Year Abroad - Bye bye Heidelberg! Part 6

After an amazing four months spent living in the beautiful city of Heidelberg, studying at a world class university, I am finally coming to the end of my stay. As a round up of my time here I have compiled a list of my favourite things to do, some of which probably sound very random so do forgive me...

1. Going up to Königstuhl

If you haven't noticed by now I love going up to Königstuhl, which is a "mountain" in Heidelberg, with the Schloss at the bottom and an amazing view at the top. To get to the top you can either walk up (which Dad and I did when I first arrived), go up on the bus (which I did when Sam visited) or get the funicular railway (the fun way! unintentional pun...). Going up on the funicular is great because it's free with my student travel pass and even though it's sometimes terrifying in the rickety old carriage to the top, it's always worth it when the view appears. On a lovely clear day you can even see as far as the Pfalz mountains in the distance. Königstuhl is without a doubt my escape spot from the (not so bustling) city life of Heidelberg.

Heidelberg and Königstuhl

2. A slightly easier (because I have to do it everyday...) and less time consuming thing I love to do is looking at the Schloss when I go over the river on the bus to and from uni. On some days it will be glowing orange in the sun, other days surrounded by clouds, and sometimes you can't even see it at all! But my definite favourite was when there was a Christmas market up there because by night it would be lit up with rainbow colours and was really spectacular!

The Christmas market at the Schloss in December

3. Not all of my favourite activities are view related, I promise... Another favourite thing of mine to do is notice all the little things which make it completely obvious that I'm foreign. Whether it's turning up to a lesson with *shock horror* lined paper instead of squared, or recklessly going out in shoes with no socks, or whipping out my two phones when I'm in uni - one for texting and one for Wifi, of course... Whatever tiny thing it is which makes me temporarily stick out like a sore thumb, I just love noticing it! And when I do notice it I might even exaggerate it a bit - proud to be British and all that! (Having said that, I have only worn shoes without socks once since Christmas and my feet froze all day. Damn, I'm slowly turning to their ways!)

4. My favourite place in Heidelberg to eat isn't some swanky restaurant or even a cute little cafe, but the Marstall Mensa. A mensa is a sort of canteen, except in the Martsall they have a buffet where you pile up your plate with as much or as little as you like and then pay by the weight of your plate. With my student card I average about €2 a meal, and hot chocolate is always just €1, which is an absolute bargain! The Marstall used to be the stables to the Duke of the Palatinate (who lived at castle sometimes) and has apparently been voted the best student mensa in the state of Baden-Württemberg, which I can definitely believe! It has such a cool arch shaped roof which they light up at night, and frankly I spend waaaaay to much time in there.

Inside Marstall (from http://lifeatuni-heidelberg.blogspot.de/2011/05/martstall-mensa.html) 

5. My favourite Sunday night activity to do, after a weekend spent revising/doing the epic amounts of homework we get given here, is to go to the Marstall cafe and watch Tatort. Although to begin with it was pretty hard to understand what was going on (different crazy German accent every week!), I soon got the hang of following the plot of the traditional German detective program. Now, I was no stranger to Tatort before I came to Germany, but I didn't realise just how much of a thing it was here! On a Sunday night in Heidelberg loads of students cram into the Marstall cafe to watch the show on a big screen, and everyone will laugh, be surprised or be outraged at the same time - it's great fun and generally hilarious despite the fact they are generally grim topics! The one mistake we did make (which I wouldn't wish on anyone!) was going on a Polizeiruf 110 day... This is shown every 4 weeks and is an alternative detective program, but no where near as good as Tatort. Also the episode we saw had a really awkward topic... Ask me if you really want to know!

Opening credits (from https://www.hueber.de/seite/tan_lernen_lektionen_2_b_l11?menu=5443)

6. On a slightly different note, one of the great things you can do as a Brit living in a Euro country is pretending that the Euro is the same as the pound. So when you *eh hem* accidentally spend €50 on new clothes, you have that temporary "OH MY GOODNESS ALL OF MY MONEY IS GONE" moment, and then realise that actually you have "only" spent £40! It's so great, and always makes me feel so much better about my slightly excessive shopping habit here... But sorry German kids, it wont work the other way round if you come to Britain :(

7. Another view related, more recent favourite activity of mine is going up Philosophen Weg to the top of Heiligenberg. On the walk from the Old Bridge to the top of the berg you come across all sorts of random monuments and ruins, like the Bismarcksäule, Stephanskloster and Thingsstätte. As you trek your way up the hill the view of Heidelberg and the surrounding region just keeps getting more impressive, with the view from  Stephanskloster winning hands downl! On a clear day nothing beats wandering up to the top, with all the fallen crunchy leaves to play in walk through and winter sun shining through the trees.

