Hi Again Everybody:
It’s Friday evening and we’re in Heidelberg, Germany on the Nectar River. This is primarily the story of our night (last night) at the castle in Colmberg, France (you can look it up – southeast of Wurzberg and west of Nuremberg) and a stop in Rothenburg, noted for its well-preserved medieval old town.
Let’s make a very general statement here – the Germany we have seen (some of the western and southern parts of the country) is very much like the United States. France is nothing like the United States, while at almost every move in Germany you can feel that you are in the United States. For us that means a high comfort level, with the exception of language. We can look at French words and many times have a pretty good idea of what’s being communicated. Not so, with the generally very long German words. It doesn’t seem as many share that Latin origin, which connects French/Spanish/Italian and points to English.
Initially, let’s move from Dusseldorf south to Heidelberg, which happened yesterday (Thursday, Jan. 2). We had a great train ride from Dusseldorf that took us a short distance to Cologne, then to Bonn, then to the Frankfurt Airport, then to Mannheim, where we quickly changed from the German high-speed ICE train to the local, which went to Heidelberg.
Some random thoughts/memories: lots of new and expensive soccer stadiums and new arenas that we just happened to see from the train --- the Rhine (Rhein) River is not really magical, but it’s muddy and not quite as wide as the Mississippi River --- the train system is absolutely great --- German villages feature mostly single family homes (red brick in the north and then as we headed south the homes became light colored stucco homes --- the villages appeared very neat and organized from the train --- north of Bonn (you can look it up – West Germany’s capital back in the day) the land was very flat, but the terrain became hilly south of Bonn, which meant the train tracks were level, so we had many berms cutting out our views and there were many tunnels --- the ICE train really got moving between the Frankfurt Airport and Mannheim (228 km/hr which is close to 150 mph) --- on this ICE train trip we moved around more and went to the “bistro”, which gave us a better idea of how nice the train was, especially the “bistro’ (very modern and well-equipped) --- we saw some older and sometimes abandoned factories, which were the first we have seen in Europe, but something you’d see often in the Midwest/East of the U.S. --- Mannheim is one of the most industrialized cities I’ve ever seen --- more often than not in these large cities we saw modern buildings, many of which get past 10-stories --- often taller buildings (as in Dusseldorf) are dispersed over a fairly wide area of the city --- trams and trains everywhere, including Heidelberg, a city of 150,000 people --- our rental car (from Enterprise Rental) in Heidelberg was a BMW (what a nice driving car) --- lots of BMWs and Mercedes Benz cars on the road here in Germany.
Last night’s visit to the castle in Colmberg came from Marlene wanting to get off the train and see a little more of “real” German life. It was a successful experience. When we arrived yesterday in Heidelberg we ran into rain and were losing daylight quickly, so we took the autobahn most of the way to Colmberg. Yes, there were drivers moving along at about 90 mph and the autobahn was great, just like France and Italy. No tolls as you see everywhere in France. In France you see service areas, while in Germany you have exits just like you see in the U.S., with McDonalds, Burger King, a few gas stations, and maybe a hotel.
Turning to the photos, you see a couple of shots of the castle as we arrived. There’s a photo of the view from our room, taken this morning, looking down on the village of Colmberg. Then a little group of family photos to give you an idea of the castle. It was very nicely done and operated by a family.
This morning we were greeted by sunshine, so we were excited to head back to Heidelberg via the back roads, going through German villages and small towns. We stopped at Rothenburg, with the medieval old town, where there have been numerous movies filmed (you can look it up). We give you a photo of Marlene and Ken (two versions: the x-rated version and the clean version), and a shot of one of many churches in Old Town Rothenburg. The old town was much larger than you typically see in France and we thought it would be a great place to spend a few days. It should be noted that the old towns seen in France, exist in almost every city, no matter how small, featuring very old buildings and streets that are hardly wide enough to walk down. You don’t see that on such a large basis here in Germany. I believe we have to go back to the destruction in Germany during World War II. If there were factories, ports, transportation centers or German troop concentrations they were bombed beyond belief.
More of the trip back to Heidelberg and what happens in Heidelberg is next.
The Wilsons
