Heidelberg and Stuttgart

The day after Stadtallendorf, I worked in the morning and then headed to catch a train to Heidelberg to celebrate the birthday of dear friend and fellow Fulbrighter Elisa. I should explain a bit about the Marburg semester ticket.

The semester ticket is given to all students who register. The student union in Marburg negotiates with the regional transportation to secure a special transit pass for students that covers travel on regional trains in the area surrounding the university. The union in Marburg is particularly good at this task and even negotiated with Deutsche Bahn to grant us access fast Intercity trains that travel across country. Thus, we the 100 Euro semester ticket, I can travel on any train that travels through Marburg to the stop right outside Hessen. This means that the normally 30 Euro train right from Marburg to Heidelberg is now free, as long as I stink to Intercity trains. Its a beautiful thing. On this particular trip, I felt inspired to write the previous blog entry about the joys of train travel.

I arrived in Heidelberg around 3pm in the afternoon, bearing only my backpack for the overnight travel. The birthday girl was MIA, so I found a park bench along the Neckar River and settled down for a nap. (another thing I love about Europe, I feel safe enough to fall asleep on a park bench). Eventually the birthday girl was found and we set out to make food for the Mexican themed feast. While cooking several other Fulbrighters from around Germany arrived (all a pleasant surpise for the birthday girl) and secured a cooler to transport the now freshly prepared food to the river bank. After singing happy birthday by candlelight, we watched a procession of men and women carrying torches down the river. We never figured out why they did it.




After dinner, we all cleaned up and I retired to Elisa's place to camp out for the night. I woke up early the next morning and hopped on an early train towards Stuttgart. I just happened to board the same train as another Fulbright so we ended up chatting during the hour long trip. (Can you imagine this happening if we all drove cars to the party?) I hopped off at Stuttgart while he traveled on to Munich. Once in Stuttgart, I took use of the train locker system (great system that needs to be replicated at US train stations) and set off exploring Stuttgart. I first found a lovely park just outside the train station.



After getting lost a few times and learning to navigate the tram system, I eventually found my way to the Mercedes Benz Museum, a modern glass sculpture on the outskirts of town.
This museum was a must-see considering that even the busses in Germany are Mercedes Benz. The museum is extremely interactive and shows the history of the company from the birth of the first car to the most modern version of the Mercedes Benz Class 5.
On your self-guided tour, you see all types of vehicles that the company has ever made (including their ambulances and speciality cars).









At one point, the museum even let you try out the massaging seat chair available in class Mercedes Benz class 3 or higher cars. (I tried this out of course.)

After exploring the museum, I met up with Elisa and Kim at the Stuttgart FruhlingsFest (or Spring festival). I at first thought it would be this dinky little festival filled with beer and schnitzel, but it turns out that the festival was a HUGE fair type event, filled with high flying swings (we rode them), roller coasters named after the alps, games (played them), and of course multiple beer gardens with live music and people dressed in dirndls and Lederhosen.


Even the little kiddie rides were authentically German with kids riding miniature ICE trains.

The feeling of the festival was one of great fun and joy. I honestly can not remember having so much fun at an American style fair since I was 10, but I guess the fact that every thing seemed new and different made me feel like a kid again.

After spending a few hours at the festival and realizing that none of us had brought more than 15 Euros each to spend at the festival we decided to take off towards the city. Since Stuttgart was a major manufacturing hub during World War II, the town was heavily bombed and thus had to be completely rebuilt. The "old town" consists of a few churches that were rebuilt after the war and some pedestrian only streets of rebuilt fachwerk houses.

However, it was still a nice town to explore. Its one of the few big cities that I would actually enjoy living in. I would love to visit it again, especially when I found out later that my dad's family lived in Esslingen in the 1200s. Esslingen is less than a 10 minute train ride from Stuttgart.



Thus this place definitely merits another visit, just probably not this summer.

