Heidelberg

For a few months now, I’ve wanted to go somewhere for a day trip, but this idea had until recently been thwarted by 1.) labwork 2.) everything being closed Sundays and 3.) crappy weather. A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to have a Saturday free from labwork and rain (well, mostly free from rain), so I caught the train down to Heidelberg. I had heard that there was a big fireworks show a few times a year in Heidelberg, and that Saturday was one of those occasions. So I organised to meet up with Joel (an American who who works in a town not too far from Mainz, who I met at my hostel in Bratislava) and some of his friends, to make the most of this occasion.

Heidelberg is basically known for its beautiful “old town”, its castle, its historic funicular railway and its university. The first thing I saw in Heidelberg, as I made my way to the tourist information desk, was this bike parking lot:



I have no story to go with that, I just thought it was cool :)

Most towns over here have their own card, which gives you unlimited public transport for the day, and lots of discounts on major attractions. So I bought a Heidelberg Card, but was soon disappointed when I read the book and discovered it no longer included public transport. Determined to make use of my card, I first made my way to the river, where I quickly bought a discounted ticket for a boat that was making ready to leave for a trip down the Neckar River. Little did I know that the boat ride was about 3 hours long... At least I saw plenty of scenery! Here’s a misty view of the castle from our boat:



The Neckar is actually sloped, and originally cargo ships used a 155km long chain in the river to pull themselves upstream. Nowadays, there are 27 locks along the length of the river, which are basically little walled areas that the ships park in, then the gate is closed, then water is either pumped in or drained out so the ship ends up being level with the next section of the river. Good idea, but painfully slow. We had to do this four times is our trip, and each time it took about 10 minutes. You can see the different levels of the river on the right hand side of this photo:



After finally making it off the ship, I headed towards the castle. On the way, I passed “Madonna of the Kornmarkt”:



This statue was erected in the late 1600s, when Heidelberg was taken over by a Catholic sovereign, who used religious propaganda such as pamphlets, processions and madonna statues to try to convert the then primarily Protestant community back to Catholicism.

Once I reached the base of the hill that the castle stood on, I made used of my Heidelberg Card a second time, by gaining free admission to the funicular railway (and yes, I had the old Pizza Singles ad song in my head as I hopped aboard).



This 1.5km long railway was opened in 1890 and has a 43% gradient at its steepest point. It carries tourists to the castle (about 1/3 of the way up), then up to Königstuhl (King’s Chair), which is an area of forests and walking tracks. Here’s the view from the top:



I decided to walk along a little circuit through the forest, which the sign said should take about an hour (which at a normal walking pace usually means about 30mins). Sadly, the map I’d found was not particularly useful as it had no road names on it, so I just followed the signs that said Nature Walk. After walking for about 30 minutes, it occurred to me that I had been going down-hill most of the time, so was probably going a long long way off-track. Then a couple of men drove past in a tractor and I knew I was out of the tourist area. So I trecked back up the hill, which my calves told me was pretty bloody big. Oh well, at least I worked off the Bratwurst I had for lunch on the boat. Here’s the pretty forest:



On my way back to the railway, I found a number of cool pieces of nature-inspired artwork, like this footed bench:



I also found the most colourful slug I have ever seen, clinging to an old tree stump:



I made my way back down to the castle via the railway, then proceeded to join the other tourists in taking hundreds of photos. Here are a few:









Inside the castle (free entry again, thanks Heidelberg Card) they had a giant wine barrel, which was surrounded by swarms of tourists. I’m not sure of the significance of this barrel, but by god it was massive (and you could climb over it!)



One of the best things about the castle was the view you could get from it. This is your stereotypical old German town view:



At the castle, I met up with Joel and his friends (4 Americans and 1 Russian), then we proceeded to act like the biggest tourists possible, playing with all the crappy souvienirs we could get our hands on. Joel and Tiffany demonstrate their talents below:



After wandering for awhile, we made our way to a German restaurant for dinner. I had some kind of south-German pizza (called Flamkuchen), which had a really flaky pastry, sour cream, tomatoes and chillies – very nice! We then got some Haagen-Daaz ice cream, which you can see us eating below (terrible photo of me, but I’m posting it anyway):



From this point on we basically wandered along the river for aaaages, trying to find a good spot from which to view the fireworks. As time ticked away, there were many “discussions” about what was more important for us to have a clear view of – the castle or the bridge – but Tim the Russian guy won out with his bridge argument, since he was the only one who had been there before. With only seconds to spare, we settled on a spot, and the show began with the castle being illuminated in blood red, to symbolise it being burned down (I think). By the time the fireworks started, we had found some good accompanying music on Joel’s phone (possibly to the annoyance of the surrounding spectators), and we proceeded to ooh and aah for the next ten minutes or so. I couldn’t get any decent photos, but you can check out the official website for a couple.

