Being Epic

The past few days have been really great. Another CBYXer (Xinyi, the American friend from “Headin’ North” that I already did lots of epic things with) had some school-free days, so she visited me and we packed our days with epic-ness and train rides. Our adventures began on Thursday, when we went to Heidelberg. (To all those Heidelbergers: Yes, I went without saying anything. Please don’t send hate mail or kill me. I promise I won’t do it again. Thanks.) … (If it makes it any better, I’ll go back in June. You have been forewarned.) It was really weird to go back to the area I lived in for the majority of my exchange; it was almost as if I had never left. It brought up some mixed feelings, but that soon went away as we enjoyed ourselves walking along the Neckar River to the Alte Brücke. From there we saw the Heilige Geist Kirche, then took the Bergbahn up to the castle. Cool stuff and beautiful views. Even though I have been to Heidelberg before, I really enjoyed the beauty of the place. Definitely one of the prettiest cities I have been to. I knew of Xinyi’s minor major Christmas obsession, so we naturally went to the Käthe Wohlfahrt store, which sells Christmas stuff all year round. It was a great day and it made me happy to see it all again. (If you’re still mad at me, maybe it helps to know that we were in that Christmas store for almost 2 hours, and were in Heidelberg before anyone would reasonably want to wake up on a holiday). Also on Thursday we went to the Frühlingsfest in Stuttgart with my host sister. It was basically a carnival/fair with rides and such, as well as lots of food, beer, and people running around in Dirndls and Lederhosen. It was highly amusing, and I got a chocolate covered apple, which instantly makes everything better.

On Friday we went to Strasbourg, which is actually FRANCE, directly on the border with Germany. Parlez-vous français? Me neither. Which made everything extremely difficult. Because the French are very proud of their language, which means that everything is in French, with no other options. So we had to figure out how to get to the city center, without a map, mind you. Because really, who wants to buy a map for 1 Euro?! … We figured it out. It took some wandering around and asking, but we eventually found the cathedral, which was rather cool. It reminded me a lot of the one in Köln. We admitted defeat and bought a map at that point, and ate at a café to make a game-plan. So we went into the cathedral, which had really nice stain glass windows. Then we got ice cream. Then climbed to the top of the cathedral to burn the calories we just ate. And burn it did. In my legs, specifically. But the climb up the 300+ stairs (the kid behind me was counting) was well worth it, because the view was amazing. Very, very amazing. We did a little “culture/environment-soaking-in” by stopping to listen to a random group of singers outside of the cathedral, and then some street musicians (at which point I thought “oh-my-goodness-I-am-SO-in-France”, even though that happens in Germany too). We walked along a river to the Petite France section of the city. Honestly, I’m not sure of the significance of that area; I just know it had some really cute houses and streets that reminded me of Quedlinburg. A little more wandering around ensued, just to soak it all in. Strasbourg reminded me of Vienna a lot, but Vienna was more ornate, and Strasbourg had more of a French/German-town feeling. I’m definitely glad we went there, it was really nice (and now I get to say I’ve been to France).

On Saturday we went to Triberg, which is a little town in the Schwarzwald, but gets a lot of tourist attention because it has Germany’s highest waterfall. Getting there didn’t require very much walking, which surprised me. It was well worth it, the waterfall was lovely, as well as the forest surrounding it. Back in the center of Triberg, we looked at cuckoo clocks (because while you’re in the Schwarzwald, you HAVE to do that), and a nice old man complimented my German skills and explained how the clocks work. It was rather fascinating. Afterwards, we got onto the train again to go to Freiburg. The train ride was beautiful because we got to see some of the Schwarzwald and some of the traditional style houses/farms there. We weren’t able to stay in Freiburg too long, but we saw most of the important stuff. I was very impressed with the cathedral there, mainly because they seemed to have really made an effort to make it look like it had when it was first built. There was minimal electric lighting, and in some areas there was still paint on the walls (I don’t know if it was original or renovated, it was rather faded so it was hard to tell). We saw a really interesting aerial picture that was taken from a bomber plane in WWII, which showed that all the buildings around the cathedral were practically leveled, but the cathedral wasn’t damaged at all. Also famous to Freiburg are the Bächle, which are small canals that run through the streets and provided water and helped fight fires in the early history of Freiburg (you did NOT use it as a toilet). We saw some kids playing with toy boats in them, and I nearly died from the cuteness. So even though we weren’t there very long, it was definitely worth it to go. Plus we got ice cream, which is always worth it.

 

 

On Sunday we went to see the Neuschwanstein Castle. Yeah, that one. The really famous one that everyone associates with Disney. Up until Sunday, we had had no problems with the trains. I knew our luck wouldn’t last. We had 4 minutes to get to our next train, and naturally the train we were on had a SIX MINUTE delay. And naturally the next train to Füssen was in an hour. So we entertained ourselves with vending machine food, 20 Questions, and reading. The train ride was great because the countryside was soooooo gorgeous. That day was the coldest day yet, especially because it was up in the mountains, and it was rainy, and we ended up having to pay for our bus tickets (we thought our train ticket covered it), and we were an hour later than we wanted to be. But. It. Was. AWESOME. Visiting Neuschwanstein should be a mandate for every person on this planet in order to continue existing. If anyone ever dares try to destroy anything within a 1000 mile radius of Neuschwanstein, I shall have to become most severe. We got our tickets and time slot, walked up to the castle, and took a bazillion pictures. There’s a bridge at a higher point on the mountain than the castle where you can get a GORGEOUS view of the castle and countryside. Despite the cold wind, we stayed up there and took a bunch of pictures for awhile. Inside the castle was rather cool, it’s a shame it wasn’t finished (due to King Ludwig II dying). Getting back to Füssen was harder than we thought, because not many buses were running… So that caused us to miss the train we wanted, and we had to take one 30 minutes later. That 30 minutes resulted in us arriving in Stuttgart around 11:30pm, rather than 9pm. Oh wells. But while we were waiting we saw a rainbow!!! Two rainbows, in fact. The bottom one was the most clear I have ever seen. It just seemed to fit so perfectly after having just seen the castle the spawned the epitome of all fantasy castles.

 

 

 

Monday we just went around Stuttgart. We had planned to go to a museum, but we discovered they are all closed on Mondays. Ooops. So we were mainly in the city center, just looking at stuff until Xinyi had to leave. Overall, it was GREAT to have her come and do fun stuff together. I’m so glad we got to see all the places we did, it was really EPIC!! :)