Day 5. Thursday, August 26. We got up as usual. It was a bit easier for me. W. didn’t sleep as well as I had. I packed my swimming suit, in addition to my three books, because we planned to go to Baden-Baden. I wanted to go to a spa and so I thought we might be able to lounge by a spring somewhere. “Baden” is German for bath. Baden-Baden is to Germany what Bath is to England, so I heard and repeated many times in telling people about my adventures. My favorite guide book, The Rough Guide Germany, said that Mondays and Thursdays were days when the sexes at the Friederichsbad were kept separate, so I thought it would be a good day to go there.
Going to spas is one of my favorite things, so I was anxious to be on our way. I set out toward S.’s house in a cold drizzle so I could get my breakfast oatmeal and coffee down in plenty of time to catch a 10 a.m. train. As I kissed W. before going out the door (as is our custom), he told me he’d follow along shortly.
When I got to S.’s house, she had written out everything we needed to know to get to Baden-Baden. It looked like a complex set of train changes. We had to change trains twice and we’d be on our first IC train. “IC” trains are “InterCity.” They are faster and fancier than the slow regional trains we took to Bingen the day before.
While waiting for W., I started on my breakfast. When I saw the food spread already on the table – S. is a great host – I was so hungry I could not wait for oatmeal to cook. The bread and “shinken” and cheeses all ready to eat were too tempting. S. fixed me a soft-boiled egg and made one for W., too.
As I ate, S. sat at a computer in the hallway just off the kitchen. She copied out train schedules by hand. When she had two options to leave written down on a piece of paper, she showed it to me. The first train left at 10 a.m.
By the time she finished explaining our route for the day, we noticed it was nearly 9:30.
“Where is W.?” S. asked.
I didn’t know. He had told me he was going to be there 20 minutes after me. He was by now 40 minutes later than he had said.
S. worried that we would miss our train to Baden-Baden, so she told me we should go to Heidelberg instead. S. copied out two options for going to Heidelberg and had me copy down the return information by hand. The train left at 11:30 a.m.
By the time W. arrived at 9:45, S. and I had revised our day’s itinerary. Before we told W., we asked him what had happened because we were almost ready to come looking for him. He said it had just taken him a while to get ready.
W. wanted to stop by a Hein-Gericke store. Ten years earlier, he bought one of their leather motorcycle jackets in the U.S. He liked it so much that he talked female relatives of mine into fixing it when the lining tore out of it. When we spent the day with my German family, someone had pointed out to him that Hein-Gericke is a German company and that there are stores all over. S. and P. told him the night before that there was even a store in Landstuhl.
W. grabbed a piece of bread and we were on our way, the four of us, S., P.B., W. and I. The drizzle stopped, but the day was still overcast, windy, and gray.
P.B. came along because he wanted to stop at Landstuhl’s fire station. He had done a student internship there and he wanted to show F., his mentor there, that he’d gotten excellent marks on a report he wrote. Also, he wanted to return photos that F. had given him to use in the report.
To W.’s dismay, we stopped at the fire station first. S. explained that, in Germany (or maybe just in Landstuhl), the fire stations in town are all consolidated into one large facility. This reduces costs she said, but may cause some delays in getting fire trucks where they are needed.
The facility certainly was large. We entered a modern building. The foyer had a check-in area and the man behind it agreed to buzz us in. We waited in the glass-enclosed foyer until we realized that the man had buzzed us in. F. met us in the main lobby near the antique wooden fire engines. He showed us the changing rooms, with the rubber firemen’s coats hanging from pegs, the garage with six or eight shiny fire engines. He showed us an extensive training and testing facility in a basement. F. explained that the Landstuhl station facilities serve the entire region. The firemen must pass stringent health requirements. I believed him because the place looked like the facility in the Six Million Dollar Man. A treadmill covered with wires and heart and oxygen monitors sat in the middle of the floor. A walled off monitoring room contained control equipment. In a back room, a three-level maze filled with dead-ends, pipes and obstacles tests how well the firemen do in the dark when the room is filled with smoke. I left with a new appreciation of tha hard work firemen undertake to protect us. W. left annoyed that we didn’t have more time at the Hein-Gericke store. It was 11:00 a.m. by the time we left the fire station.
We scooted half a block away on the opposite side of a divided highway. By the time we got to the Hein-Gericke store, W. had only five minutes to look around. He did his best, but we left ten minutes later. W. found a jacket he liked, but they didn’t have it in his size. S. left her number so the sales people could call around to other stores see if the jacket W. liked was in stock. Both P.B. and W. snatched up catalogs up as we rushed out the door to make our 11:30 a.m. train. Once we got in the van, the man and the boy realized that, perhaps, they should have paid for the catalogues.