Then came the “Us vs The Crowd” battle, as we migrated en masse back over the bridge, to the city side of the river. Our group then halved in size as the girls bid their farewells (I refrained from yelling out “SOFT!”, because I think they had been out the night before), then our battle continued as we tried to find a bar that we wouldn’t be crushed to death in. We eventually found an okay one, then Joel introduced me to the magic of the Jaeger Bomb (a drink, for those responsible enough not to know). The magic was improved by the fact that the bar tender poured about 4 shots of Jaeger into each glass. And I’m not even exaggerating. Here’s me, Thom and Joel on a Jaeger-fuelled high:



Early in the night, I was disappointed at the lack of dance floor, but fortunately we had such staying power that eventually most of the crowd disappeared and we were able to create our own in front of the bar. Then, to cap it all off, Tim (obviously having encountered many an Aussie backpacker) surprised me by requesting “Land Down Under”, which we hollered at the top of our lungs. Good times.

The next day I was feeling pretty seedy, but luckily it passed by the afternoon, because I had to be at another pretty German town for a Silbermond concert. I went with Dani and her boyfriend, and it was actually a festival called “Hessentag”, and Silbermond was the special guest act. It was a really good show, but no photos, sadly, because we were told no cameras (although 90% of the people there had them anyway), but you can check the band out on Youtube if you’re bored.

In summary, it was a very busy weekend, and to top it off, I had to go to the lab after the concert to change media on some cells (at about 1am, eyes half closed). Just goes to show, you’ve gotta make sacrifices to travel!!

Warning: Only read if you have time to waste

Okay, here tis – the one you’ve all been waiting for (yes, I’ll give myself a wrap, it’s my blog): THE PARIS EDITION!!

Featuring… KATH!!



The Paris weekend started off as a big one, even before the official weekend and even before I’d left Mainz! After getting very little sleep the Thursday night before I left, because of washing, packing, and general excitement, I woke up at about 6 am and hauled myself over to the lab. Then, after an hour and a half of tissue culture, I raced off to German class, then raced back to the lab, finished my work, then went home, ate, and rushed down to the train station. The rushing stopped after I checked in, because my flight was late in boarding, then when we finally did get on the plane, we were told we had to wait another half hour for some runway space. At this point, I started to get angry, because there was no air-con and I was sitting next to the window, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, with the sun roasting me from outside. Five minutes later, I decided to break the rules and pull my window shade down (god I’m a rebel), but as soon as that problem was solved, another came along in the form of the girl who sat next to me. I didn’t like her from the start, because she stole my arm-rest, then proceeded to open her newspaper out to its maximum dimensions and set about looking through it in the loudest manner possible. Once we finally took off, a combination of sun and lack of sleep meant I started dozing, then when I woke up, I realised I’d missed the food (I blame the girl next to me for not waking me up). I was pretty stoked when the drinks lady came around because I was dying for some water, but after I said “can I get a glass of water please?”, she handed me a cup of coke. I don’t really know how “water” sounds like “coke” in any way, shape or form, but since she couldn’t understand that, I didn’t bother trying to explain the error. Now comes my last bit of complaining. As we descended towards Paris, I started to lose my frown, because it was so pretty from the sky – lots of little CBDs, surrounded by patchwork-looking paddocks and houses, and in the distance I could even see the Eiffel Tower! Then, once we’d landed, I started to stand up only to be smacked in the face by the jacket that the girl next to me was violently putting on. AND it was the bloody painful zipper bit! GAH!! Okay, now I’m done.

I was incredibly late for my arranged Kath meeting time of 7pm, at our hostel, but luckily as I was walking up the street, I ran into her anyway! So I dumped my stuff and we headed out to sample the French cuisine. We walked into a promising-looking restaurant and were pretty impressed within two minutes because the waiter gave us a bowl of pretzels (so easily pleased). We soon realised they only had about 10 things on the menu, and all of them involved mussels, so I ordered some mussels with cheese and tomato and garlic butter sauce and Kath got some sort of white wine-marinated mussels (what an alco). Not only was the food good, but after I finished eating, the waiter offered me another plate of mussels FREE! I’m not special, this was just an offer they had for a few of the dishes. Mmmm… so much cheese…
By the time we got back to the hostel, it was close to midnight, but being the true tourist we are, we set our alarms for 6am.