Stephanskloster

8. Last but not least, one of the best things about living in Heidelberg, or in Germany in general, is that I get to speak German all of the time! I'm not saying I am fluent by any means (adjective endings anyone?!) but I think I can safely say I have actually improved in my German - if not my actual skills then my confidence to speak it anyway! I'm even at the stage where I can argue in German and watch films and even understand when they are talking really fast. For me this is the coolest thing ever, and I feel like it is proof that I have actually used my time here wisely to do the one thing I was supposed to do - learn German! (Ha lets not talk about the 3000 word year abroad essay...)

So there you go, those are all of the amazing things I love about being in Heidelberg, and I shall miss the beautiful city and all the amazing people I have met so much! But don't you worry Heidi, I shall be back!

Year Abroad - Heidelberg Part 5

Thingstätte and Munich!

After a quick 2 week stint at home for Christmas (which went way too fast!) I am back in Heidelberg for a short amount of time. My flights home are booked for the 10th of February, and although I am super stressed out with the abundance of exams and uni work, I will be really sad to leave! So I decided to make the most of my last few weeks here by squeezing in some last minute trips. You'll all be glad to know I finally went to the top of Heiligenberg to Thingstätte and visited Munich, both of which I have been dying to do for the last four months.

My first weekend back in Heidelberg consisted of me mainly sitting in my room with a cold feeling sorry for myself, wading through a pile of work I didn't do over Christmas and booking tickets to "pop" to Cardiff to visit Sam... On Sunday, having spent two and a half days wallowing, I decided to seize the opportunity of some sunny, but chilly, weather and go for a stroll. Somehow my stroll into the near by pretty suburb of Neuenheim turned into a hike to the top of Heiligenberg, a large hill (mountain in my eyes) opposite the castle. In the winter sun the walk was so pretty, and all the (incredibly chilly) fresh air did help me feel a little better. And I only got a tiny bit lost!

Up Heiligenberg

At the top of Heiligenberg, and quite hard to find if you don't know where you are going, is a huge amphitheatre, created during the National Socialist era for rallies and training the Hitler Youth, called Thingstätte. This all might sound incredibly depressing but it really is quite spectacular! It can hold 5000 people sitting or 8000 standing, so it's absolutely huge. On the walk to and from Thingstätte I only met a few people (made great friends with this German family who were also trying to find it...), so I was quite surprised when I went through the entrance to find loads of people lounging in the sun. Apparently there is a Heidelberg Uni tradition where everyone goes up to Thingstätte together at the end of exams, which I can imagine would be so cool, but sadly I'm not here in the summer for it!

Thingstätte

On my second weekend I went to Munich with Fi, something I have been meaning to do for soooooooo long! We only went for a short trip, Friday evening until Sunday evening, but we managed to get a surprising amount of things done in that time. Friday evening we found the nicest little Italian restaurant with the yummiest GF pizza I have ever tasted ever! The proof being that we went back again on Saturday evening... Sadly it was quite out in the suburbs so we did have to go on a little adventure to find it. Saturday morning we went on a (VERY) cold walking tour around the old city, which was actually really good despite the chilly weather! We went to all the main sights and into the Hofbräuhaus beer hall, where so many of Munich's historical events have taken place, which was really cool even at 11am!

Hofbräuhaus

After the walking tour we grabbed some lunch and explored some more of the city. We had a wander round the Viktualienmarkt, which still had remnants of it's Christmas market lurking around, and then took the hundreds and hundreds of stairs up to the top of Alter Peter, the tower of St. Peter's church. From the top of the tower you get an amazing view over the whole of Munich, including all the main sights - the Frauenkirche, the Neues Rathaus and Marienmarkt. Although it was a bit of a trek up all of the stairs it was definitely worth it for the view!

