Heidelberg

Okay so the last post was excessively long and I’m going back to Europe in 10 hours so let’s upload some blogs without pictures just so I don’t give myself another two weeks to forget what happened in the summer. I’ll add pictures when I get back, and will probably edit the text more too. EDIT: pictures added!

Day 15, cont.

The next destination on our list was Tübingen. The train station was not that impressive upon debarking our train, but the brand new not-even-finished bus loop outside sure was! It appeared to have as many platforms as letters in the alphabet. In fact, Tharash suggested it had too many platforms/buses, given how difficult it was to figure out which was the correct bus. The good news if you were anywhere else in the city was that like 98% of all transit passes through the bus/train hub by the Neckar River (which is a much smaller river here than in Heidelberg). But the bus station was really aesthetically pleasing, and they have little symbols to help you identify which bus you want, and scrolling boards saying how long until the next bus at every platform. I was also shocked when we actually got on the bus, because it had a ticket machine on the bus. Now that’s living in the future. (As of this writing, my hometown has FINALLY FOR THE LOVE OF FRIES rolled out a contactless payment system for fares, so my hometown is thinking about joining the 21st century as far as public transit is concerned. Now to turn one of those parking lots downtown into a proper bus station, and we might get somewhere.)

We were staying in Tübingen in a residence for university students that rented out their spaces like a hotel during the summer, and we were right across from the kitchen which was nice. The first thing we investigated was the matter of laundry; the residence had a laundry which was difficult to find, only took 4×50¢ coins, and appeared to be terribly finicky on actually running any loads judging by the instructions left in our room’s welcome packet. Now, I’d run out of clean clothes four days ago, so I desperately needed to do a load. But we could only scrape together 3×50¢ coins. But then we ran into one of the building admins, who helped us find the location of the laundry and kindly gave us a 50¢ coin so we could get started. So I put in the laundry while Tharash went dowwwwn the hill to the nearest grocery store to get some fresh food and more 50¢ coins. It was a very steep hill, I learned when we went together later, which is great going down but oh boy you’re going to build leg muscle going back up – especially with groceries.

Then I needed was a shower, and that was when I realized I’d forgotten my body wash in the bathroom in Heidelberg. I blame the creaky floorboards in our pension; if I hadn’t wanted to keep my noise to a minimum, I would have checked behind me better. So I had a little melt-down because I’d done really well so far of not forgetting things, but I’d had that bottle for ages and my parents gave it to me and now it was gone forever. I do get attached to stuff… and I hate making mistakes… It’s not a fancy bottle or anything. But it was really nice to have a shower and have clean clothes at least.

Then we went down to the river to have dinner with our friends who live in Tübingen – Khem and his wife Elena! We met Khem in FFXIV years ago and last met up with him in person in Berlin! They suggested eating at a really nice place called Neckarmüller, which is right on the river beside the bridge. I had spätzle and a rhubarb beer, and Tharash had maultaschen. The spätzle was huge – tons and tons of noodley cheese. And then I think we had a dessert flammkuchen? A Black Forest flammkuchen, so it had cherries and drizzled chocolate sauce. The restaurant is its own brewery, and you could look into the basement to see the machinery which was pretty cool.

Day 16

Today, the planned outing was to a monastery called Bebenhausen. We had some difficulty getting there; there was a bus that went straight there, but it was so late that its ETA dropped right off the signboard of the bus stop. And then I stupidly suggested we walk to the next bus stop, which is of course when it went by. I wish I wasn’t so confident about directions in places I don’t know. : P

Eventually we got there, after we figured out how to enter the grounds (we went in a back door and out a side door to get to the road that led to the front door? probably all of that was unnecessary but we were lost and exploring). While we’ve seen many religious buildings on this trip, this one had something new. For one thing, every piece of decor was unique; e.g. in the corridors surrounding the central courtyard, the ceiling vaulting patterns were different in each corridor. It also was the residence of the last king of Württemberg after being forced to abdicate in 1918. I think that would have been more interesting if I knew who he was. According to wikipedia, he died in 1921, but his wife Charlotte lived there until she died in 1946.

After seeing the monastery, we walked out of its grounds and out into the surrounding forest, which is a protected nature park. We got lost a couple times again. We saw some goats, talked about fiction, enjoyed the trees and streams. Eventually we had to climb a really steep hill, and at the top were fields. Also hunters’ look-out posts. On the other side of the fields was a place called Schloss Hohenentringen, and it had a small café and restaurant in it. It’s not a castle in the military sense, just a big old house with a tower and some walls. But it has an amazing view to the west. We just got some juice to rehydrate, and some bread to go with the juice.

Then we went down a very steep path to a pleasant little village to take the train there back to Tübingen. The train we were on wasn’t listed on the schedule somehow, but it was going in the right direction and stopped at the right place, so all was good. Back at our residence, we decided to make potato pancakes. Partly because Tharash thought that if we made potato pancakes ourselves, then we could spend time in the restaurants eating other local food. (It didn’t work, I had a potato pancake in a restaurant later.)

Day 17

A rest day omg. We really needed it. We slept in, then watched My Neighbour Totoro. And then we went downtown to explore the old town. And I was not actually aware of the weather forecast, which was for thundershowers so anyway we got about 50m into the city and it began raining buckets. We hid in the entryway of a wool shop until the worst of it passed and then kept walking.

I was trying to find the Rathaus (town hall) because Khem had given me a bag with a picture of it when we previously met, and for some reason I just couldn’t find it. We found the castle, up a steep slope that was a little scary after the rain. We found a nerd shop, with a statue outside that I called BDSM Spiderman because it was held together with duct tape and chained to a tree to prevent people from stealing it; we went inside the shop and found Mandalorian figurines and the Vox Machina Origins comic (I almost bought it, since it was in English, and then I was like “why tho, I can buy this at home and save luggage space”). I just walked in a big circle until I found a map that directed me almost back to where we started in order to find the Rathaus. Then we found it. Tharash thought it was very funny how bad I was at finding things. This follows on me always getting lost when I go somewhere new, always going the wrong direction in videogames, and just generally being bad at giving directions.

The nice part was all the rain gave us some lovely rainbows. We made wraps for dinner. I don’t remember what was in them because I’ve waited six months to write this and I didn’t include that detail in my notes. T_T

Tübingen – Schloss Lichtenstein