S. rushed to the train station, as fast as her minivan would allow. Still, we weren’t fast enough. We ran downstairs to the underground tunnel and up the stairs to the track and saw we missed our train by only a minute.
We went back to the tunnel to find a schedule. The way I read it, another train was leaving for Mannheim in just three or four minutes from another track. So, we ran to the other track and got on the train that arrived just after we did. Less than ten minutes after missing our first train, we were well on our way to another day of quick explorations of German cities.
We had to change trains twice, once in Kaiserslauten and again, with a much longer wait in Mannheim. The Mannheim train station was by far the largest we had seen so far. It had two floors of shops and food booths, including a large book store. We wandered around and relished the sights and bustle of the place. The variety of the shops surprised me. There were places to eat, a pub or two, a flower shop, a gift store, and places to buy leather goods. After fifteen minutes, we went back out to the track where we caught the next train.
It came right on time, our first InterCity (IC) train. All the other trains we had been on so far were slower Regional Bahn (RB) trains. We climbed on near the end of the train into a crowded second class car. We walked forward through the train, looking for a first class cabin, past well-filled seats. The IC trains, even second class cars, were already much better appointed than the RB trains. The upholstery was thicker and made of a fine crushed velvet rather than of a coarser material. The wall and window treatments more detailed and attractive. When we got to a first class car at the front of the train, the layout reminded me of the first class cabin in a plane. Instead of three seats per side, there were two on one side and single facing seats with tables on the other side. W. and I sank down into two seats facing the direction we were traveling. W. read his manga and I read my phrase book. The train, meanwhile, sped through the countryside sun-dappled countryside.
Within half an hour we reached the station in Heidelberg, unfortunately about the same time a summer rain shower arrived, too.
It took us some time to orient ourselves to Heidelberg. We wasted some minutes reading the ticket-machines in the station. We thought perhaps the passes there would also apply to Heidelberg public transit. We walked through the train station and found a bookstore and a newsstand and a variety of other shops, but no posters explaining the Heidelberg bus system.
Finally, we did as the tour book suggested, and waited in line at the tourist information booth. Twice. The first time, I waited while W. went to buy an umbrella. I got the bus number, but forgot to ask where we could find the busses or buy transit day passes. We waited another ten minutes to ask very basic questions. Directly in front of the tourist center are driveways that look like perfect places for buses to stop. The buses there were all tour buses and cars. We found that the public transit stops was off to the side of the station. We skirted the acre or so of bicycle parking and spent more time trying to figure out which direction we needed to go to make our way to Heidleberg’s Altstadt, that is, the old part of town. Heilelberg grew long and narrow along the banks of the Neckar river and between hills that flank the river on either side, so if we were to go the wrong way, it could take some time to get back.
Finally, we bought our day pass the covered us both boarded the right bus and now wondered which stop to make. By this time, it was nearly 2:00 p.m. and we were famished.
We got out at the stop nearest the path uphill to the Schloss, the huge palace overlooking Heidelberg. W. realized that, yes, he had been in Heidelberg before. We wanted to catch the train leaving for Mannheim at 6:15 p.m. We now had to decide what to do in a strange city with only four hours. At least, we had not had to actually use the umbrella W. bought.
First, we decided not to climb a hill for twenty minutes to see the Schloss. Both of us had been there before and we were both famished. We decided to wander around to find a place to eat. We doubled back to the Marktplatz, the market place. The Heiliggeistkirche, or Holy Ghost Church, dominated the center of the square. Spread out beneath it were dozens of little vendor tents where tourists could buy postcards, T-shirts, commemorative silver spoons, and hundreds of other highly useful items. We ignored these booths, but looked instead with interest at the menus of restaurants that ringed the marketplace. Many of them looked too fancy and slow for our needs. Just off the marketplace, we found a promising place. It looked like a glorified pub. Its glory, primarily, was that it was packed with happy German-speaking people who looked very content with their food, with the service and with life in general. W. and I reasoned that such a popular place must have exceptionally good food, so we entered the Palmbräuhaus Gasse and asked for a table.
The hostess led us to the back, near the entrance to the kitchen and near a service counter, and sat us at a long table with another couple of English-speaking tourists. These two ladies had just finished ordering by the time we were seated.