Frauenkirche and the Neues Rathaus

 The next thing on our list was, obviously, Dirndl shopping! If you don't know what a Dirndl is, it's basically a traditional German dress worn in Bavaria. Most people will only get their Dirndls/Lederhosen out for Oktoberfest, but in smaller towns and villages people even wear them to church on Sundays! Ever since my friends went to Oktoberfest in September last year, I have been incredibly jealous of their pretty Dirndls, and as it was January sales the time just seemed right to do a little Dirndl shopping of my own!

Yay Dirndl shopping!

On Sunday we got up early and headed out to do a speedy bit of touristing before visiting the nearby former concentration camp at Dachau. Although it was a really foggy day I was determined to see the Nymphenberg Palace whilst we were there, so we jumped on a tram to check it out. Because of the foggy weather, however, it was a bit of a game trying to find the place! I can imagine normally you can see it from the road where you get off the tram, but we had to get so close that we were standing right outside before we even realised it was there! It did make for some cool pictures though, and I would definitely go back again in the summer to see it in all it's glory :)

A very foggy Nympenberg Palace

From there we got on a train to Dachau. I wont write too much about it because I think it's really something you have to do and see for yourself, but it was definitely worth going. It didn't have the horrors of the remains at Auschwitz, but you still definitely got a feel for how horrifying it would have been to be detained there, just from the shear size of the place and the number of buildings that once stood there.

All in all a fun and very education weekend spent in Munich! Now all that's left to do are the summery things like the English Gardens, but I really just see that as an excuse to go back one day... ;)

Year Abroad - Heidelberg Part 4

Christmas in Deutschland

Christmas in Germany was everything I expected it to be: lots of amazing Christmas markets filled with Wurst and Glühwein, amazing advent calendars (a mini Rittersport chocolate behind every door - YES PLEASE!), lots of chilly weather and a teeny bit of snow!

At the beginning of December I spent a brilliant couple of days in beautiful Bayern (Bavaria), where I visited the town of Bayreuth, the city of Nuremberg and my Bristol bezzies!

Friday 6th December I got up at the crack of dawn - 8am - to jump on a bus to Nuremberg, before getting a train to Bayreuth, where my friend Rachel is living this term. As we were coming in to Nuremberg on the bus it started snowing, only a little bit, but enough for me to get very excited. Little did I realise just how snowy it would be Bayreuth! From Nuremberg I got a (very speedy) train to Bayreuth, an had my first experience of the crazy Bavarian lingo! To my unexpecting south-west-germanised (I'm sure that's a word...) ears, the kindly train conductor came over to check my ticket and greeted me with a surprising "GRÜß GOTT". Now don't get me wrong, I have been educated in the beautiful Bayerische ways (thanks Eva <3) but somehow I had completely forgotten about their version of "Guten Tag". I'm sure the train conductor must have thought I was some rude, ignorant foreigner for staring at him, before sorting myself out and handing him my ticket... Arriving in Bayreuth I was greeted by the lovely Rachel, who gave me a quick tour of the pretty, snowy town on the way to her WG (student flat). So many of the buildings are old and grand, making the town a really cool place to visit.

The school Rachel is working at in all it's grandeur

After a short stop off at Rachel's flat to warm up, we headed in to the centre of town to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) and Winterdorf (lots of really cool wooden huts joined together with amazing varieties Glühwein!). It was so pretty in the evening when it was all lit up, and literally every lamppost in Bayreuth had a Christmas tree attached to it!

Enjoying the Glühwein at Winterdorf

On the way to the station on Saturday we went the long way via the park to get in as much snow experience as we could. It pretty much doesn't snow in Heidelberg so I had to make the post of it while I could!

So much Schnee!

Sadly in my books, when it comes to making to "making the most of snow" this actually means doing a slightly dramatic slip up whilst zooming to the train station! So however much I love the snow, it's probably a good thing that we haven't had any in Heidelberg yet, or I'd have at least a broken wrist by now...

In Nuremberg we met up with Anna and Frankie (from Bristol) and had some typical Bavarian food for (I went for the Nuremberg sausages and potato salad) before walking up the hill to the castle for a view over the city. After a quick look at the view and taking some photos it was time to hit up the Christmas market. Now these was no easy task... Most of Germany (including 3 coach loads of exchange students from Heidelberg) had decided to descend upon the famed Christmas market in Nuremberg. Don't get me wrong, it was very pretty and had all the things you expect to buy in a Christmas market: chocolate covered fruit, Christmas decorations, gingerbread hearts etc. However to get to all these Christmassy goodies you had to fight through the crowds! It was a fun experience but I'd definitely like to go to Nuremberg again when the whole world isn't there too.

