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.