Well, its been awhile, sorry about that, I had an exam on Wednesday and I've had a headache basically since then. But now its getting better :) so, I figured I should take advantage of my procrastination and do something useful: BLOG! haha so I went to Heidelberg with my friend Anna from Princeton on Saturday and it was awesome! We started the day nice and early (at 6:30 - UGH) so we could catch a cab at 7:20 to get to Kehl (just over the border in Germany) for our 8:04 train ride to Offenburg, where we switch, take a train to Karlsruhe, switch again and then go to Heidelberg. It wasn't bad tho, the connections were easy, all the trains were on time so it wasn't hard or stressful.
So, yeah, we got to Heidelberg and went to the tourism office for free maps and help. They told us to take the tram to Bismarkplatz and then walk along Hauptstraße, which is the main walking street in Heidelberg with lots of shops and restaurants and cafés and stuff like that. It was really cute. We meandered around there and then stopped for a cup of coffee and a pastry at a café. We ran into the Ritter house, the oldest house in Budapest and the heiliggeistkirche, the church (= kirche) while wandering. Then we headed to the castle (schloss in German), up a really steep path to a castle that's partially in ruins and partially still put together. It was really cool and had great views of Heidelberg. The gardens were also really cool because you could wander around and poke around the ruins.
After that we went to the student prison and the Heidelberg university museum. The student prison was really funny because it was like 5 rooms and it was used from the 1700s until 1914 because the students were outside legal jurisdiction, so there was a university prison keeper person who distributed justice to students for crimes like pig chasing, drunken debauchery and causing ruckus in the streets. It was also a right of passage for the students to get put in prison, if they didn't get arrested at least once at school, they were known as losers lol. The other cool part was that the whole inside of the prison was graffiti-ed, with lots of self-portraits from the students and the dates they were there, and of course various other drawings. The museum of the Heidelberg university was in the same building so we went through that, but it was less interesting (especially since it was all in German and I speak approximated 12 words of German), so we just sped through it.
From there we went on a search for weinerschnitzel and eventually found it at a place where Anna could get jagerschnitzel. So we both got our schnitzels and spaetzle - I love spaetzle lol its a type of egg noodle, but it doesn't really look like a noodle... it looks kind of like... well, this: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUfZRHfIp2dl1kEhWr4zQ8ajWE34rG-Lk3OfKae2kM085qed_13x64plyMff9zg44WWudukrkiyWo_98Xy6mmKdZN849WQGp7K1t9qyASKbFBKAr38ytW-Pt7DsUqICf49RTJPN7Qxrkiz/s400/spaetzle.jpg lunch was delicious, I'm a fan of weinerschnitzel lol. We finished our lunch and then from there we decided to go explore philosopher's way, which is a path on the other side of the river that's supposed to have great views.
So we paid, left the restaurant and headed towards the bridge. We crossed the bridge and then had to climb this really windy path up to the philosopher's path. It did have really nice views though! And then we decided to look for these ruins I read about in my book. We found the first of them, after hiking (legit hiking while I was in converse and jeans and Anna was in leggings and boots without traction lol) for like 2 hours. We found the ruins of an 11th century benedictine monastery. The watchtower was still in really good shape, I'm not sure if it had been redone or not, but we could get in it and climb to the top! so we took lots of pics there :) and the monastery was cool too, but it was definitely "ruins" all the walls had caved in and there was only one doorway left, but you could still tell what was what, we could see the alter, so we could make out the church. There were other rooms that I'm assuming were where the monks lived and cooked and studied. It was really cool. We wanted to keep going and find the 9th century basilica and the thing the Nazis built, but it was getting later and we didn't want to get stuck on the mountain at night. So, we decided to just head down and get celebratory beers.
We got down, and found a café where we got our beers and they were good, although I expected Germany to have good beer :) but it did really impress me on the gastronomy front. Anyways, it started getting chilly and we were getting a little short on time, so we went to go find a place for dinner. Anna wanted to get a certain dessert, I forget what its called, but its like a pancake cut up with powdered sugar, cinnamon and applesauce. We found a place that had it, so she got that and a salad for dinner and I got goulash and a salad. It was exactly what I wanted too, lately I've been craving soup and salad combos (probably because they don't do that here haha and I miss both soup and salad, so when they come together its heaven!)
So yeah, we had dinner, and then decided to walk back to Bismarkplatz to get the tram to go to the train station for our 9:45 train. We had a few connections again, Heidelberg --> Mannheim --> Offenburg --> Strasbourg. We ended up getting to Stras around 12 and took a cab home. Oh home sweet home after a day of exploring :) But a GREAT day of exploring! Heidelberg: check! :D
Now, off to see Courtney in Berlin for a few days! Maybe I'll learn a few more German words!
Gutentag! <3
PS. Calendar check: leaving today for Berlin, getting back Saturday. A week of "studying," my las econ final and my family comes (!!!) next sat (5/29), Joanie comes the next day (5/30), a week and a half of traveling in Switzerland and Italy, then HOME on 6/13. CANNOT BELIEVE IT. It's gone so fast and its almost over! And I'm SO excited to see my family and SO excited to get home, but I
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