The next morning, we set out on Massive Sightseeing Day #1. We walked a very very long way, from our hostel on the northern side of town, past the Opera House, past the Louvre:



and along the river to the Eiffel Tower. Although Friday had been warm, that Saturday was freeeeezing, and Kath and I were ill-equipped for the cold winds. At 11am, we met the guide of our Fat Tyre Bicycle Tour underneath the tower. This tour company is run by Americans, and also does tours in Barcelona and Berlin. Close to 100% of our fellow cyclists were Aussies, who were just starting their Top Deck tour of Europe, so it reminded me a lot of being on Contiki. It also proves my point that if you want to meet other Australians, go to Europe. At this point, the sun came out from behind the clouds, then we started on our journey. I have no idea what many of the places we went to were called, but they were all very big, gold-tipped old buildings. I remember this one though:



It’s an exhibition centre built to show off French architecture for a world expo, and it was originally intended that it be knocked down after the expo (like the Eiffel Tower), but luckily (like the Eiffel Tower), they decided to keep it. Speaking of the Eiffel Tower, here’s me standing in front of it:



We stopped for lunch at a café in the park, and since Kath and I are so committed to truly experiencing other cultures, we opted for crepes over boring old sandwiches:



We then went to the Louvre, in front of which our crazy Texan guides:



decided we should build a human pyramid in front of the glass pyramid. Unfortunately, nobody was gutsy enough to make a 4th tier, but the Johnny Knoxville-lookalike guide was stoked with the effort, nonetheless. He said it was the biggest human pyramid they’d ever made – I’m so proud to have been a part of it ;)



Here’s me on my ever-so-comfy-ultimate-suspension-bike:



They called the bikes “California Cruisers”, and you really do cruise along on them because the design gets you sitting back in your seat like you’re riding a Harley. Also, the tyres really were very fat, so much so that I could have run over a small animal and not even felt a thing.

After the bike tour, we ducked into a supermarket and bought some bread, cheese and smoked ham, then enjoyed our very French lunch in the park. Being the true tight-arses we are, we carried around the rest of the bread and cheese and ate it for lunch the next day. But really, you can’t throw out perfectly good cheese!

Following our glorious lunch, we went back to a museum that we’d passed on our tour, and had been highly recommended by Johnny Knoxville. The museum was basically the mansion and grounds where the sculptor Rodin had lived as a guest of the government, in a deal where all he had to do was socialise and sculpt, and after his passing, leave all his works to Paris. The most famous work of his (the only one I’d heard of) is the good ol’ thinker:



We had to race around a bit, because we only had an hour before the museum closed, but we managed to see nearly everything. Kath ponders over whether French men really are more attractive than Australian men:



After we were shooed out by a slightly unfriendly museum worker, we wandered around the pretty little backstreets of the area, looking at all the interesting shops on the way. Sadly, our window-shopping was cut short when the sky opened up and the rain started coming down. So we caught a train home and used the time to plan Massive Sightseeing Day #2. Somehow, it was late again by the time we got to sleep (the joy of sharing a room with 4 other people), but again we set our alarms for 6am.

Saturday was officially our day of shopping, so we set off towards a big shopping centre Kath had heard about, which was apparently well worth a visit. We arrived before the opening time, so spent 45 mins or so staring in jewellery store windows, wondering why we didn’t just do medicine so we could give homes to all the pretty shiny things on display. When we did actually make it into the shops, we were quite overwhelmed by the size and grandeur of the centre:



And check out the ceiling!



I mean, it was no Carindale, but it was okay ;) We quickly realised we could never afford anything in that place (outside of the food hall), or rather, I could never explain to my Mum why I’d spent 300 Euros on a shirt, so we settled for browsing. Not being satisfied with 5 floors of designer labels, we then headed for the Champs Elyssee. By this point, I was acutely aware of the pain coming from my feet – Paris is a very large city. But we trooped on and managed to buy a couple of items each,



It was then time to make our way over to the Latin Quarter to meet Lea (ex-QIMRer) and her French man, Nicholas, for dinner. But not before a few cheesy poses on the bridge!



