Heidelberg. Genau!

Well, this past weekend in Heidelberg was absolutely amazing. I had the best time - it definitely competes with some of my other favorite weekends in Germany.

After the 7 hour train ride that included 3 different transfers, I finally made it to Heidelberg. I met some cool people on the last train into the city and I ended hanging out with them the entire weekend. We followed the giant crowd of American students from the train station to the bus and finally arrived at the hostel. We checked in and found out that the people I met were directly across the hall from me - awesome! They fed us some coffee, tea, and cake while we waited for others to arrive and then bussed us off to the university to listen to people from the research internship abroad program talk. It was really boring and lasted far too long. Oh well, we all felt we had to listen because we're getting paid to be here all summer. If that's the worst thing that happens while I'm here then I guess it's a fair trade off...

After the really lame speech they shipped us back to the hostel for dinner. I skipped out on that and went out to dinner with Uncle Mac and Aunt Melody who just happened to be in Heidelberg during their European tour (what are the odds?). I had a great time with them, naturally, and we ate some delicious food at a restaurant right down the road from the hostel. Good times.

That night we got a group together and wandered the streets of Heidelberg, beer in hand. It was a lot of fun getting to hang out with other students that speak English. I hung out with 5 other people most of the weekend, and as it turns out, out of the 6 of us 3 were American and 3 Canadian. There are definitely more people in the program that are from America, but we just got lucky enough to hang out with Canadians the whole time. We ended up getting back to the hostel at midnight because we all had to wake up early for company visits the next day.

The program split us all up into groups by what we are studying and then each group visited a company that pertained to their area of expertise. The environmental group by far got the best deal. We were the last group to leave (we left at 9am while others had to leave at 6am) and our first stop was a fossil site and our second stop was an organic wine vineyard. Dinosaurs and wine - what could be better?! Turns out there weren't dinosaur fossils at the first site, but there was plenty of wine at the second to make up for it : ) The wine vineyard was amazing - we were led around by this über hippie old woman (she didn't shave her legs, had short grey hair that she dyed green and blue, and talked about how the power of the earth was sucked up by the grapes and is put into the wine). I fell in love with her, really. She cooked us a completely organic (and delicious!) lunch and then let us try all the different types of her wines. We thought we would just be swishing the wine in our mouths and spitting it out - no - she poured us glass after glass of tasty wine that they made right at her house. During lunch the tables were lined with bottles of wine and she asked us to help ourselves, haha. We all think that she just wanted us drunk so we would purchase wine from her at the end. Anyways, it was amazing and I got some beautiful pictures of the vineyard - check them out by clicking on the link to the right!

After the vineyard we were taken to the Heidelberg Cultural Brewery where we were fed a traditional German meal and got to drink home-brewed beer. Damn - the environmental kids started drinking at 2pm and didn't stop until 8pm or so. Go us. The food was delicious and the beer even better. Laura (my new Canadian best friend) and I ordered some Weißbier with banana juice - my favorite. She really liked it too. Everyone thought I was crazy, but once they tried it they realized how amazing it is. Yum.

After the brewery we headed out to the bars and had a lot of fun. It was the 4th of July so everyone was celebrating the best they could. Canada celebrated Canada Day on July 1st so they decided to celebrate again with us that night. Good times followed.

The next day we woke up early, again, and were sent on a guided tour of Heidelberg. As a poor college student, I never take guided tours of any of the cities I visit, so I considered this a real treat. We were led around by an old English woman by the name of Valarie. She married a German when she was in college and so she learned to speak German when she moved here a long time ago. She was so cute and I loved her. One day I hope I love a city that I live in enough to become a tour guide. She was great and took us all around town and to the Heidelberg Castle. It was really neat-o.

After the tour the 6 of us (Canadians: Ryan, Laura, and Judy. Americans: Galina, Dana, and myself.) grabbed some quick food and then set off to hike a nearby mountain that overlooked the city. We took a trail called the "Philosopher's Path" that let us to the top. The path was SO steep! It was insane, but lot of fun. It was literally almost a 45 degree climb for half the way, then it leveled out to become a normal hiking trail. Very cool. At the top we saw a beautiful view of Heidelberg along with ruins of an old church, monastery, and Nazi amphitheater. The amphitheater was built for the Nazis to have meetings and such, but it was never used because the war started. Super huge and super cool.

After ours of hiking we headed back to the hostel to shower, drink, and hit the clubs.

One part of the night included Galina and I trying to see if we could name off all 10 Canadian provinces and 3 Canadian territories to our new Canadian friends. Needless to say, we couldn't. We tried I don't know how many times and could never get all 13 in one sitting. Laura, on the other hand, showed off and named all 50 states in about 30 seconds. Ugh. Even I can't name all 50 states in 10 minutes! Want to try? Click here! Oh well, pretty funny.

Sunday morning we just hung out, checked out of the hostel at 10am, and then went to the city and explored some more. Did a bit of souvenir shopping and ice cream eating. The usual. We all went our own ways around 4pm. Luckily I got to ride halfway back with Dana and Judy. I ended up missing my train in Leipzig because they switched tracks on me and I didn't know - ugh. That delayed me quite a bit and I got home to Cottbus at 3am. 11 hours of traveling to get home. Lame. Oh well, such is life by train.

Overall, this weekend was amazing. I made some awesome friends - some which live close by (Galina is from Sandy Springs) so I'm sure I'll see them again.

I changed my travel plans for the next two weeks to travel with the group from Heidelberg instead of the people I originally had planned to travel with. It works out better this way because my plans to go to Hamburg fell through and I really wanted to go to Munich, so now I'm going to Munich next weekend and Amsterdam for my birthday. Woohoo! It's going to be a blast and I cannot wait.

Good thing is these weekends are going to be so much fun that time is literally going to fly by and I will be home soon in no time. The whole time I've been here I've been counting down the days to go home and see everyone again, but in Heidelberg I had the first sensation of wanting to stay in Germany some more. Most of these people are staying here until the end of August. I'm staying as late as I possibly can because of working for housing and having to go to training, but if I had to choice I would probably stay another week or two just so I could travel with these awesome people. Yeah, they're that cool.

After talking to all the kids I met it turns out that my work schedule is actually very very easy. Haha, sweet. I guess that's what I get for being alone in this boring city - I don't have to work a lot. Lots of other people have 2 or even 7 other North American research interns in their city - jealous! Oh well. Tomorrow, though, I have to wake up at 5.15am to go and pick weeds in our field site all day long. Ugh. Not cool. Perhaps it will be a sunny nice day instead of the spontaneous rain showers that we've gotten the past 3 days. I'll cross my fingers.

Well, I think that's about it at the moment. Check out my pictures by clicking on the link to the right. : )