The place smelled pleasantly of good food and roasting meat. We were in a dark corner – most of the light came from the front windows and we were tucked away behind a huge stone fireplace along one wall. However, a hallway past the entrance to the kitchen led to a large cavernous room with a skylight. I walked toward it, attracted by the light and colors. The hall took me to a landing with stairs leading down to another level. Below me, sat many German men at benches drinking beer served from a bar on the far wall. Signs in German indicated that people could exit the premises and reach restrooms if they would take the stairs down. What an interesting place! I thought. It looked authentic German to me. We studied the menu with great care. W. ordered chicken cooked with a mustard cream sauce. I ordered Schweinhaxe, which the menu explained, was a specialty of the house.
While we waited for our food, I enjoyed a fine German beer and even W. ordered one. By the time our food arrived, the place had completely cleared out. I asked the waitress about it, in German, and she explained that tour groups occasionally booked the restaurant. We had come just as a group of a hundred or so was finishing up.
Our food was excellent. The Schweinhaxe was a ham hock. It was a large piece of meat, baked or broiled, still attached to the bone. The flavor was outstanding and the slightly crispy texture was very appealing. We liked the food so much, we stayed an extra fifteen minutes to drink coffee and cappuccino. We discussed where we wanted to go for our remaining two and a half hours. I wanted to go along the Philosophenweg, the Philosopher’s Way. The tour guide said that the views along the path on the opposite side of the river were among the best views in the area. Even though I looked, I could not find the path on the map in the tour book. Again, I asked the waitress and my German was good enough to get the general idea of the way we should go to find it.
We left the restaurant, happy and ready for a bit of exercise. Just as we walked another block toward the river, the rain started falling again. We ducked into a funky little store, run by Spanish-speaking people, who sold jewelry and tiny little T-shirts with pictures of Che Gueverra on them. Before we left there after the quick little shower passed, I checked the map one more time and found the Philosophenweg on the map. We were on our way.
We took many photos of the old-time bridge we crossed by foot. Heidelberg is one of the prettiest cities in Europe. It is Germany’s answer to San Francisco. The light shimmers and the whole place looks like the fulfillment of a dearest wish could materialize from the glowing air at any moment.
We found signs pointing our way to the path up a steep set of stairs. I got a bit winded, but we stopped at all the many lookouts on the way from the banks of the river to the old path up above us. W. was too shy to speak Japanese to any of the several groups of Japanese tourists we met. Heidelberg is a famous intellectual center known for its university and the poets and thinkers who have lived there. This is still true because there are a great many physicists who live and work there and the University is still highly regared. Eventually, we reached the Philosophenweg. It ran parallel to the city. Benches and clear spots with views were plentiful as were many local joggers. We did not encounter many other tourists along the path. We sat a while. We photographed each other and the city below. W. was fascinated by the sheep grazing just below the palace walls. I thought the view was fabulous to contemplate the relationship between government, religion and nature. The white Schloss dominated the scene, but we also counted no fewer than five church spires. Wooded, misty hills rolled up mysterious and dark beyond the city. W. jolted us from our reveries by asking how long it would take us to get back to the train station. I asked some local men how far the path went. They assured us that we were only 1 kilometer from the end.
Sure enough, the path soon ended in a lovely garden, which we did not linger to enjoy. Instead, we hurried on to the public streets and wondered how to get back down the six hundred or so feet to the river. We passed by large physics institutes and nodded “hello” to some brainy-looking young men. We asked one of them to tell us the best way to the river. He pointed us to another set of stairs just ahead.
As soon as we reached the road at the base of the hill that ran near the river, the rain started again. W. and I rushed to the first pub we could find. We holed up there drinking beer and mocha coffee until the rain stopped. The café was full, but not crowded. It had great restrooms and played French folk music. We read French magazines and wondered how to get back to the train station. I found an article in Der Stern about the German dismay at facing longer workweeks and shorter vacations in order to stay competitive in a global market. I confess to feelings of schadenfreude.
After W. coaxed me, I finally concentrated on getting us back to the train station. I looked at the bus map and schedule and decided we could take the bus, no problem. The bartender pointed out where we were on the map. I’m not sure we came out ahead buying the day pass for the buses. The day-long pass cost 8 euros, which was more than the 5 euros the tour book quoted. I think we broke even on the deal. It would have cost us about 8 euros to take the bus the normal way. We leisurely finished our drinks and took a bus in sunshine back to the train station with plenty of time to spare for shopping.
