slight miscalculation

---

(finally made it to an internet cafe - no connection at the castle. It's 2pm friday)

So I’m writing this Fri a.m. as I sit in the nook of our castle room - I can’t get enough of this spot, as you'll see from the pic, best seat in the burg.

J’s last day with the team was great. They gave him a warm send off with a team jersey signed by all the kids and “thanks for a great week”. He started with 29 kids and 1 pro, by the end of the week word was getting around and he had 46 total, 13 of them pros. So - they loved it. How he managed that many guys for a 1 hour workouts 2x/day is beyond me. The week was a success and now his vacation could start….

So we got going at around 11:30 --- I decided I loved Ladenburg so much that I wanted Jeremy to see it - and since it was *so close*, my plan was to take him there for lunch and then head onward. Which brings me to my first miscalc - again, we got on the wrong train and had to jump off at the last minute when we realized the one we were on went 3 stops and then heads back to Mannheim. Waited in that nothing-to-see town for 40 minutes and got the next bahn to Lahhhd. Yes, he loved it, I knew he would - we had a great lunch and took our sweet ol time over a coffee and a hefeweisen and did what every idiot tourist does and talked about how amazing it would be to live there. Well, it would be.

Then it was time to go, afterall we had a 3-hour* ride to Rothenburg and I wanted to stop at one town on the way. So here’s where it gets a little more complicated….

In my planning I found what is called the Burgestrasse - it’s literally translated as “Castle Road” and the operative word here is ROAD, it’s not the Burgebahn (castle train). So I had been dreaming of just merrily hopping on and off the bahn on our way to R. ahem, nope, not even close. 6 hours later, we had gone back to Mannheim, to Frankfurt, through 2 other uneventful towns, a 25 minute delayed train, one delicious brat, $12 coffees, and finally made it to R and got robbed with one more $35 taxi ride to the castle Colmberg.

Now, I’m not complaining and J wasn’t either - we actually enjoyed the journey, as they say, and got a lot of mileage out of making up fitting deutch names for each other. I was giddy to find and buy The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest and J bought a Grisham book. We bought a deck of cards too which never got used because we swiftly got kicked out of our sweet seats with a table on the train because, how were we to know…it was reserved. Vunderbar.

Now - the castle. It’s really pretty cool. It is surrounded by a huge fenced in field that is full of deer, babies and mommas- so so cute. We arrived here at 8:15 and made dinner reservations for 8:45. a quick shower to remove the bahn grit and then dinner was awesome, pork n cheese n gravy for me, beef and pork medallions for J and some what-I-thought-tasted-not-very-strong-but-turned-out-to-be-uber-strong wine. We walked around the castle grounds for an hour or so completely laughing our arses off.

Some of Thursday's take aways:
- J didn’t know WC was a bathroom and refused to believe me when I told him it was, he thought I was messing with him just to make him get up and go find it on the train. I could barely speak I was laughing so hard, which made him think I was FOR SURE messing with him.
- Can’t help but think of the Fuhrer while in Germany. Especially when I see words that look like it - like Feuer. And as we pass through towns, it’s hard not to wonder what they all went through during the war. I wondered out loud to J if it would be inappropriate to say Hitler’s name out loud, he thought yes because “they probably aren’t proud of him.” I got a kick out of that one.
- I had a dream last night that we had a ghost cat that was walking on the bed and then cuddled up with me. I’m pretty sure it was real.
- J had a spider crawling up his leg inside his pants this morning - and it was big. Mug, thought you’d appreciate that.

---

Photos

essentials
we left the two big bags in back at the hotel and brought only the 3 little bags in front.

Leisurely lunch at Ladenburg
We had no idea what the day was going to bring, taking our sweet time.

Train
The table we thought we scored. 3 minutes later we were booted.

loooong day
we in about hour 5 of switching trains. still smiling though.

fun with photos
After wine

Our room from outside
top left

Trying for a nice photo.....
me trying to take a nice pic

Writing
From the best seat in the house

waiting for the taxi
to take us to Rothenburg