Heidelberg

This past Sunday I took a hour drive to a town called Heidelberg..  I found this destination from a book that I got called “Daytrips in Germany: 50 one day adventures”.  This book is pretty good because it tells you about the city history, what the highlights are, and a walking tour map.  This town has a market square, a couple of churches, a castle, and a bridge.  The walk started out by walking past the oldest University in Germany it dates back to 1686.  There have been expansions but it was still a very small school.  There are stories about the school jail.  This is where the school rowdies who got to spend anywhere from one to five weeks on bread and water for their misdeeds.  Actually serving time was considered a mark of honor and given the cleverness of the student the water usually turned out to be beer.  As the story is told.

  I walked by a few churches that were nice but not to the grand scale as I have seen on other trips but this one called the church of the Holy Ghost.  It was built in the 15^th century and made it through all the wars.  The interesting fact about this church is that from 1705 to 1936 it was both a protestant and catholic church with the two faiths being separated by a wall.  On the outside of the church you can see the merchant’s stalls that have been in use since the medieval days. 

  I got to the base of the hill that the castle was on and had two choices, go up a long winding trail or go up the stairs.  I picked the stairs.  When I finally got to the top I saw on the side of the steps that they had a number and I was on 315.  Not to bad but defiantly a workout.  The castle had a great view of the city and had some interesting things to see from the courtyard to the world’s largest wine cast.

I walked down the winding trail and walked along the Neckar river to one of the old bridges.  I am always surprised to see how many people are out walking around on a Sunday afternoon.

House Concert

This past Saturday night I was invited to go to a house concert.  I was interested to see if this was going to be like in the college days when a band would play in the back yard until the cops came and broke up the party.  Well it wasn't it was at a guys apartment and he had food and drinks and I ended up talking to his Dad for the longest time.  He worked at a company that makes breweries and he was telling me about the many times he went to St. Louis to the Budweiser plants.  He told me a joke that he said was told to him by the head of Budweiser at the time.  It goes like this:  Do you know what a couple having sex in a canoe and American beer have in common?  Answer is they are both f*cking close to water.  Everyone got a big chuckle out of that.  The people (about 25-35) at the party were all very nice and talked to me so that I felt comfortable.  When the music started it was a two person band with the vocals all being done by Joanna Chapman-Smith.  She is from Canada and is touring Europe right now. 
http://www.myspace.com/joannacs
and listen to some of her music.  If you hit play on the first one it will play all six of the songs.  They played all of these at the concert.

They played for about an hour then took a break so we could go fill up our beers and then they played for about another hour.  As you can see from the pictures it was a very quaint setting.  This ended up being a lot of fun.

Apartment

Now that I have lived in Germany for 5 months and have been in my apartment for about 3 ½ months it is time to show it off.  Ok its nothing special but it works.  I live in an apartment complex that has three other apartments.  On my floor is an older gentleman from Poland.  He is in the same situation as me.  His family and friends are in Poland but the work is here.  The only difference is he told me that in a few months he is going to Singapore for a year.  The apartment above me is occupied by a single mom and her 15 year old daughter.  They are all nice but we don’t see each other but maybe once a week if we are leaving at the same time.  So the apartment is about 310 square feet based on me pacing it off and not counting the coat closet.  The main room when you come in from the common entrance is the kitchen/dinning room/living room.

The kitchen has a two cook top burners, a sink, a college dorm room size refrigerator, and a toaster oven.  Everything works but it took some time getting use to.  The refrigerator doesn’t have a freezer in it but I have learned that if I put things to the back and on the bottom they will actually freeze.

The living area is nice now that I negotiated a larger TV.  I have this set up so I can watch movies through it.  It also has a door that goes out to a deck that it nice.

The bed room bed is ok.  I did bring some sheets and blankets from back home.  The ones that were on it and normal for Germany were a couple of inches short all the way around.  Closet space is limited but I added a few storage boxes to help out in that area.

The bathroom is nice.  It has everything that you would need.  It is also where the washer is located.  The washers in Germany are a bit different than in the USA.  They run a lot longer,  the shortest wash I have found has been about 40 minutes with the normal one for cotton is 1 hour and 30 minutes.  They don’t have dryers so everything is line dried.  This took a little getting use to, you just have to plan better and don’t think you’re going to wash something and wear it that day.  

The nice thing is it is only 10 minutes to get to work and the shopping area is close by too.  It has some nice area to go walking.