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Published: June 13th 2009
Castle
View of the castle from the outside.Yesterday, after a few disastrous visa-attempts (Brittany has been trying to get her work visa for the past week but has encountered many roadblocks), Brittany and I decided it would be a good idea to get out of Karlsruhe for the day and spend some time in Heidelberg (about 45 minutes away by train). It was time to put the thoughts aside about logistics and go have fun and be carefree in another town.
We arrived by train and were greeted by the sights of a big city with a small-town feel to it. Overlooking Heidelberg is a castle that had been around since the 1300's. We decided to go explore the castle grounds and took a tram up to the castle. We first went into the castle courtyard, and out on to an overlook where the entire city could be seen, the Nekkar River snaking it's way through the town. What stuck us the most is that everything in Heidelberg was so vibrantly green!
Walking through the castle, I was hoping to find some secret door or passage way that would lead throughout the castle, or, you know, to another magical world or something (should probably stop reading
Ye' Olde Bathrooms
Guess pot-o-potties have been around longer than we realized. Harry Potter, eh?). After trying pretty much every door in the castle (and Brittany fearing I would get in trouble for trying to break into the castle), we decided it was a lost cause and decided to explore the castle gardens... no magical doors were found.
The castle gardens were also very lush. They weren't really "gardens" per se, but areas where the gardens used to lie. Walking around, we saw the outside of the castle and one of the castle towers, which had collapsed in the 1600's as a result of an explosion (cannon, perhaps?). It was neat to see the different areas of the castle, some which had eroded and looked like it had been through multiple battles. It was great to let the imagination run and envision knights in armor, kings and queens, and all of the other characters that would have been walking these grounds 700 years ago.
After thoroughly exploring the castle, we decided it was time to head down and explore more of the town. We walked down the main pedestrian street, which extended on far through the city. With our stomachs grumbling, we decided it was time to get some food.
Ye' Olde T-Mobile
Inside the courtyard... I guess someone should tell Alexander Graham Bell that someone beat him to the invention of the telephone? We found an outdoor garden-area restaurant that had a waterfall in the corner of the dining area. We decided to get some drinks (Britt had a local brew, I had a Batilda Kirsch) and we both had souffles (which were really fun to say: Kartoffelauflauf).
We decided to wander back down the street and came across and Irish bar... in Germany. We figured that we would stop in and revisit our time in Ireland by having a cider. It was a relaxing little pub and we sat, watched a soccer game for a while, and lost track of time before realizing that we had to get back to the train station to catch the last train back to Karlsruhe.
We made it to the station with more than enough time to spare, so we sat at a cafe next to the station. We overheard a large group of people who were all speaking English, so we decided to ask where they were from. They were actually part of a group of individuals who had moved from their home countries to come work in Germany and they meet once a month to make connections and enjoy each other's company.
Castle
Super green! Perfect! They asked us to join their table and we spent the next few hours chatting with them and learning about their diverse backgrounds. We met people from Columbia, Iran, Oman, Texas, and even those that were German locals who came to connect with others. It was a really great experience to just sit and talk with everyone, so much so that we decided to take the early morning train back to Karlsruhe (we figured out later that there were some 1 am and 2 am trains, so we caught one of those).
It was such a peaceful and relaxing day and we decided that this weekend we would travel to Tubingen (where Brittany used to live, where I visited her about 3 years ago) and hang out for the weekend. After returning, I'll be heading out to Paris, France for a few days while Brittany starts her job training and then hopefully Brittany and I will be heading to Belgium for a weekend to get in touch with some of my family history. Stay tuned... =)
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Matt (from school)
non-member comment
Wonderful looking city. It sounds like you two (aside from the visa thing) are having a great time.