Heidelberg

Okay, so it was one crazy filled weekend! Usually I'm bored on the weekends, but this weekend was different. It seemed like we never stopped, and it went by so fast!

Yesterday, as you may know, I went to Heidelberg with Hannah and some other people. One of our friends from DAAD, Yanalte, invited us to go to Heidelberg for the day to go to the Christmas markets, especially the one up at the castle (as it was only for like 4 days). Hannah and I decided that Heidelberg sounded like a good idea, so we met up with Yanalte and all her friends at the train station at 8:50 Sunday morning, and from there it was lots of train rides. We got on the first train to Stuttgart, and then had to transfer over for our train that went to Heidelberg. All in all the trip took about three hours. When we got to Heidelberg it was kind of gloomy out, and we had to walk to one of Yanalte's friend's rooms so that she could drop her stuff off. The walk took about ten minutes, and we got to walk across one of the bridges going over the river. It was really gloomy out, but still really pretty!

The fog and clouds were rolling off the hills, which made for a good sight!

After we dropped stuff off at Sierra's (Yanalte's friend who is studying in Heidelberg), she took us around Heidelberg showing us all the Christmas markets and all the main buildings in town.

I forgot why, but this building had some context, to the point of me feeling the need to take a picture of it!

What's a Christmas market without a turner thingy!?

This was the first market we hit up!

Our next stop: The Castle Christmas Market.

After we walked through the first little Christmas market, and I bought some fries that I thought would be good until I realized that they covered them in curry, and I couldn't eat them, we decided to head up to the Castle Christmas Market. This market was only going on for four days or so. Instead of walking all the way up in the rainy gloom, we decided to be full on tourists and take the tram up!

On the left is the tram that went up some 30% incline, and you can see the tunnel up ahead!

They had all sorts of warning signs inside the tram, which did not make me feel too safe.

 After seeing these signs, Yanalte decided that it would be a good idea to mention that if the brakes were to go out, we would plummet down fast to our death like a giant roller coaster. Not helping Yanalte.

This was the tunnel going down, once we made it to the top. Pretty terrifying!

We made our way to the market from there, and it was quite a sight from the top!

When we got up to the top, we were greeted by this lovely archway.

How festive.

Hannah in front of the market!

The castle itself had been destroyed upon several occasions, by the French, and they stopped rebuilding it. So here are the remains of the castle. Still pretty spectacular.

After seeing the ruins of the castle, and hearing about how the French destroyed it, I just think of Monty Python.

I wonder if the French brought down the walls of this castle with their tauntings?

The court of the castle, with all the people lined up on the bridge for tours.

Here I am in front of the castle!

The view from the top.

After we walked through the market, we saw that there was a sort of lookout area that was a great spot for pictures!

Here is the main part of the Altstadt and the river.

We could see the Christmas markets from up there!

It was quite a view.

The weather was not the best, but it made for a great shot!

At the market Yanalte bought a little penguin that you stick in the microwave to heat him up, and voila: you have yourself a hand warmer!

She named him Doppi.

Another shot of Heidelberg.

After everyone had had their share of apple cider and the sights up at the castle, we decided to make our way down to town again to visit all the other Christmas markets, as there were about 6 of them.

We started our way down, having to stop for pictures along the way!

All streets that went down hill would take us to the city apparently.

Some building that I saw as we were walking down from the castle. How would you like to live here? Although it was probably some office or university building.. who knows.

Now, as we were going down, we saw this slide and got to hear about the time Yanalte went down this slide while it was wet. Doesn't seem that intimidating, right? Well just wait until the other picture of it.

A view of the university buildings from above the playground.

I suggested that we take the playground down instead of just walking down the sidewalks, because where's the adventure or fun in that?!

Here's the thing we climbed down.

And here is the slide that Yanalte had ventured in her previous visit to Heidelberg. Yep. Pretty sure this slide would be illegal in the US.

A final shot of our fun path.

Here was the sign in front of the playground. The first one says: No children wearing helmets allowed (Sorry Mr. Bump, aka Sam, you're not allowed here); The second one: No running dogs off of leashes. Okay perfectly acceptable. Third: No pooping dogs. And finally, this park is smoke free. So if you're a smoking child who wears a helmet, you are not allowed in this park.

When we finally got down to town again we walked through the other markets

This was the first one we went to, and they had an ice skating rink. Some guy wiped out, and since it had started to pick up raining a bit more by this time, the rink was covered with a nice thick layer of water, and the guy was absolutely soaked on one side. I felt bad for him, but it was pretty funny to watch. Sorry fella.

We walked through the first market that we went to again, and I got a picture from the other side with the church in the background.

Yanalte looks good next to the creepy butler. And who's the creepy butler standing next to? Oh yeah, an even creepier Emily. Sorry Yanalte for ruining this picture with my weirdness. I don't even know what I'm doing here.

Now, as you may notice from the picture above, it had begun to rain pretty hard at this point in the evening. My pants were soaked, and we dragging down, so please excuse the baggy, nasty pants. Also, my shoes that I wore yesterday were my shoes that I wore to track in high school, and because they were my track shoes, they have holes in the front of them (from all the wear and tear from the repetitive drills). So, walking through the rain and the puddles meant very wet, sloshy, squishy feet and soaked socks for me. By the end of the night if felt like I had just come of a River Rapids ride at Six Flags and I was sloshing through my gym shoes complaining, and my mom was saying, "Well Emily, did you bring sandals?" and I said no, and she said, "I told you to bring sandals and an extra pair of clothes."