W. bought a couple of expensive magazines at the magazine store. He cleaned me about of 35 euros just on two items. From there we went to the bookstore. Here, we could not help but notice that American political books were doing quite well on Germany’s top 10 best sellers lists. Michael Moore’s books were particularly popular, but Clinton’s autobiography was also selling briskly. I wanted more classic German literature to take home, so I found myself in the poetry section. I bought a Herman Hesse book of poems. When I showed W. the book of hiakus translated into German, he bought it as a gift for his Japanese teacher.
We boarded our train for Heidelberg. By the time we arrived in Mannheim around 7:30 p.m., we were famished again. We found a pizza vendor on the second floor, then be bought an ice cream for dessert. The station was nearly empty and we had no trouble finding a seat on a bench just a few stores away from our food vendors. We even had time left to visit the Mannheim train station bookstore. By this point, I was starting to worry about having space to pack all the books we (mainly W.) had been buying.
While we were waiting for our train to Kaiserslauten, W. figured out that the tracks showed little diagrams of each train. We could know ahead of time which end of the train had the first class cars and where the dining cars were. Unfortunately, we did not know for sure which direction the trains would enter the track. I gloated a bit for being correct even though W. prevailed and we went to the wrong end of the track, away from the first class compartments.
We boarded the train and found a closed off, glass-walled compartment that held four people. I promptly fell asleep, but W. woke me up when the conductor asked to see our tickets. I said that it seemed that a conductor always checked our tickets on the first-class IC trains. They seemed to care less on the RB trains. We could go for hours without anyone asking to see our tickets. Fortunately, W. consistently remembered to add the day’s date in the proper way, so we always had our papers in order whenever anyone asked to see them.
I spend the ride from Kaiserslauten to Landstuhl trying to wake up. The family would want to hear about our adventures. Again, we discussed how long our family would want to visit and how long it would be before we could go to bed.
J., the newbie driver, came to pick us up. He met us on the street – he was parked right in front of entrance to the lobby with the ticket counter when we walked out of the station a little before 8:00 p.m. We loaded our backpacks in the van, but before we left, J. told us he wanted to buy us some beer at the market. W. and I were surprised that there was a little snack stand right there in the Landstuhl station. J. picked out a couple beers for us and also some chocolate.
When we arrived back at S.’s house, S. and P. were all ready to take us to “see the deer.” S. told W. that Hein-Gericke said they had a jacket in inventory in one store, but they couldn't find it in stock. She said that, anyway, even though they could ship it to her house, it would be expensive to do so and it may not arrive before we had to leave. We got the impression there is no weekend delivery of express packages. We didn’t have the hart, er, heart, to tell them that we also have deer in California. So, after drinking a token amount of beer and eating a couple pieces of bread and meat, we piled into the van again and drove out into the fields. By 8:30 p.m. in California in late August, we would already be calling things dark. The twilight in Germany lingers on forever it seems. We walked along a tiny paved road for nearly a mile, until we found an open field visible only through some shrubs, that had a couple of deer and a few rabbits a quarter mile away in near darkness. To aid our vision of the deer, P. handed us a pair of binoculars. They apologized that the deer were not closer. They said they come to see the deer several times a week and that, often, they can get much closer before the deer run away. Next time German relatives come to visit, we’ll know how important wildlife sightings are to them and we’ll take them to either a petting zoo or to one of the open space preserves where we frequently see deer grazing 50 yards away. W. chose not to mention his history of hunting deer in Texas. It was a pleasant night and W. took some artistic photos of quaint farm equipment. Even so, when they asked if we would like to walk farther or turn back toward home, we chose the option to going home.
As we walked, we talked. W. and I told them about our adventures that day. P. was astonished I had tried the Schweinhaxe. He had heard of this dish, he told us, but neither he nor S. had ever tried it. Once again, P.’s vocabulary astounded us. We talked about electronics and the power plant we could see glowing in the distance. I explained to S. my involvement in the community. These things don’t translate well because Germany’s system of government is different than in the U.S. and each state in the U.S. does things differently.
When we arrived back at S.’s house, I gave her my two rolls of film, one each from my two Russian cameras. One camera has 9 lenses, in a 3x3 array. The other camera has a Colorsplash flash, a flash that lets you place a colored gel in front of the light that flashes. We had played with these on our first night in Kaiserslauten and I wanted to show her the results of these two novelty cameras. I gave her strict instructions to request exposure correction, but to insist on no color correction.
With that task off my mind, I fell asleep very quickly once we arrived back at our own place with our own little cots.