Wetzlar, Goethe once hated this town

Back in late April (easter weekend to be exact), my friend Johannes and I decided to make the best of our semester tickets and travel to obscure places in Hessen (that's the region of Germany I live in). The list of cities to visit started out rather small. Hessen is not exactly known for its tourist sites. The city of Frankfurt merits only 10 pages in my lonely planet guidebook while Berlin merits close to 60 pages. Marburg gets 1 page. Thus we didn't really know where to go. One of the other Fulbrights in Marburg(link) mentioned a town with free night vision goggles. The idea sounded interesting so the Saturday before Easter, Johannes and I piled onto a train and headed to Wetzlar.

The town of Wetzlar is little over 1 hour from Marburg by train. After transferring in Giessen (a town much larger than Marburg that does not merit a single mention in my guidebook) we arrived in a rather sad looking town. This trip did not seem promising at first as we stepped off the train into a American style indoor mall, complete with German interpretations of the easter story (hope to find the pictures soon). However, we soon found signs directly us to the old town, so we took off across an old bridge and ended up in the Altstadt of typical German fachwerk houses.

We traveled up into the hill to find the Wetzlar Dom/Kirche. A catholic and a protestant church in one. The mismatch of services corresponded quite well to the mismatched architectural styles of the building. In the photo below you see styles reminiscent of the middle ages, gothic, and romanesque.

Interestingly, unlike many churches in Germany, this one was not bombed in World War II, it just grew to look like this. The effect was not quite ugly but not quite beautiful either. I would call it interesting.

After exploring the innards of the church (pretty boring so no photos), J and I headed back into the fachwerk houses of the Altstadt. One house in particular carried a plaque that merited further investigation.

Goethe once lived here. We decided to commemorate this occasion by enjoying a beer, which led me to try this interesting Magic drink

The drink may not have been magic, but carried enough sustenance in it to keep me going for another few hours. Its the difference between American and German attitudes towards beer. Americans view beer as a way to get drunk, but Germans view it as a way to refresh the body with vital nutrients and minerals. The german beers are generally much darker than their American counterparts and thus provide you with the stamina to continue a hike.

After refreshments, we headed out to explore more of the city and came across this tower on the edge of town.


A sign on the tower said that it used to be a guard tower. Now its attached to a rather modern apartment complex. The other side of the tower is a lovely park, which was just starting to bloom.


As we walked through town, we saw lots of pieces of old town fortifications and even a few more fachwerk houses, but our goal was some castle ruins on top of a hill overlooking the city. After a few wrong turns and detour through an old factory, we finally stormed the castle.



I have found that castle ruins are much cooler to explore than fully restored castles so J and I spent about an hour just walking through the former courtyards and guard rooms. The largest remaining part of the castle was the guard tower, which even had a staircase for us to climb.


Once reaching the top, we saw this lovely view of south Hessen.

You can see the Wetzlar kirche/Dom in the middle of the photo. We then decided to head back into town to find some food. We hit the jackpot when we discovered a newly opened beer garden in the middle of town selling fresh wurst and ebelwoi. Now before people start calling me a drunkard, you have to understand that German beer gardens are places for family, not for getting drunk. People gather around large tables and reminisce while the kids play around the table. The gardens are typically surrounded by plants (hence the garden) and are great places to just relax and chat. This particular garden was located on the banks of the river Lahn (the same one that flows through Marburg) and featured a great view of the 500 year old Wetzlar bridge.


We enjoyed a bit of wurst and brotchen while probsting to the recently minted PhD friend of mine in the US. (Here's to you Bryce!)


We still had about 45 minutes to kill before the next fast train to Marburg, so we enjoyed a bit of the musical water fountain before heading back into town. (listen very carefully and see if you can figure out the song...here's a hint...Jingle bells, jingle bells....)



We eventually found the famous "night vision goggles" which proved to be quite useless in the daylight. We also found many other interesting novelties such as a spinning tunnel that was supposed to distort your mind and a series of giant bubbles that you were supposed to shine lights on. My friend J realized that the town was home to a major German optics manufacturer. The company apparently donated all the weird optical equipment.

We caught the train and headed back into town. I can now say that I have been to a random German city and explored the games of the local employer. In reference to the title of this entry. Goethe, the German writer, once lived here but hated it, not exactly the best selling point for a city.

