Germany

So I finally made it to Germany in January 2010. Now I am out here for a second trip already in February-March. Overall life has been busy, both at home and abroad, so I haven't had a lot of time for picture taking/site seeing, but I though I would post what I have and make a few comments in case anyone is interested.



This is me standing on a castle wall, overlooking the town of Heidelberg. This is an "Americanized" German town, but I can't tell from where I am. To me it just looks German.



This is pretty much the same picture, just better because I am not in the way.


More from the same vantage point, but looking straight across the valley.



If I turned around from where I took those pictures of the valley, this is main building? Wall? of the "castle". The term castle refers to a lot of things, and while it felt like a castle as I climbed the ancient narrow trail that wound up the side of the mountain, I didn't expect for there to be so many windows... Granted, this still isn't an easily accessed/conquered vantage point, but still. That is a lot of windows.



It seems that the castle is in a constant state of being rebuilt to keep it in showing condition, however, some parts had been damaged beyond fixing by time, bombs and lightning. This picture (horrible lighting, sorry) was meant to show the thickness of the walls. They are incredibly thick in some place,like 12 feet thick. And it still broke... Interesting.



This was part of an interpretive sign that explained about how the castle used to look. It seems that most castles weren't just built, they were large buildings that kept getting addons and remodels until the took the shape of what we consider a castle. Perhaps some of the more Gothic structures are a little different, so I should find some of those. If/when I go to France, I think that a few French castles fit my particular perception of a castle a little better.



This tower was broken almost clean down the middle, and the massive piece of the tower remained intact and just slid to a new resting place. A German professor, trying to make a political point of some kind back in the day, spread the story that this was the work of WWII bombing by the Allies, but Wikipedia confirms that the real culprit here was lightning in the 19th century. Still, it is amazing to see this massive, old, man-made hunk of tower just leaning there like a tinker toy. My picture doesn't do this justice...

Old vs. New. As I said, the castle was more like a bunch of add-ons. Here you can see a date carved in the stone (1545) and right next to it are the more modern pipes bringing in utilities of some kind (water maybe?) Very interesting.




This is from inside the Courtyard of the castle. That big building in front of me is the other side of the wall I was looking up at a few pictures ago. The courtyard does match my perception of castle life a little better... They have converted the East side of the castle (to right, around the corner) to an Apothecary (Pharmacy) museum. It was very interesting too, but I wasn't able to get pictures of anything in there. In the foreground of this picture on the right, you see the corner with pillars. That was where the well for the castle was. That alone is amazing to me, that they could dig that deep by hand on a mountainside and hit water... ok, so I was raised in a desert.

This is a horrible picture for a number of reasons, the biggest being that you don't get the scale of it at all. This is a humongous Wine cask. It was built in the castle, and is 20 ft. tall I would guess? Standing on the ground next to it I have to look up to see the center of the thing. It was huge. Some idiot with more money than brains had it built, only to find that within a year it started leaking. It was only in use for a year or two, at the end of which it was constantly leaking like a sieve. At least the guy did set his sights high.... There was a staircase so you could walk up and over it, or stand on top. It was cool.



This is a town square in below the castle (you can see one of the ruined walls behind the statue. The statue was of Mary and Baby Jesus, but the picture didn't turn out too well.

So those are some of my pictures from my first trip in January. I only had one half day (luck) to do anything but work, since I was only there a week, so I am glad to have been able to see what I did.

I was home for about three weeks, and then I went back to Germany for what was going to be 2 weeks, but is stretching into almost 4 weeks (I am still here...) I hope to be home soon. The upside is that I had a few more days--weekends--to see a few things, so here is a sampling of those sights.

The day started at the Hauptbahnhof (train station) in Frankfurt. We had to take a coworker to the airport, so we parked the car at the train station. There was a tourism office where we got a day pass for Frankfurt, which allowed us to ride any of the trains and get discounts at any of the museums in town (there are a lot of museums) for about 9 euros. That is about $14.


An overall shot of the train station. I am not a big fan of cities, or city life, but I am a big fan of trains. Too bad they seem to go together.


So after getting our day passes and maps we took a few minutes at an American icon to plan out our day. It was extremely cold, and snowing off an on, so a cup of hot chocolate was perfect. Did I mention it was freezing cold? Ok, good. Didn't want to leave that out. (BTW: Can you pick me out of the crowd? Ok, that was too easy.)


There are basically 4 types of trains: underground (U-bahn), Regional surface trains (R-bahn), local trams (buses on tracks;)--(S-bahn) and then the long distance, super fast Inter City Express trains (ICE trains). This is the tram stop (S-bahn) outside of the train Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station). We decided to ride the tram down to the old city center along the river, where it would be a short walk to a dozen different museums.

This is the old town in Frankfurt. Frankfurt is actually considered a new city, and has more skypscrapers than anywhere in Germany (or so I am told) but why would I take pictures of skyscrapers? That seemed dumb. So here is one angle on the old town square. This weekend was Carnival (a big drunken festival of unknown origin?) and they were setting up for the festivities as we wandered around.


Just another building in all its quaintness.


This statue was outside an "ancient statue" museum. They had big windows along the outside of the building, so we walked along and saw all kinds of Greek and Roman statues, at varying levels of modesty. We didn't pay to go in. The statue pictured is of the King (ok, so I don't remember exactly what he was king of) from around 760ish AD. That was a long time ago. And it looks just like him!! Amazing. I wonder if it was chiseled by a guy named Polaroid. Or maybe it was a guy named Bob using Polaroid chisels...


So being from Vegas, I see random stuff stuck on buildings all the time. I don't even see it anymore becuase I know it is all just a faked up attempt to make stucco (and the whole city) look like something more than it is. Well, I saw this on the side of an old German building and thought, I don't know if that is genuine or a reproduction for tourists. Just not knowing for sure somehow lent it some credibility. And even if it is just another cheap stucco reproduction, it does have more value because the street I was standing on probably had seen armored troops on horseback (among other conveyences.) Also, you can't tell from the picture so much, but this is not just a picture, but a flat sculpture on the wall (isn't that called a relief? I never took art history. I never thought I would use it ;) )




This is two attemps to get a shot of an old chapel across the river. Yes a new camera is on my Christmas list.


There was a foot bridge across the river... (Did I mention it was freezing cold?)


This is me on the foot bridge, freezing. (Thanks Mom for the stocking hat from Christmas like 10 years ago. See, it made it to Germany!) The sign above/behind me is in Greek. In the full sized picture I can't make out the characters I can't read. Yeah, you aren't missing much there.

This is a dog.

So we wandered around some more. Went to an Architecture museum and a Archeology museum (no pictures allowed in either.) We found a more modern, very European street to walk down that had a bunch of shops and pubs, so we stopped in one for lunch. That took two hours. That is where the dog picture came from. We noticed in multiple places, especially restaurants, that people would bring their dogs to work. Our waitress owned this little dog, and the table next to us had a few little kids, the youngest being a little blond haired girl who was 3 at most. They loved this dog, and the waitress came over and had it do tricks (rolling over and such). My little Taryn would have loved that dog. He was very patient with the kids, although they did finally get him to bark a few times. When the family left the dog went and sat by the glass door and watched them leave.

So a few more train rides and we were done for the day. I have a few more pictures from my trip, which as I mentioned isn't over yet, so I will do another post later for those who might be interested.