It was a very long way to the meeting spot, and we were pretty late getting there, but Lea and Nicholas were late too so all was good! We walked around some gardens (again, I forget the name), then had dinner at a typically French restaurant. Great food again. Then, we went for a walk around the area – Lea showed us her current workplace, the famous Curie Institute, and then we wandered along the river to the Notre Dame, with Nicholas telling us interesting historical stories about Paris (all of which I’ve forgotten, sorry).



Inside the Notre Dame was some kind of mass, which was more like a lights-and-sounds-spectacular. I’ve never seen such a technologically-advanced church! They had a giant screen, onto which they projected brightly coloured biblical images, which changed in time with the haunting hymns they were playing. They even had the words of the songs coming up on the screen! It started to get a bit repetitive though, so we left and made a dash to the Eiffel Tower, in an effort to make it there in time for the last ride up for the night. We caught a train, then power-walked a few km (it was much further than any of us had remembered), but we made it in plenty of time. I didn’t take any photos from the top, because my camera’s useless at scenery shots at night, plus my fingers were frozen, but here’s a shot from below:



Those are the midnight sparkles you can see there – the lights go off every hour, on the hour, for 5-10 minutes. By the time we got home it was after 1 am, so we braced ourselves for a painful wake-up the next morning as we went to sleep.

Massive Sightseeing Day #3. This day began with my feet in about as much pain as they’d ever been, and I knew it was going to be a long day – especially as I wouldn’t get back to Mainz till midnight. I packed up my stuff, but thankfully was able to leave it in the room, since Kath was staying an extra night. We had planned to go to the Louvre that day, mainly because it was a Sunday and not much else was open, but then we had the bonus that it was the first weekend of the month, which meant it was FREE to get in! We’d received the tip from our tour guides on Friday to avoid the main entrance, and go in through the train station entry. So we followed this advice, and managed to be about 5m from the start of the line!

I always thought that photos were banned inside the Louvre, but then I saw lots of people taking them so thought “what the heck” and whipped out my camera. Being the preserver of fine artworks that I am, I diligently turned off the flash for this photo:



but was swooped upon by a museum worker within seconds, who was clearly not appreciative of my effort to protect the art by not using flash. Oh well, at least I still have my photo :) We wandered around for ages, saw the most important things and then looked at the interesting things like the sculpture courtyard and Napolean’s quarters, but after that we lost our enthusiasm as our minds began to focus more on finding a seat than appreciating masterworks. Plus, the crowds were annoying as hell. Here’s a bit of a Where’s Wally for you: Kath wonders how on earth we were going to make it out of there past all the other people:



We were at a bit of a loss for what to do after the Louvre. We’d visited everything we could think of, albeit at a whirlwind pace, and everything was so damn far away. So we decided to just wander and ended up back at the Champs Elysee. After searching for ages for a lunch that was both healthy and inexpensive, we found a good sandwich shop, where we could also sit for awhile. It was at this point that we realised our energy stores were completely empty, and we had about a half hour conversation that went along the lines of:

Me: So, what now?
Kath: Dunno.
Me: What haven’t we seen?
Kath: Dunno.
Me: Hmmm…
Kath: So where do you want to go?
Me: Not sure.

We eventually decided to catch a train to Montmatre to battle the crowd and have a look around. This area was definitely one of the most touristy places we’d visited – dozens of people selling crappy souvenirs, street performers, the obligatory beggars and thousands of sightseers. It was very colourful though, and apart from being annoyed when we saw 1 Euro souvenirs that we had bought in town the day before for 10 Euros, it was a nice visit.



We trekked up the rather daunting stairway to the Basilica of the Sacré Couer, where we joined the other tourists in a lap of the landmark. The main feature of the Basilica was a giant mosaic of Jesus on the ceiling in the centre of the room (apparently the technical term is the “apse”), which is among the largest mosaics in the world (thank you Wikipedia). Here's a photo. After spending awhile admiring the stained-glass windows, we went back out into the sun, positioned ourselves on the steps, and enjoyed the panoramic view of Paris.

It was there that we decided we had seen about as much as our legs could carry us to, so we caught the train back to the hostel and spent the last free hour before I had to leave sitting in our room eating chocolate. Time well spent, I say!

So then I grabbed my bag and we walked to the station, where we finally parted ways. It was sad to say goodbye, but I was pretty happy to be able to go back to my apartment and get more than six hour’s sleep in for the first time in awhile.

That’s it for the overly-long Paris entry. Better late than never, eh?

Au revoir!