Greetings from Heidelberg - 10 May 2001

Hello friends! I arrived in Heidelberg last night at about 9:30 pm. True to form, I hadn't booked accomodations in advance, figuring that there would certainly be room given that it's not even the tourist season yet. Using the North-South orientation of the track and my Lonely Planet Guidebook's map of the city which indicates that the interesting part of the town is to the East, I set off in that direction to search for a hotel. Mind you, I had called ahead in Koln, after ascending the 300 meter church tower while waiting for my train connection. But I hadn't been able to reach anyone. So after poking around the train station for a while looking for non-existent tourist information, I headed off to the East. At about 10:30 I told myself I'd stop at the next hotel I saw. At about 10:45, I ran into a guy who asked me in German, with a Russian accent, if I knew the way to the Post Office. I selected carefully from the two German phrases I know and settled on "Ich spreche kien Deutsche." "English?" he says. Now we're getting somewhere. Turns out Leo is a software engineer working at the Heidelberg printing press company and knows English quite a bit better than German. So we decided we would both be well served by stopping in at the nearby Crowne Plaza hotel and asking for help with our respective situations. This is where I met the most wonderful Sandra Bittler who, in the absence of any hotel rooms anywhere in Heidelberg, proceeded to call a number of hotels in the neighboring city of Mannheim for me also. Unfortunately there were no rooms to be had anywhere. Not even a manger. So Leo walked me back to the train station where I might catch a train to Stuttgart, which would surely have rooms or else he was (dubiously) prepared to let me sleep on his floor. At the station, I tried one last time to ring the hostel. Lo and behold, there was an answer and a room, if I could make it there by 11:30. The rest is history. Heidelberg is beautiful. Sort of like the Adirondacks, but maybe a little warmer and some unusual smells in the verdant environs. And of course a lot more beautiful old buildings. Today I took a hike on Philosophenweg and then went to visit the Heidelberg castle. Pictures will be posted, of course, when I get back. Last night when I got to the hostel, I desperately needed a beer, so after trying the wild (apparently) under-age disco in the hostel, I headed over to the bar and, upon ordering in English, met Adam from near Orlando. Adam turns out to be a very interesting guy. He invites me to join him downtown to check out a more happening pub. Had a bus ride that took us nowhere and after the best hefeweisen I've ever had and some peanuts for dinner, we commenced the half hour walk home at about 2. Fortunately it is much warmer here. Brugge, where I spent the previous three days was also beautiful. It's going to be one of the "cultural centers of Europe", according to a fellow hosteller, when the opera house is completed. In its current state, I enjoyed taking a boat trip in the city moat, visiting the four windmills at the city gate, eating lots more frites and waffles and chocolate, meeting the inebriated organizer of the local fair at the frites stand (seems like there's an event on wherever I go!) and using the free tokens he gave us to ride the teacups, the haunted house (which consisted entirely of a car that goes into a dark room where people in weird costumes grope you), and what would have been a litigation magnet were it in the US: the "funhouse". No end of ways to injure yourself in there. There was bad news in Brugge too, however. Cautious and knowledgeable technical expert that I am, I sagely decided to test out my extra AAA batteries to make sure they would be ready if and when the batteries in my trusty Palm Pilot were to run out. So I took out the working batteries, popped in the new once and noted, with satisfaction, that the Pilot showed them to have a full charge. So I put my batteries back in and forgot about it. Until the lovely boat ride I mentioned. Where I took out my Palm Pilot, pressed the On switch, and realized that I had not installed the original batteries properly. By this time, all the things I had entered on my trip (dates, plans, email addresses) had been erased. It put me in a very bad mood for the boat trip. So now I am back to good, old fashioned pen and paper. Luddites please contain your laughter. Did I tell you about the possibly schizophrenic, definitely drunk/stoned/mentally-challenged Belgian I met on the train to Brugge? He was actually a lot of fun because he spoke about as much English as I speak French. So we engaged in something he called "Le Brouyeure" (sp?), which essentially boils down to very low bandwidth communication but a great conversational French learning session for me. I met a lot of interesting folks in Brugge: Ea, the Canadian graduate from an Italian cooking school; Nick, the drunk, incredibly loud snorer; Crystal, Truppde, and Colleen, the compulsive medical school graduates; and my personal favorite: Alex, the actor (?) from Paris who looked like a cross between Fabio, Don Johnson, and someone with very bad teeth, who was a perfect caricature of the French man. He had this "Hawnh, hawnh, haaaaawnh" laugh that always made me laugh too. Not necessarily with him. Well that's all I and my diary can remember. Tune in next week, when you'll hear about Switzerland!

-Joe

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