Hopefully I will find more time to write about the other random cities that J and I visited, including a WW2 munitions factory town (big highlight for me).

Until then, here's the link for the complete photo album of Wetzlar.

Wetzlar

Train hopping to Berlin

On Sunday, I introduced Lala to the joys of German train travel and the Happy Weekend ticket. With the happy weekend ticket up to 5 people can travel to any destination in Germany for only 37 Euros ($45). The catch is that you can only use regional trains. On weekends the regional trains only tend to run about once and hour so you have to plan your travels pretty carefully. Since Lala was on a tight budget, we decided to travel to Berlin using just regional trains, which meant that the normally 4 hour journey would take 7-8 hours. In addition, we planned to make a stop at an important Protestant city along the way (stay tuned for more details).

No fear, we just loaded up our groceries from the the night before into my travel bag and hopped on the first regional train out of Marburg (7:30am...not bad for a lazy bum computational chemist and a jet-lagged American). Because we knew we were train hopping, Lala and I kept everything in our backpacks and didn't carry any big suitcases. Thus we could also run to catch trains if we were running late, which happened several times.

At our first stop, Kassel, we encountered our first hiccup. I had forgotten to print out the schedule, so out of habit, I just assumed that we had to transfer trains at the major Kassel trainstation, Kassel Wilhelmshofe. However, it turns out we were actually supposed to switch trains at Kassel Main train station (which because of the newer station called Wilhelmshofe, is no longer the major train station, weird). But no fear, we had 30 minutes before the next connection so we just hopped another train to the correct station. We even had enough time to grab coffee at a local vendor. We then settled down 5 more hours of train travel, which took us deep into the heart of the former East Germany. The German government has spent a lot of money restoring East German town so it was rather difficult to tell the difference between East and West Germany. Some of the train stops looked a little sketchier than normal Hessen train stops, but that was the only difference we could see. In one train station, we saw 8 heavily armed policemen patrol the station but we never figured out why. Nonetheless, after 5 hours of regional trains, we arrived safely at our Protestant history stop for the trip, Lutherstadt Wittenburg.



For those of you not familiar with Protestant history, Wittenburg is where Martin Luther first posted his 93 theses against the Catholic bishops in town. Being daughters of a Protestant pastor, my sister and I were both pretty stoked to see the town that started our father's (and soon to be my sister's) profession. Lutherstadt is a former eastern German city but the middle (and the oldest) part of town has been completely restored. Its fairly unknown by the tourist crowds so its a great place to visit. I have forgotten all the stuff that we saw, but we spent about 5 hours wandering the streets where Martin Luther once walked. We saw the church door that tradition holds as the place Luther posted his theses.




We also saw the church where Luther married.




We also saw the painting of purgatory marked with the names of students who failed their exams (so claims my lonely planet guidebook).



We also took the time to visit the Haus der Geschichte (or house of history) where a German tour guide took us through apartments set up to look like every decade of DDR life. Even though my English speaking sister and I were the only ones waiting for a tour that day, none of the tour guides spoke English. Instead, a 60 year old DDR resident very skillfully showed us the entire tour, pausing every 2 minutes so I could translate the German into English, which was pretty funny considering my limited German skills. It was one of my favorite parts of the entire trip as we had time to interact with a native German and we learned how much can be expressed through hand signals and smiles. I highly recommend that you visit the museum if you go to Wittenberg! Sorry no pictures cuz they weren't allowed, but you can see the museum here.
Apparently the museum has been used as a set for many German films set in that era.

We saw the seminary founded by Luther's students. Sadly the museum had already closed but we did see a really great name for a beer garden.....My sister, who I consider an expert on this subject, says that Luther was well known for having deep theological conversations while drinking beer.


After a lovely visit to Lutherstadt, we caught our last train of the day.