In Heidelberg the whole town has been taken over by the Weihnachtsmarkt! There is one in every available square and even at the castle, with endless Wurst, Glühwein and gingerbread hearts. I incidentally did get a loyalty card to one particular Glühwein stand... and yes I did fill it and claim my free one... oops. Every year for the whole of December Heidelberg is taken over by the sparkly excitement that is the Weihnachtsmarkt, making it one of the best places to do some Christmas shopping, but also making what is already a relatively small city extremely packed! You have to allow a good extra 10 minutes to get to lessons, so you can fight through the crowds of German, American and Asian tourists...

Christmas market in Heidelberg

For my final weekend in Heidelberg my family came to visit, so we did all the touristy things I have done with other people and added in some exciting new extras like the Studentenkarzer and a tour around the castle.

The Studentenkarzer (Student Prison)

As part of our touristing we went to the little town of Ladenburg, which was about 10 minutes from Heidelberg by train. This village is the epitome of German cuteness, and all the houses look like they have fallen out of a fairytale! The Christmas market was tiny compared to those in Nuremberg and Heidelberg, but that just made it even more lovable. We tested the Glühwein (it has to be done, everywhere) and went wandered around the tiny town centre before heading back to Heidelberg on the train. It may have been one of my favourite Christmas markets I have been to! And I've been to a fair few, if my Glühwein mug collection is anything to go by...

Ladenburg Christmas market

Basically this year I have discovered that one of the Christmassy places to be is Germany! There were definitely some things I missed (putting up the tree, listening to endless Christmas songs on the radio, having a fake Christmas with my friends) but for a general Christmas feel, endless gift ideas and a LOT of Glühwein and yummy foods, Germany really is the best place for it!

So watch out German friends, I will definitely back next year ;)

Year Abroad - Heidelberg Part 3

A blog from Königstuhl

This morning I had a Czech exam, so to recover from the stress of learning pointless vocab (úroda means crop, in case you ever need to know...) and turning up to my exam to realise I'd forgotten my Deutsch-English dictionary, the obvious thing for me to do was jump on the Bergbahn to Königstuhl - free with my Semesterticket. So here I am now, chilling (literally, it's freezing up here!) with a warming hot chocolate about to fill you in on all the latest year abroad antics.

The view from Königstuhl 

Last weekend was a killer. Two nights in a row spent in Halle02 (where we saw Klingande!) staying out until 4am led to a weekend of lying in bed ignoring all my homework, followed by a huge pizza and ice cream pig out on Saturday to help us recover. (Massive, yummy take-away gluten-free pizza for under 8 euros? Yes please!). Sunday we were finally feeling a little better so jumped on an S-Bahn to Mannheim to see our local handball team play, the Rhein-Neckar Löwen.

Scoring their first goal!

If you've never seen a handball game then go!! They are so fun, with very attractive players (Uwe! <3) doing all sorts of crazy high-leg kick stunts, lots of goals and shouting!

I think we were probably the rowdiest there (aside from the keen-bean grannies in front of us who kept up a chant of "LÖWEN" *clapclapclap*) joining in with all the chanting and getting way too excited at each of the 32 goals! We came out on a handball high from all the excitement - to sum up the Rhein-Neckar Löwen do gefallen uns!

This last week has been a bit more relaxed, with a weekend of touristing with Rachel (who travelled for so long to see me!) and curry and roast... Rachel and I did all the standard tourist things Heidelberg has to offer, but also took a trip up Philosophen Weg, which I hadn't done before. It was well worth a visit, providing a spectacular view over Heidelberg and the castle, and has all sort of historical monuments along the walk - although we only managed to make it to Bismarcksäule before we decided it was getting too dark and headed back. You can read in detail about our touristing adventures in Rachel's blog here.

Heidelberg from Philosophen Weg

One thing which has become a regular occurrence over the last few weeks is trying to explain very British things to German people (and Alex J. suggested I blogged about it ;) ). A few examples have been trying to explain GCSE/A-levels, yorkshire puddings and food babies (which they loved and found hilarious!). And on top of that, the look you get when you add milk to your English tea along with "...Are you having milk with it?" is priceless. You become so used to something in your own country that you don't realise how weird it is until you try and explain it to someone else. So we have to make life changing decisions over what subjects to do, therefore whether we will go to uni, and then which career we want, at the age of 14. We then have to study 12 of them (a huuuuuuge number when you think about it!) for 2 years before randomly dropping a load of them to leave you with just 4. Um, what? Clearly teachers in Britain are very trusting of their teenage pupils in deciding their career path so young.

