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Published: September 4th 2006
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castle!
The H-berg castle and the Old Bridre. pretty impressive. Germany is excellent. We’ve been busy with school and exploring our new surroundings, and trying to figure out public transportation! After this weekend, I think we have a better grip on it, but I’m still not completely comfortable with my train/strass track knowledge!
I’ve been busy at school, first graders sure wear you out! It’s a great class, 19 students and the kids are pretty good. I can already tell that it is going to be hard to leave them in another 7 weeks. I started off right away doing little things with Carol, and she is handing over more and more lessons every day. We had our open house last week so we got to meet all of the parents. This weekend AO and I were downtown (more about that later) but as we walked down the street I hear “Hi Miss Walter!” and turn around to see one of my students and his mom. It was a tad unsettling to hear someone call me Miss Walter in the middle of the busy street. Something I’ll have to get used to I guess. Besides my work for the classroom I have also been busy with my university homework, so it
Gino's
THis is a kebab place that Aaron (the guy tht lugged us around for our paper work!) suggested, and it was awesome! It's on the Haupstrass, so you can see how busy it is. was nice to have a long weekend to get caught up on things.
Our first weekend here, AO and I met up at a teacher get together on Friday after school for some free food. And when I got there I also realized that there was free beer and wine! The beer was in little wine barrel kegs, so it was a sweet “teacher kegger” as we dubbed it. So we hung out there, got some bikes from the middle school secretary and drank free alcohol. Then we came home and worked on homework and had a wine and cheese night. Since both the wine and cheese are wonderful here! On Saturday, AO and I spent a whole day downtown. First, getting there was an expedition in and of itself. We asked a nice lady at our gate what the best way to get there was, and she told us to walk to a small village nearby and catch the strass there. Well, this little village was about a half an hour away, and we had to walk on the side of a busy street and over a bridge! Pretty scary with the German drivers! But, once we found the
eating tobacco
AO decided to try a nibble of a tabacco plant on our way to the strass through the little village. There are tons of barn type things that dry the tobacco around here. crazy. strass, we didn’t have any problems downtown. We went to look at the castle and bridge (still haven’t taken the tour. I’m waiting for some of the tourists to leave!) and explore the Hauptstrasse. That is the main pedestrian zone, a huge street with tons of stores, pubs, and kebab houses! It’s a very cool and busy street with something new to see every time you go down it. We picked up a few things like more cheese, cool wine pourers like Leo had, wonderful loose tea and the like. We also found this pub called the Dubliner a hot spot on the Haupstrasse. It was cool because there was a rugby game going on with the crazy fans. We liked it. Coming home was another experience, because again we got lost on the public transport. Remember, this was our first weekend in town and we are from Iowa. Anyway, we finally relied on the kindness of buss/strass drivers (which isn’t always guaranteed) and found our way close to home. Close. We could see the fence around post, but had no idea how to get in. We were at a bus stop on the side of the autobahn, with a
in the field
this is what i look like after walking all day, and being stranded in a field to get home! hey at least we could laugh about it. farm behind us. So, we stared walking. Through the fields. We finally got to the fence, to find out that we had to walk all the way around the bend to get to the gate. AO and I were in good spirits though, took our shoes off and just laughed about it. We finally got to the gate, and the guy that checks our installation passes laughed at us. Sunday was pretty much more decorating and settling in to the apartment.
This Friday we broke out the bikes and rode down to the farm near our house for fresh veggies. The commissary brings in things from like Holland, and the produce isn’t the greatest. Then we met up with two of the upstairs girls and went to a German sit down restaurant with really great food. The other three had snitzel, and I had cordon blue and it was great. We went downtown again on Saturday. We bummed a ride downtown early and hung out the whole day. At the beginning of our wonderings, we found this cool looking skinny road and decided to walk up it. It turned into a little muddy path, which was basically walking up the
drinks
This is at the german place we walked to with the upstairs interns, Megan and Robin. They are sweet girls, both special ed at the middle school! they have patience! steep hills, but we kept walking. And eventually we ended up on the Philosophenweg, which is a cool trails area. We surveyed and found a good place too see the fireworks. We found another Irish pub called O’Reily’s, which I guess is a favorite of student teachers. The bar tender was a stereotypical Irish guy that harassed AO and I the whole time we were there. We liked him. A few times a summer the city illuminates the castle to represent the different fires the castle survived, and has a big fireworks show. The other apartments went to Prague this weekend, but we didn’t want to miss the show. And I am glad we stuck around. We went back to our spot early to hang out and met a University student from Ohio. The illumination was cool, and the fireworks were amazing. Very well choreographed, and seeing it with the castle on the river was pretty damn cool. After the illumination, we decided to hang out downtown since we had to take a taxi home anyway. We went back to O’Reily’s as the bartender had told us it is karaoke on Saturday nights. It was packed! But while I was
avalanche!
So, AO and I were walking on the trails at the Philosophenweg minding our own business, when we hear this loud crashing noise through the grass. We run back and these two huge rocks are in the path we just walked on! Avalanche! getting my drink (Heidelberger Export, super beer!), this guy asked me if I had figured ordering out yet. He was with some friends from the University, and they were from NY, Penn, and Kansas, so we hung out with them and almost sang karaoke with them. We got them Coco Krispies from the commissary, so we will have to see them again.
There was a Labor Day Bazaar in the Pavilion on Post this weekend, and AO and I checked that out Sunday morning. There were vendors from all over, with lots of cool stuff but it was kind of over priced. Still neat to see. Sunday was the last day of the Bakerfisch (baked fish) festival in Worms, Germany and it had wine tasting area. So we struck out to figure out public transportation yet again, and succeeded fairly well I believe! We got into H-berg using the military busses and the strass, got to the train station and after asking the lady at the information desk only three times figured out where and when we needed to go. Worms is actually only a little over half an hour drive away, but it took us 3 hours to get
Translation Garden
This is in the Philosophenweg, and I am trying to translate this plaque, something about an Angel's church used to be there or something. AO was no help and just took pictures. there. Yay trains! We were sitting at Mannheim waiting for our train, we were at the right gate and everything, and then it changed and that train just didn’t come. So we had to wait for the next one. But it was worth it. The festival was like a giant state fair, with huge rides, good greasy food, chocolate covered banana’s, beer, kebabs, nuts, mushrooms in sauce, pizza, huge sausages, and wine! We bought little upsized shot glasses, and then paid like 1E to fill them up. We had a good time people watching, because as in the states, fairs bring out all kinds! We did a good job of finding our way back home with no help! And had to take a taxi home (mom, I was in a taxi, I win!) because on the weekends after like 4 pm we can’t really get back to post with out one.
Today is catch up day with homework and cleaning the apartment. It’s been nice to have a quiet day, and I am trying to talk AO into playing Frisbee with me later today. It’ll be a nice week, starting out it’s only a 4 day week, then kids only
funny stained glass
We went into a church in downtown H-berg, by the university, and I see this stained glass. Look closly at the bottom right corner, and why why does this stained glass window say E=mc2?? come half day on Friday for in-service or something. So that’ll be good! I’ll stop writing now, love you all, and miss you!
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mom
non-member comment
Sounds like you are having a great time. Mmmm chocolate covered bananas.