Forty five minutes later we were already at the stop for our hostel, cutely called Ostel (combination of the German word for east = Ost and hostel). The entire hostel was themed on the former eastern Germany. The rooms were former apartments in real DDR buildings. All the buildings have been renovated so the houses are actually quite nice. The first night in town we were the only ones in a 3 bedroom apartment so we used the time to explore the place. One room had a balconey so I rushed back downstairs to reception and bought two local Berliner beers. Loletuth and I closed the night by talking sisterly things overlooking the playground of the area below....awesome....more to follow later.

meine Schwester and my sister

I don't feel like yelling at the computer right now and I can't work on my thesis introduction until I hear reviews back from my thesis committee, so I will waste time by writing about my March travels.

After I returned from Switzerland, I worked frantically for two weeks on thesis research. Then, on the 4th of March, I basically stopped working for about 3 weeks to travel. On March 4th, I picked up one of my German sisters from the Marburg train station. Maria came to Marburg to attend a conference on Parkinson's, which worked really well with my schedule. During the day, Maria attended conferences so I could work while at night I got to come home to a not empty room! It was really nice to have someone else around to cook dinner and share deep sisterly stories with. But the sisterly times don't end with Maria. On Friday I headed to Frankfurt airport to pick up my American sister (the one I am actually related to) Loletuth (aka Lala)!

For 36 glorius hours I was thrilled to have my transcontinental 'family' together. While Maria attended the conference on Friday, I introduced Lala to my German research group and took her to the 400+ year old tower overlooking the city of Marburg. Despite Lala's fear of heights, we climbed to the top and saw some pretty cool views of the city. Then we caught the 'short bus' into town to meet Maria and could pick up groceries for dinner. It was really cool to pick out my favorite German foods. We then came back to the dorm and made a lovely smorgeboard of vegetables and vegetarian bratwursts. Somehow, all three of us fit into my little studentendorf room.

On Saturday, Maria left the conference early so I could take her and Lala on a grand tour of Marburg. We visited the castle, saw a German wedding, and enjoyed coffee and cake at my favorite bakery in Marburg. Afterwords, we quickly ran home so Maria could catch the last fast train to her hometown. Loletuth and I then enjoyed a nice dinner of Auflauf and Abelwoi (Hessen speciality) at Cafe Early (best auflauf in town!).

After dinner, Lala and I returned to pack for our train hopping excursion to Berlin....more details to follow...

Austria Day 4...take 2 and day 5

I forgot to mention that after returning from the cross country skiing with Moritz, I skipped the first afternoon session to visit the only museum in Mariapfarr. The Stille Nacht museum.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

Mariapfarr's little claim to fame is that a young man named Josef Mohr lived in this town in 1816. During the two years he lived here, he wrote one of the most beloved Christmas songs ever known, Stille Nacht, or Silent Night. The museum is only open for 4 hours a week, so I jumped at the chance to visit the museum during one of the hours its open. I walked in and was quickly placed into a tour group where the tour guide spoke enthusiastically about the Catholic artifacts (mostly shreds of Cardinal robes that visited the town). The entire tour took place in Austrian German and I really struggled to keep up. Finally, after 30 minutes of seeing pictures of stained glass windows and long decomposed flower wreaths, the guide took us to the highlight of the tour, a reconstruction of Josef Mohr's bedroom, complete with the original furniture and a plasma screen tv (sorry no pictures allowed). It was a very odd experience. Right before Josef Mohr's room, the people of the village had hand crafted a miniature version of the Creche (Nativity scene) next to a miniature version of what the city looked like in Josef Mohr's time (it hadn't changed much). To save costs (and perhaps the environment), the townspeople used barbie dolls for the women and hand-made period outfits from old clothing. Despite the cheap materials, the entire scene looked completely real! I really wish I could show you photos, the scene was surreal. I now know how Austrian villagers keep themselves entertained on cold winter nights. I also saw the original copy (its a cheap museum) of Stille Nacht. The church where the song was first sung is actually several kilometers away from the village, but the museum was quite nice. Since I couldn't take photos, I bought a few postcards and some souvenirs for the family and headed back to the workshop. On the way back, I saw this lovely little sunset over the alps.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

