Friday June 27, 2008

Friday June 27, 2008

Air conditioning is nice, but so is a free breakfast, so far most of the places we have stayed at have been an option of the two. We’re in Heidelberg now, at the Holiday Inn (yeah how much more touristy can I get), and we’ve had a GREAT nights sleep, cool and quiet. But if we were to get breakfast at the hotel we’d be paying 20 euros each, yeah really? Most of our lunch’s and dinners have not cost that much.

The opposite end of the spectrum was the hotel in Nurburg, great place, clean, compact, not super touristy, really great breakfast included in the stay. But wow was it hot, our room was on the side the sun came op on, and we would wake up sticky, and seemingly spend the day that way, no matter how many showers we each took in a day.

I gotta say I am willing to find my own breakfast if it’s in exchange for a good refreshing night of sleep. I’m sure normally air isn’t needed in these parts be cause the weather people keep saying what a rare heat wave Europe has been experiencing ever since we got here, so likely when we leave, all will go back to normal and it’ll be 100 and humid in Columbus!

So since it’s only 8am here and Aaron’s still kind of sleeping I’ll recap yesterday.

It was June 26, we woke up at the Blaue Ecke Hotel, showered, got breakfast, packed all our stuff (it’s amazing how our things keep accumulating, should have probably gone to the post office and mailed a package home, but instead we had packed an extra bag within our bags, which has now come out and is full), got in the car, drove to Frankfurt, spent 3 Euros and about 20 minute trying to figure out how to get into the rental car return parking lot, got lunch and then explored Frankfurt. We used the car (which we returned a few hours early) as our locker for the luggage and just walked around downtown Frankfurt, took pictures of cool stuff, and just soaked in some of the surroundings. It’s a very diverse area, but as we had been told not very touristy. We spent about 3 hours this way and then caught our train to Heidelberg.

We were in first class, and it is a little cabin with storage for luggage and air and lots of leg room, sadly the ride was barley an hour long. We both were kind of tired from the travel, and so got to the hotel and took naps. When we woke up it was because we were hungry and it was dinner time. We decided to walk around the area of our hotel, it’s not a very touristy area, but there are a LOT of U.S. service men staying in our hotel, haven’t yet found out why, assuming this is a connection point from one place to another for them. We walked about a mile one way, found nothing but cute homes and lots and lots of closed shops with barely any of them having English menus, the only places that seemed open were carry out pizza shops, and there was a ton of them. We headed back to the hotel, went to the restaurant there, got a cheese burger and pizza. Neither tasted quite like what we expected, but they took care of our hunger and that was all we needed.

We went back to the room, watched Russia vs Spain (Spain won 3 goals to 0) and then proceeded to pass out happily in the cool quiet room. Spain will now play Germany; I’m just not sure what day.

We have today and tomorrow in Heidelberg and then back to English speaking Britain!

A few things about Germany that surprise me:

Smoking, very very prevalent, for a society that is so health and earth conscious I am amazed at how many people smoke and that cigarette vending machines line almost every street corner.

Germany is very organized, unlike Paris or other parts of France, there is a way in which things are done, and you do them that way, not just anyway you feel like it.

English is pretty widely spoken and 1 out of 5 menus can be found in English.

German people are very helpful, again this might be in comparison to Parisians but we’ve had very good interactions, even in little cities and big ones with all the folks we have encountered in Germany.

The roads and driving is AWESOME; the highways don’t have a set speed limit, except in certain zones, where they reduce speeds due to intersections or heavy traffic. We saw a Ferrari come up to us on the highway yesterday and pass us like we weren’t even moving and we were going about 130kph. And it was all 100% legal. People don’t talk on cell phones and all pay attention while driving, and the system works. We tried to keep up with some fast moving traffic but our base level Peugeot didn’t have anything to offer in terms of go potential so we happily stayed with the pack of average speed traffic.

Dubbed TV in French or German is hilarious, really the only thing we’ve gotten in English since we’ve been gone from London (since June 11th) is CNN at any of the locations we’ve been at, so we’ve been watching lots of sports on mute when we’re having down time, and during channel flipping will find the likes of sponge bob, scrubs, grays anatomy or married with children on in German or French, it’s quite a hoot.

People in Europe seem to have no hang ups about personal space, not sure why, everyone who knows me knows I’m all about it, and the more the better :p A little uncomfortable when I’m used to that and here even random strangers have no qualms with getting up close and personal in lobbies of places, or on trains and such!

Chicken isn’t as widely eaten as in America, it seems like you can ALWAYS find chicken on the menu in the states, and here, it’s pretty rare, instead it’s liver, and rabbit, and duck… uh yeah, not good for a person who is not a fan of steak, and really doesn’t do seafood, and like mushy vegetables (the only veggies I really like are Indian Sabji’s and such).

Train Stations charge fees (have ranged from 50 eurocents to 1 euro) to use the restroom, it seems like a good way of keeping the riff raff out and making sure they stay in good shape. It’s bad when you drank too much, left your husband with the luggage, don’t have any money and have to travel up about 30 steps back to get some change!