The beauty of a well made Yorkshire pudding

Then we eat a pastry covered/filled with sauce (gravy <3) with our roast dinner which is essentially a slightly smaller Christmas dinner, but we eat it every Sunday, sometimes even for lunch. And no it's not sweet, it's savoury. Oh and when you're making your first roast in Germany, go and bake a hilarious GF one which looks nothing like a Yorkshire pudding to confuse them even more! (Sorry Lukas, this is what they really look like...)

Finally making the classic English-person-abroad mistake of translating food-baby literally, so that they actually think you're pregnant (also do not translate "I am full" to "Ich bin voll", ditto "I am cold" to "Ich bin kalt" - it can lead to awkward misconceptions...) and you then have to backtrack crazily and explain that you only look pregnant because you ate 2 roast dinners and half a crumble... phew.

Next weekend I shall be jumping on a plane (Lufthansa no less - thank you Erasmus grant!) and heading home for a weekend, so will natürlich pick up some squash (you never EVER drink it straight) and mince pies (filled with fruit and not meat...), to blow their minds just a little bit more with our mad English ways.

Anyway I now can't feel my hands so I think it's time I got the rickety Bergbahn back down the mountain and headed home to the warmth of a cup of tea.

Bis bald xxx

Year Abroad - Heidelberg Part 2

So now I have finally settled in to my life at Heidelberg - this week I even managed to make it to all of my lessons! A few of the things I have done over the last couple of weeks :

- started lessons, eek!
-  have sort of figured out the system here and where everything is..
- got up at 7am to do a washing. Ah uni halls I didn't miss you.
- Fi came to stay!
- we stayed out until 4am (Fi fell asleep on the dance floor)
- did all the tourist things with Fi again: Schloss, Königstuhl, Altstadt etc
- went to the ZOO!!! (which is on my uni campus - so cool)
- went on a trip to Freiburg and the Schwarzwald (Black Forest)
- Sam came to visit
- did all the touristy things again!
- went to Frankfurt and did touristy things there
- finally made it to a whole weeks worth of lessons!
- borrowed a bike off of Melli (my flatmate) and accidentally went on a 17km bike ride

After much organisation and confusion I finally sorted out my timetable and what I am actually going to study in Heidelberg (just in time to send a form home and get my Erasmus grant - yippea!). I decided on: Czech, New High German, History of the English language, Introduction to German politics, Germany in Europe and Translation into English. So far they have all been OK and easy to understand (especially the English ones tehe) but the Germany in Europe generally consists of me sitting there being lost/confused and asking my friend what's going on.... hopefully I'll get the hang of it soon.

After a week of being confused and stressed my Zwillingschwester (Fi) came to visit and we did all the fab tourist things Heidelberg has to offer. Including 2 visits to the cake shop, amazing chocolate from the chocolate shop and a very large dinner in the Mensa... Sunny Saturday afternoon was dedicated to a visit to Heidelberg Zoo, which is about a 5 minute walk across campus from my halls. As it's only €6 entry for students it was definitely worth visiting, and so much fun seeing all the cute animals - baby meerkats!!!! We also luckily managed to time walking past the seals to see the seal show, which was fab! They could balance a ball or a tray on their noses and one of them clapped after the other seals had finished! So to sum up, I love the zoo and will definitely be going back...

Getting drenched at the open air museum

Sunday was another excursion day, with a trip to an open air museum in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) and to the city of Freiburg. Now, I know we are English so should be able to deal with the vast quantities of rain which descended upon Baden-Wüttemberg that day, but we really couldn't at all and got absolutely soaked! The museum had traditional houses from the Black Forest, with old stoves and cattle sheds and tiny huts for baking bread and brewing beer. Some of the houses were so dark and smelt so strongly of smoke, so it was pretty surprising that people had lived in these places up until the 1920s. They also showed us some typical Schwarzwalde Tracht, which is the Black Forest equivalent to Dirndls and Lederhosen. Basically the men wore suits and the women wore nice dresses but with these weird hats covered in pompoms or huge hats covered in glass gems. Personally I think I prefer the Bavarian style but I wont say that too loudly... 