Now back to the last day of the workshop.....
After the long day before me, I was not looking forward to the 3 hours of student presentations that stood between me and my bed in Marburg. However, I drank some coffee and sat through them anyways. I ended up learning a lot more interesting work. My labmates and I said goodbye to the Uni-Würzbergers and our table companions from the night before, then piled back into the car for the 7 hour drive back to Marburg. Well, it was supposed to be 7 hours. As a fitting closing for the week, the drive back took place in snow and traffic. We didn't arrive back in Marburg until 12 hours after we left Mariapfarr. I checked email for the first time in 5 days, realized that nothing was important enough to keep me from sleeping, and crawled into my own studentendorf bed. Thus ended my Austrian travels. Before I move on to the other posts, I leave you with a link to the photos for this trip. Feel free to leave comments!

Ausria Day 4- Enjoying the farmhouse...

The last day of the workshop, I decided to slow down a bit and enjoy the farmhouse that we stayed in.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

As much as I really wanted to go downhill skiing again, I felt like I had avoided my labmates all week and that I hadn't given our farmhouse a chance to be cool. Instead of heading back to the slopes with Volker and Wenlan, I headed back to a small lunch with my labmates in our farmhouse. I took the opportunity of sunlight to snap a few pictures of the stuffed animals that adorned our house.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

This little guy freaked me out every time we walked down for breakfast. I always felt like he was hissing at me.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

The farmhouse was located far up in the hills, so far, that we could clearly see the ski slopes that I had been on the day before.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

The farmhouse was very quaint and had this adorable (but incredibly smelly) giant puppy that loved to get attention.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

After I took a short 20 minute nap, I joined my labmate Moritz and headed out to the cross country trail that passed by our little farmhouse. I still had my cross country skis from two days before, so Moritz and I planned on finding out where the trail led. The sky was sunny and clear so it was the perfect day for viewing the hills around us. After navigating the steep section near our farmhouse, the path seemed free and clear. Moritz is seen here saying, "look mom, no poles!" (not really but he could have)

From Austria-Mariapfarr

The trail lead us through snow covered forests and alpine valleys, even more beautiful now that I could actually see them.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

After about 30 minutes, Moritz (wisely) suggested that we head back. I, however, was convinced that a beautiful valley lay just beyond the trees and convinced him to push through. No less than 5 minutes after I convinced Moritz to continue, my last reserve of energy completely gave out. However, stubborn person that I am, I refused to tell Moritz and just pushed ahead anyways. My stubborness paid off as 5 minutes later, we found this amazingly beautiful mountain pass.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

It was like a storybook picture, we even saw a dog hopping through the valley below. We snapped some photos, then hurriedly skiied through the valley and back to the main trail back to our farmhouse. The views were captivating and I kept pausing to snap pictures.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

However, the gently lowering sun reminded us that we had to return for the afternoon session so as quickly as our legs would allow us, we skied back to the farmhouse.

I thought I would make it through the week without a single injury, but on the last slope before the farmhouse, my legs again gave out and I lost my balance on the cross country skis (yes, it is possible to do this). In a scene reminiscent of the day before, I tumbled head over heels. Cross country skis do not release as easily as downhill skis, so my left ski (and leg) ended up criss-crossing with my right leg, twisting my knee in the process. Apparently my camera fell out of my purse and snapped this photo.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

I struggled the 100 meters back to the farmhouse, stripped off the skis, and then crawled back into bed for a 5 minute nap. My knee hurt pretty badly but it was still functional, so I swallowed some pain killers and returned to the workshop. After the last session, all workshop participants piled into a charter bus for a catered meal on top of a mountain. I wish I had taken photos, but my body was completely exhausted at this point so anything other than sleep was completely incomprehensible. Despite consuming a cola (something I never do after 3pm) and wiggling my legs, I kept finding myself collapsing into a pile of jackets beside me. We finally left the restaurant at midnight, which meant that I didn't crawl into bed that night until after 1am! I am pretty sure I fell asleep while my head was falling onto the pillow......

Austria Day 3---Downhill skiing

On Day 3, I woke up to gentle rays of sunlight pouring through the window. I ran out to the balcony and saw glorious sunshine!

