Heidelberg

A few Sunday’s ago 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 when there are no shops open but there are bakeries and coffee shops that are open.

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.

China

I have been delinquent in telling about and showing pictures of some of my travels.  About 8 weeks ago I traveled to China for about two weeks.  The first three days were traveling.  I started in Detroit, flew to Frankfort Germany, then to Amsterdam, then to Shanghai, China, then to my starting point of Shenyang, China.  See the picture of the inside of the Shanghai airport.

This trip I flew out of Detroit at 5pm on Monday and landed in Shenyang, China at 5 pm on Wednesday.  This city is known as the little Detroit.  Not just because it has a lot of automobile and industrial factories but also because most of the buildings are old, dirty, or falling apart.  The hotel was ok if you didn’t mind spending some quality time with the cockroaches and dirty carpet.  See the pictures from my window in the hotel and no that is not fog it is smog and its there all the time.

 The nice thing about this hotel is that it was right next to a KFC and yes we went there.  It was similar to the ones in the US.  Across the road was a walking shopping area called the “Love Park”.  This ran for about a mile or so and had tons of shopping and restaurants on it.  Actually in the mile long area there were 3 KFC’s not including the one by our hotel, 2 pizza huts, and 2 McDonalds.  The shops were mostly cloths and they prices were about the same as back in the states. .

We did go out to eat at a restaurant that you picked the food and they brought it to a room that has a rotating top on it.  This place had a lot of different food.  We had mostly “normal” food but here are some items that could have been..

Pig snout

Chicken feet

Duck head

Goose tongue (we had this one,  I’m not a fan)

Frogs

 

This was our table

Another thing we did while at this location was go to a German bar, listened to a band from the Philippines, which sang American music.  Kind of funny if you think about it.

On the last day we had a few hours before we had to get to the airport and decided to use this time to do some sight seeing of the Imperial Palace of the Qing Dynasty.  This dated back to the 1700’s and was interesting to see all the  different huts or building that they had for everything from dinner, to entertaining, to political business.

The plane trip from Shenyang to Yantai was quite an experience.  The airline we flew on was “ok airline”.  We later found out this was the last plane that they had and they were in quite a bit of financial problems.  This all became clear when we went to get on it and it was a prop engine plane with about 40 seats on it.  They handed you a bottle of water as you walked in.  I was sitting in my seat and looked out the window and noticed the pilot looking at the tire.  I had to do a double take because the tire was completely bald.  Thinking this was normal I started checking other planes and the other wheels.  Nope not normal… Yikes.  We took off and had one stop before we got to our destination.  At this stop the pilot once again spent a lot of time looking over the tire but this time he also pulled out a rag and wiped a bunch of oil from the engine as well.  To make a long story short (I know too late) we arrived safe and sound but will not take “ok airlines” ever again.

We got to Yantai and the one thing that was very clear is that this city was growing and growing fast.  There was tons of new construction and most all of the buildings looked new as well. 

 The hotel we stayed at was right on the ocean and was very nice.  The plant that we are adding to was about three miles from the hotel.  See the pictures out of my window.

And the picture of the hotel.

The one thing that was nice about this location beside being able to walk the beach everyday, was that everywhere we ate they had fresh seafood.  It was very tasty and inexpensive

The next and last city we went to was Shanghai.  By this time we were getting a bit burned out and tired.  The hotel here was very nice and it was right next to our offices.  See the picture out the window of this hotel

And of the insides.

In shanghai we did go to the “imitation” market.  This is where they had the cheap knock off clothes.  They had North Face jackets for the equivalent to $25 and jeans that were inexpensive.  I didn’t buy anything but a few of the guys I was with did and the next day one of the guys showed me his North Face jacket that had a big hole in it and the guy that bought the jeans said he put them on and they fit perfect he went to button them up and there was no hole for the button at the waist.