I took a quick shot of this guy playing his instrument, because we could hear him all the way up at the castle, which was really cool as we were walking around up there. So thank you random man.

The streets were all lit up and decorated for the market.

This was another market that we walked through. It was super raining by this point, and you can see the rain clouds hanging over the hills.

So, after we walked through quite a few more markets, we decided to see if this one candy shop that Sierra knew of was open. By the time we found it, and found that it was closed because it was Sunday, it started pouring! It was raining so hard, and with four of us sharing two umbrellas we had to get out of the rain. We went to a cafe where everything was movie themed. All the drinks were named after movies and the food after actors or directors. It was really cool. When we got there we set all of our wet things aside and decided to dry out for a while. We were all completely soaked. Hannah got it the worst I think though, especially because her coat is not so thick. So when the time came to leave, I got a video of Hannah putting on her extremely wet coat. I thought it would make for a good laugh, sorry Hannah. 

So after putting all of our wet coats, scarves, gloves, and hats back on, we set off for the last few markets before heading back to the train station to head back to Tuebingen. When we got to the station, though, we had a little time to kill, so we went to the bookstore in the station. Yanalte bought a magazine on horses, definitely meant for five year olds, and then Hannah and Yanalte spent the beginning of the train ride back to Stuttgart (where we had to go before catching a train back to Tuebingen) oohing and giggling at their horses and horse posters and horse calendars. I put my headphones in and ignored the silly horses, sorry guys, a little too much girly for me.

The magazine explains why my headphones went in when they did.

 So when we got to Stuttgart, we found our train back to Tuebingen. We got on the train, and sat across from the scariest man I have ever seen (pretty sure he was a hitman, and I tried not to look at him, in fear that I might offend him in some way, as I have a habit of offending people that I meet randomly, as we saw with the boots) and we sat next to a pooping baby. As if this wasn't bad enough, the train ride was the worst I have ever been on, as if felt like I was being spun around and around and my head didn't know which way was up and which way was down. I got so sick from the motion of the train, and it didn't help that it was dark out, and I couldn't see where the train was going or look at the sky. It was truly awful, I thought I was going to be really sick. We finally got back to our part of the city and said goodbye, wet and freezing, and I went off to bed after making myself some dinner to settle my very empty, and sick stomach.

I woke up this morning and ran to the store before heading off to a group meeting for a presentation that we are doing for one of my classes next week. The meeting didn't last long, and before long I was meeting up with Hannah, because we had a DAAD meeting at one of the university buildings.

So, when we signed up for this meeting about a month or so ago, the form asked us to RSVP. Here is the form word for word:

MEETING with DAAD
on 5 December 2011

        Yes, I will attend the meeting 

       Unfortunately I am not able to attend the meeting
(Please give your reason)

            I will contribute the following (brief description):

And then it left a place for you to write your contribution if you were attending. SO, Hannah and I both said that we would talk about our experiences in Tuebingen. So today, the 5th, rolled around and we made our way to the check in desk for our name tags and such before the meeting started. When I gave them my name, the lady said to me, "Oh, you're the one giving the presentation?". I just looked at her, because I did not think it was anything special. She then said, to a confused looking me, "You are Emily Stillman? You and Helina Scupham are doing presentations." Hannah popped her head in and said that her name was Hannah, and we tried to say that we thought everyone was going to be presenting something. The lady told us that, no, we were the ones presenting. I then expressed to her, with one terrified expression, that we did not prepare anything special and we thought that everyone would be contributing just a few words or so. She looked a little irritated at this point and said that if we didn't want to do it, that we should talk to a Dr. Somebody. (Brunner maybe). She took us to him after a bit of panicking, and we tried to convey to him what we had thought, and that we had not prepared anything special. He then showed us his list of how the meeting would go, and there were only about seven speakers, and we were two of them. In half English/half German (because I think he thought that we didn't understand, but in truth we were just trying to comprehend the situation and find a way out of it) he somehow got us to still do the presentation, but now we were doing it together. AHH! Just what I needed after a crazy full weekend. So we sat down and while the other people were talking, Hannah and I worked to come up with some semblance of a speech, and a speech in German about our "Experience in Tuebingen". We wrote out our speeches, and even though they were short, I think we did alright with grammar and such. We gave our mini speeches, cracking as many jokes as we could in the short time, and after a few minutes of painful speech giving and nervous mistakes, we found our way back to our seats to the sound of knocking (as the Germans knock on the table instead of clapping at the end of classes, speeches, and such). After the meeting, we all went to another room where they had a little buffet of appetizers, and we chatted it up a bit before heading out. It was quite a surprising experience. On the sheet, which angered me, it made it seem like you had to contribute something, am I wrong? I want opinions on this. Am I crazy, or was it wrong to assume that everyone would be saying something if this was on the RSVP form?

Anyway, so after that hectic meeting, I headed home to start making dinner and doing laundry. It has been an interesting day with a rather mundane ending to it. Tomorrow I have one class and then I have to meet again with my group to work on my presentation. I found out today that I am going to Strassburg this weekend and am looking forward to that! I may not post until then, but hopefully something interesting will happen in the mean time, like maybe the lost package will arrive. When that happens, I assure you, there will be a chorus singing and every other sign for a miracle will appear before me.

Bye now!