From Austria-Mariapfarr

Hoping that the sun stayed around, I packed my gear for downhill skiing. During the morning coffee break, I conversed with my labmates and discovered that yet again, they would return to the farmhouse for a nap. Wanting to take advantage of the sunny day, I met up with my Uni-Würzburg buddies again and secured skiing companions for a day. As soon as the morning session ended, we drove to the market, picked up some food and water, then ate our way to ski lift 25 minutes away. After arriving, we quickly found the ski rental shop recommended by the lady in town (12 Euros for a half day rental!), strapped on our boots, and headed to the slopes. One of the Uni-Würzberg colleagues had never skiied before. Since the only other colleague only knew how to snowboard, I ended up teaching the new colleague how to ski, a frightening prospect considering that I had only skiied 8 times in my life, usually on a fake mountain in Indiana. I had never skiied on a real mountain. My most realistic ski experience was two days skiing at a Michigan resort. (Michigan is not exactly renowned for its ski terrain). In fact, I had not stepped into downhill skiis in over 2 YEARS!. However, the colleague insisted that I could teach him, so I spent the first hour of my downhill day remembering how to fall safely, turn, stop, and slow down (in that exact order). I couldn't complain too much as the view from the idiot hill (direct translation of the german word for bunny slope) was still pretty amazing.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

Wenlan, was a fast learner so he soon felt confident enough to navigate the easy slopes on his own. Volker (snowboarder) and I (skiier) then took off for the real hill. I was mildly anxious. Mostly because I was still exhausted from the day before. However, I refused to let tiredness overtake me, so Volker and I hopped onto the six seater lift (it even had a little shell that you could close to keep the wind out) and rode to the top. The view from top was AMAZING! The pictures below do not do it justice!

From Austria-Mariapfarr

From Austria-Mariapfarr

From Austria-Mariapfarr

Volker and I rushed down the hill several times. I learned that falling in fresh snow powder isn't very conducive to downhill skiing. AFter a few wrong turns, we ended up on an advanced slope, where I learned that running into snow piles (although a fairly unpleasant experience) does keep you from running into a tree. Note: The Europeans do not block off hazardous slopes, they just assume that you aren't dumb enough to try them. They also don't really tell you which slopes are really hazardous until you are already on them.

However, Volker and I managed to find our way back to the more basic slopes with just an hour left before the lift closed. We quickly rushed down the hill and discovered the joys of mini ski jumps (microscopic is more like it, but I did achieve air time of about 0.2 seconds and still land safely). I eventually regained my ski legs back with enough time to take three more runs in under 25 minutes! On the last run, however, my ski legs gave out and I had a rather dramatic head over heels tumble where snow somehow permeated through my three layers of ski clothing, one ski ended up 2 meters from where I ended up, and my glasses became completely covered in snow. It took me about 5 minutes to put myself back together and meet Volker at the bottom of the hill. Promptly at 16:00, the skilifts closed and we headed back to ski rental shop to return our skis. We found Wenlan, somehow mixed in with a group of schoolchildren. He had given up for the day and take his skis off already. I however, anxious to partake of all the ski time I could, used piles of snow along the way to relive my downhill experience. We packed up our gear, paid for the half day, then loaded into the car for the trip back. After a few wrong turns, we made it back with 15 minutes to spare before the afternoon session started. Before I could return to the program, I had to snap pictures of the amazing sunset in the mountains.

From Austria-Mariapfarr

I rushed into the women's restroom to change out of my sweaty clothes and then joined my colleagues at the tables. On a previous hike, I had discovered that dried figs can quickly restore energy to the system, so I snacked on dried figs and managed to stay awake for the last two sessions of the day. The group then piled into the car for a dinner in town, where we happened to find the only hotel with a full salad bar. Since one never gets enough veggies when traveling, I was extremely excited, especially since Austrian and German salad bars feature red beans (all vegetarians or semi-vegetarians know the amazingness of this food). After dinner, the group members piled back into the car for the trip back to the farmhouse to enjoy Austrian beer and dried fruits. I rediscovered the wonderful stretching powers of yoga with my Yoga for Skiers yogaamazing podcast and then fell asleep around 12:30am.....