After the open air museum we drove through the Black Forest to the city of Freiburg. Freiburg has an old town very similar to Heidelberg, and is very pretty in places with the little canal running through it. Sadly the centre was bombed a lot during the war so has been replaced by lots of slightly less attractive buildings... When we arrived in Freiburg we were dropped off and told to go and find some lunch before meeting back for the walking tour. After checking out some restaurants on the main square and realising just how extortionately expensive they were, we decided the best bet would be to go off the beaten track a bit. Eventually we found a moderately priced restaurant which offered Bratwurst (which was all we wanted....) so we thought we'd try it out. Unfortunately the entire restaurant experience went from bad to worse! On the way in I managed to fall down some concrete steps, bruising my arm pretty badly, then we sat down and ordered our food which turned out to be completely not what we were expecting - Tilly and I ordered Wurstsalat, which we assumed would be hot Wurst with salad... how wrong we were! Google it, it's gross. So we finished our plate of shredded cold Wurst and decided to pay, which consisted of the waiter throwing the receipt in Alex's face and shouting at us to just give him the money and we could sort it out among ourselves later! Needless to say we didn't tip... 

Don't worry guys, I just had ice cream... 

After a slightly more brief than expected walking tour - the cathedral was closed... - we went on a hunt to found ourselves some Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte - Black Forest Gateau. You may think you have tried this already in the UK and that it can't possibly be any different, but it was HUGE. A slice could feed a small family easily, and the amount of Kirsch schnapps they put in it could make a small person a little tipsy. It does look amazing though with all that cream and chocolate, I definitely need to try and come up with a GF version!

A week of hard core German uni work and lessons followed, before Sam arrived on the Thursday night :)

(Sam's photo) at the top of Königstuhl

Despite the fact I had been up there twice already, we decided to do the Schloss on Friday, but this time we walked up instead of going with the funicular, which was a really nice way to do it as you get to slowly see more and more of Heidelberg as you go up. Saturday we did the long bus trip up to Königstuhl (Sam slept the whole way) and had a picnic at the top looking out over the view, which was a fab idea because then you really get to take everything in! It was such a sunny day that we could even see the Pfalz forest and mountains in the distance, so it was a pretty spectacular view. 

This picture lies about the weather... it rained a LOT

On Sunday Sam was flying back to the UK (booo) from Frankfurt so we decided to make the day into a tourist trip around the city. Not really knowing how much Frankfurt had to offer in terms of touristing, we arrived there at about 11am, with Sam's train to the airport leaving at 3:30pm. Fi was our tour guide for the day, so we started our tour with a slight (45 min - sorry Fi ;) ) detour around a random suburb of Frankfurt before arriving in a pretty old bit called Sandhausen. We then zipped up to the main square for some Currywurst mit Pommes and to admire the old looking buildings - think chocolate box and you'll have the image right there. Other sights we visited in Frankfurt were: the Dom (cathedral), the Zeil (a big shopping centre with the longest escalator in the world!), the old opera house and Goethe's House (every city has to have one ;) ). The only problem was that the Frankfurt marathon was on, so it took us aaaaaaaages to cross any road because of all the running people!

So at 3:30 I said bye to Sam, watched a film and ate my weight in biccies with Fi, and then bussed back to Heidelberg (an hour late, thanks Mr Bus).

Finally this week! I'm sure you'll all be very glad to know that I actually made it to all my lessons successfully this week!! Yippea! Sadly it now means I can no longer use the "ohhh but I'm an Erasmus student" excuse, which had been so handy up until now...

My last adventure of the last couple of weeks was on Thursday. My flatmate Melli kindly lent me her bike for the weekend as she was at home and I was craving going cycling because EVERYONE in Heidelberg cycles and I was getting jealous... So I got back from my lesson on Thursday, had my lunch and had planned to go swimming which went out the window, so instead I thought I'd go for a little bike ride, maybe to the old town. 3 1/2 hours later I finally arrived back at the flat having (accidentally) cycled 17km to a cute little village called Neckargemund. It was so sunny and there were very beautiful views on the way, but I hadn't realised just how far away it was! Walking the next day wasn't exactly einfach... but it was worth it for the views of the river and mountains in the sun.

