the nearby old town of Tubingen. I almost wish I were living there instead of Stuttgart. I have fallen in Love with that tiny city! It's so cute and old fashioned, and it truly looks like what I'd expect of a European town. We had lunch there at a restaurant that overlooked the river, and then we took a city tour.

 However, it was very cold and heavily snowing/raining on and off, which made it quite a bit less enjoyable, which makes me think I most definitely need to travel there again during the summer!

climbing up to the castle, looking back through the trees

The first gate/entrance to the castle.

stunning view from the top of the hill, if only it weren't so foggy

little garden

spiral road leading up to the actual castle gates

castle watch tower/ gates to get in

 

entry way to inner court part

looking down from the top entrance part

 

The castle sits on a Mountain top, with an extraordinary view!  

 

 

old corner lookout tower.

finally inside the inner gate, headed up to the castle entrance.

top of the mountain and fortress bier garten!

 

standing next to a statue of one of the Friederichs that ruled here. I was trying to look regal. I don't know what Jenny was doing.

View from the top of the castle from the otherside

driving away, the castle up on a hill.

 

And onward to Tuebingen!

Tuebingen! This is the Neckar River, and across the bridge is Old Tuebingen. It's so lovely!

We ate at a restaurant that has one wall all windows and looks out onto the river. We had 4 lunch choices since lunch was paid for in the 15 euro cost of the trip (such a good deal!). I choose the "Bretzelknoedel" aka the pretzel dough dumplings, in mushroom sauce.

A cute little road!!! Notice that ALL the parking spaces are open! That's because it's so much easier to walk around the town, it's so small. It's perfect!

One of the main squares in the city. Super duper cute!!!

The beautiful Neckar River and story book looking Tuebingen

So a lot of the really old looking buildings have actually been rebuilt. There is only one stone is a wall of the city that support a giant church and parts of the city- give that the place is on a mountain- that is of the Italian romantic architecture style instead of the Gothic style. That's this weird curved top stone, which looks like it has an eye drawn in the middle...

Our tour guide told us that it works like Platform 9 3/4 (Harry Potter reference) and that if you tap the brick 3 times "tzak tzak tzak" [that's phonetically how she said you have to tap the bricks] when no one is watching, and at a very specific time of day, then you will magically wind up on the other side of the wall.

I tried it, but I guess too many people were watching, because it didn't work.

Another little "gasse" or alley

A very old building that is now used as a university building in Tuebingen.

Walking up to the old fortress in Tuebingen.

view from the outside of the fortress in Tuebingen

Inside the fortress.

Fortress courtyard. It is now used as part of the university, so there are some classes and such that take place here!

 

The city Rathaus! The oldest building in Tuebingen! There is an astronomical clock (it got cut off in the picture) that is over 500 years old on the top of the rathaus!

Some really cute buildings in the city Martktplatz

There are a lot of tudor style (super cute looking!) buildings that were actually only built in the 1800s, so not nearly as old as they look.

This is the narrowest lane in Tuebingen. It's called "Hasegasse" which means "Rabbit Alley" because you have to hop like a rabbit to make it through, since it is so small. Barely 2 feet wide. Apparently there were a couple guys on the tour who had to turn a bit sideways because their shoulders wouldn't fit through normally.

There is a little canal that runs along one of the roads, and this is actually one of the main roads in Tuebingen. It's so cute and also weird how all the buildings are built right up against this canal, and all the doors have bridges to the road!

 

The Stadt (=city) Museum

This is what remains of a so called "Plumpclo" in what used to be a "Nonnenhaus" or where the nuns lived or women learned to be nuns, and now it is used as a theology studies building.

Cut off in the picture is the canal along the road to the right. The original building would have had this "Plumpclo" stretching all the way across the canal (only about another 4 feet- it's very small for a canal) and it was basically the first kind of indoor bathroom. People would do their business and it would "plump" into the canal, and be washed away.

 How sanitary, right?

 

This was actually the second building we saw that had one of these!
But, despite that, and the frigid weather, Tubingen was so wonderful!


And then we got back to Stuttgart, and TA DA- SNOW!

It wasn't actually sunny in this picture, that is my camera flash from taking this picture out of my closed window! I have a very pretty view!

 

 Yep, so as I mentioned, it was ridiculously cold and rainy/snowy all day, and we were outside for all but about 2 hours of the day! I'm cold just looking at the pictures from the day. However, it was still so much fun, and such a great excursion today!