A German road trip! Part two

Heidelberg

Day two of our road trip brings us to Heidelberg.  After getting horribly and utterly lost for two hours looking for our motel the previous night, we cursed Google maps and swore to use a GPS the next time around.  I’m happy to say our friendship came out unscathed and neither one of us ripped the others head off.  We devoured all our snacks (since we missed dinner) and went to bed to get an early start on all the sights of Heidelberg.

Real quick, let’s just talk about our motel.  We are budget travelers here and chose this for the fabu price of 33EUR a night.  When we arrived, I’m pretty sure we were the only women there.  We were also the only people wearing shits.  I’ve never seen so many shirtless men sharing one room!  We thought that perhaps this particular chain of motels was a well known homosexual hot spot… just not well know to us.  Nonetheless it was clean and had these nifty pod-like bathrooms and showers that cleaned themselves after each use.  They also had a pretty decent German-style breakfast which made starting the day so much easier!

So after breakfast (any one remember the German word for breakfast? EXTRA POINTS!) we drove into the altstadt and parked near the schloss or castle.  What a castle it is!  It is built into the side a small mountain so that you can look over the town and take in an incredible view.  Quite a history with this castle too; it held or inspired many famous visitors including Victor Hugo and Mark Twain.  She also held a pivotal place in the thirty years war. I won’t bore some of you with the details but if you happen to be interested, read this for a brief history of the schloss.

To get up the mountain, one could walk OR take the funicular railway.  You can guess which one we chose.  I’ve never ridden on a funicular railcar before and the way it works fascinated me.  Two cars are attached to each other by a cable which goes through a pulley at the top and they counter balance each other. Nifty!  The first stop takes you up to the castle, the next stop takes you to a switch were you hop on a different car, this car then takes you to the top of the mountain.

Up there, the view was incredible!  It was an ideal view of the way Heidelberg, like so many German cities, are a marriage of old and new.  You could see the ancient architecture in the center blooming out gradually into more modern styles, with the industrial areas wrapping the edges. Megan took a great photo which I think really captures the whole old/new idea.  To top off our trip to the top (buh dum ching!) was a little biergarten that had completely normal prices! (so rare in touristy areas in Germany… or anywhere for that matter)  We enjoyed some bratwurst and beer and then took a short walk around before heading back down to walk around the altstdat.

In the city we explored two churches that were so different from the traditional catholic churches so common in Bavaria.  After looking a little into the history of the Protestant reformation in Germany, it makes perfect sense that the people would reuse the shell of the church but make it their own inside.  Outside, the Church of the Holy Spirit holds all the grandeur of a gothic church, but inside it was simple with wooden chairs replacing the traditional pews and modern artistic stained glass neighboring the traditional style.  This particular church has quite a history and at one point held service for both Protestants and Catholics at the same time by having a partition down the middle of the church.

From the old bridge you could look over the river Necker at the city with the schloss as it’s backdrop.  No wonder so many artists chose this landscape as their subject!  It is something out of a fairy tale.  We kept talking about what it must have been like to live in that castle overlooking your kingdom as we stood, taking it all in.  The bridge it’s self had two groups of statutes flanking it.  All very much in the roman style, which brings yet another layer of Heidelberg's rich history to life.

And so ends day two of the adventure. Next on our route will be Kassel and it’s fantastic Bergpark. Until then, Tschüs!

PS- Almost every one of these amazing pictures are Megan’s!  Thanks again for sharing with me!