Neckargemund :)

Now you are completely up to date on my life from the last couple of weeks!

I shall update again soon when more has happened :)

Bis bald!

Year Abroad - Heidelberg Part 1

A summary of what I have done so far:

- spent 2 days in a car travelling through 5 countries
- enrolled at the uni
- moved into German halls
- explored Heidelberg
- hiked to Königstuhl
- attended Orientation week (which was awful!)
- met lots of lovely (mainly English) people
- found out Heidelberg does actually have nightlife
- experienced a wine festival and parade!
- spoke German. A bit.
- made it through my first day of lessons, but not the 2nd

So on Tuesday 1st October, after months and months of planning, Dad and I finally left good old Hampshire for our 2 day road trip to Heidelberg, Germany. After only a couple of minor glitches (some spilled coffee and ending up in the disabled lane) we made it to Maastricht in the Netherlands, via France and Belgium.

Evening sun in Maastricht

Sesselbahn

In Maastricht we had a quick look around the tourist sights, grabbed some dinner - Dad had the regional dish "Zoervleis" - and headed back to the hotel to rest before another whole day of driving!

Eating lunch looking at the Rhine Valley

After and couple of hours of driving the next day we arrived in the beautiful town of Boppard, in the Rhine valley. Feeling adventurous we decided to go up the Sesselbahn (chair lift) to the top of a hill overlooking Boppard and the "Bendiest bend on the Rhine". The view was spectacular, and we ate lunch (Wurst - what else?!) sitting right on the edge taking it all in. From Boppard it was only an hour and a half to our final destination, Heidelberg. Coming in to Heidelberg by car doesn't allow for the best first impressions: you have to drivethrough the industrial town of Mannheim and the suburb of Eppelheim. When you finally reach the town, however, with the view of the rolling hills, the river Neckar and the Shloss nestled in the mountain, you realise just how impressive Heidelberg really is.

Heidelberg's Altstadt 

We spent the next day doing all the tourist things Heidelberg has to offer: exploring the old town, going ton the funicular up to the castle and hiking up the Burg to Königstuhl. Although it was very cold, the sun was shining, turning Heidelberg's Altstadt into to some sort of fairytale town.

Heidelberger Schloss

Friday was a day of stress, und ich habe viel deutsch gesprochen. I had to collect my key for halls, eroll at the uni, make an appointment at the bank and attempt to sort out my phone. All was going swimmingly (aside from finding out my phone is very much locked to England) until we went to check out my room and flat. My flatmates have already lived there for 2 years so when we first walked in it felt like I had just broken in to someone's home! Then it turned out that they had given me the wrong key so I could only get in to my flatmate's room. I finally got it all sorted with my own room and key and successfully moved in all my things on Sunday.
After Dad left I had a slight panic but luckily some English girls decided to go for coffee, so I tagged along and found out how much of a life saver it is to have people in the same situation as you!

The following week was full of talks on enrolling, getting accommodation, and generally lots of things we had all already done! The end of the week was a little better - we went to a ganz cheesy club after not getting in to a seemingly empty bar because there were "too many of us".

On Saturday we spent most of the day in Ikea and H&M buying all the random things we needed (or didn't need) for our rooms.

Pfalz Forest

Sunday was trip day, so cue a very early start to get on a coach and travel to the Pfalz forest. We climbed up to the top of a hill with an amazing view over the mountains and forest, and had a tour around a castle which had once imprisoned Richard the Lionheart (for a whole 3 weeks!).

Gluhwein!

After jumping back on to our coach, we drove through the wine region, along the Weinstraße to the town of Neustadt an der Weinstraße. Here they had a wine festival (picture a beer festival but with wine) and we had a cup of Gluhwein to warm us up - although we were the only ones, all the hardcore Germans were drinking pints of wine! At 2pm the longest parade ever (or so it seemed) started, and for an hour we were entertained by the random floats, old men on bikes, and endless marching bands.

We gave up after float number 50 (of 120!!!) and went back to the festival for more Gluhwein. The day endedd with a tour around a vineyard (by an old man with a very strong accent) and a wine tasting. All in all a fab weekend!

So now it's Tuesday and I have survived a French lesson (ish) and a lecture in English, and attempted to attend two lectures which don't start until next week! Hence a very long day sat drinking Kakao in the Mensa!

I shall report back with more reports of my deutsch adventure soon :) Bis bald xxx

Rome in 3 days

How to do Rome in 3 days:

Day 1 - Arrive in Rome, jump on a bus to the main station, find your Hotel down one of the many many side streets in 30 degree heat and get exploring! 

We started off with a wander into the centre of the town for dinner with some sights on the way: 

- the Piazza della Republica 

- San Carlo Quattro Fonanta

- Quirinale

- Fontane Trevi

and Tempio Adriano

Piazza della Republica

Once in the centre of the city, in among all the tiny alleyways, we decided to try and find some dinner. In Rome, as with many other European cities, as soon as you look mildly interested in eating in a restaurant, you will get absolutely bombarded with menus and people trying to sit you down. As I was looking for somewhere offering gluten free food, (in Italy - Ha!) it worked as a pretty good deterrent to get rid of all the restaurant people! It went something like this:
Them: "Ahhh table for two?!" (Imagine the Italian accent and menus being shoved in your face)
Us: "Gluten free?"
Them: "Err no sorry!"
And then they'd move on. Sweet!

The only problem was, as soon as someone said "Yes we do have GF" I got so excited that we just had to eat there! Luckily it was a nice restaurant and I had some lush GF carbonara :D

Fontana di Trevi

Day 2 - Grab yourself a cheap cappuccino and croissant (or just a cappuccino if you're me!), head to the station to attempt to buy your next train ticket and fail, and then head out to see some more sights!
- Santa Maria Maggiore
- St. Pietro in Vincoli
- Colosseum
- Arco di Constantino
- Palatino/Roman Forum

Tiny piece of advice if you are thinking of visiting the Colosseum, Palatino and Roman Forum - book a ticket for all of them in advance! We joined a short queue, which lasted about 10-20 minutes and watched all the poor innocent people queueing for hours and hours who hadn't booked a ticket.

Visiting the ruins was definitely worth it. All the things you learned about in primary school about the Romans suddenly comes to life and you can picture exactly how they would have spent their lives.
Two slightly embarrassing tourist errors we made whilst visiting the Palatino and Roman Forum. Whilst we were walking around the old Palatino on the top of the hill, with a view of most of Rome, I saw a "big ruined building" through some trees and made the mistake of asking what it was... turns out it was the Colosseum. Akward.
Another mistake was searching for ages for the Roman Forum, following signs which were taking us back on ourselves and places we'd been before. After a good half and hour (possibly an hour...) we realised that all that time we had been standing in the Roman Forum. Oops.

In amongst our extreme touristing we managed to fit in some real Italian gelato (very overpriced but YUM!) to keep us refreshed and to stave off hungry. On the way back to the hotel we went via:
- the courtyard of Campideglio
- Ara Coeli steps
- Monumento a Victoria Emanuele

I'd highly recommend trekking up the millions of steps of the Ara Coeli because the view you get of Rome at the top can't really be beaten!

Hiking the steps of the Ara Coeli

Roma

Day 3 - Book your Vatican tickets in advance, queue for 10 minutes instead of 4 hours, and some culture!

One of the hottest days so far! We headed over to the Vatican City for some pretty intense culture. Although it was really cool to have a look round, it was mostly a massive art museum... so it didn't take all that long for Sam and I to get a bit bored of looking at vases and paintings by people we had never heard of! The Sistine Chapel was very cool though, with the guards violently shushing every 20 minutes or so!
Now I wont lie to you, we definitely thought that St Peter's Square and Basilica were part of the Vatican City, as in included in your ticket. How wrong we were! At the end of the walk through the Museums we were a bit disappointed - the square is what we came to see really, aside from the Sistine Chapel. In case anyone else ends up confused like we did, you actually have to walk around the City walls in order to get to the square, but it's so cool!

St Peter's Square and Basilica

After the Vatican we decided to walk back to our hotel across Rome, catching some more sights on the way. We grabbed some (very expensive) lunch and followed the river towards the Palace, stopping to look at a little riverside market and pick up some pretty paintings of Rome to take with us. After another sneaky gelato stop to keep us going (coconut ice cream = best thing ever) we visited the Pantheon, which mysteriously has a huge circular hole in the roof.

By this point I was exhausted and had a headache so we visited our last sight of the day, the Spanish Steps (which we just sat on because we were too tired to climb them!). We decided to take the lazy option and get the metro back to our hostel for the last night of our Rome experience. 

Spanish steps