After a painfully long time, our plane finally arrived in Frankfurt, Germany at 3pm their time. The international airport there also doubles as a train station which resulted in the place being massively huge. Balx and I changed a couple hundred dollars into euros and then proceeded to buy a train ticket to our first stop in Heidelberg. As I was to learn, almost everyone in Germany speaks English. So our progress with any questions of where we were, what to do, and how to do it became a simple task. The train system in Germany is so much better and cheaper then in the U.S. but they also suffer from thin corridors which made the baggage very hard to handle.
At this point I’ve had a few spurts of three or four hour naps over the last three days, I’m now in a new country dragging all of my prized worldly possessions, following Balx around who is only a tiny bit less lost then I am. So it was unneeded stress when Balx made an attempt to call our contact in Heidelberg to come pick us up and the phone numbers did not work. One number resulted in an error, and the other only got his message machine. So it goes.
With no way of reaching him, we stopped for some food to try and wait it out and see if Yurgin, our contact, would get the message at his house. Just outside the train station I found my first photo opportunity of the Heidelberg Running Horse sculpture. As I was to learn later, this massive statue caused a controversy when someone did the calculations on how much energy it took to melt all the steel used in the statue’s construction. It would have been enough energy to heat the entire town for a year. The horse stood in front of an equally impressive building whose outside walls were constructed entirely out of glass. I also found out later that the train station was nicknamed the bicycle graveyard. It was where people would leave their bikes locked up if they didn’t want them anymore, until either they were stolen or the state removed them from the massive lot already filled with hundreds of bikes.
All theses facts came from Yurgin, who did eventually pick us up and then proceeded to take us on a walking tour of his town. He seemed to know the surrounding history for every building in the area. We walked down the cobblestone streets of downtown while our host and guide pointed out each of the attractions. I know that skyscrapers are much bigger but they tend to be so big that you just ignore them. The old buildings around here managed to do the reverse, making all their height and girth as noticable as possible. It was like being surrounded by sleeping giants. At the end of the street we came upon a fantastic view of Schloss Castle. I’m afraid the camera pictures will never do justice, the way the sunset splayed itself across the broken down castle on a hill from our perspective was quiet fantastic.
Despite being worn out by all the aformentioned activities, we then proceeded to climb all the way up the hill to go see the castle up close or at least as close as they let tourists get. Not much to mention about the trip that wouldn’t already sound the same: We went, we saw, it was good, I took pictures.
The next day Balx and I went in search of breakfast and electrical plug converters for our laptops. Breakfast was a shared bunch of raspberries and red currents from the local morning farmers market. There was little more done that day as we were both still exhausted from our travels beforehand. Our current task has been to locate a living space in Prague. This is difficult, because it’s been rather tricky lately to find some solid internet connections (As you might have noticed my posting are a bit behind real time, that’s because I write them down at the end of the day but I cannot post them until the next time I can connect.)
In the meantime I’ve managed to read Brave New World; a crappy book on great philosophical concepts. I give the book an ‘A’ for ideas and slick concept of a human utopia but I think it utterly fails at being well written. No one likes a character who quotes Shakespeare. Yes the man was good, there is no need however to cut and paste his lines to make oneself seem deep. In short the content of the book was powerful but clumsy in delivery. Give me Dune or Animal Farm any day.
Travelers note: If you want to be able to tell which clothes you’ve already worn, and which are still fresh, I’d recommend turning one set, clean or dirty, inside out. It’s easier to turn the old stuff inside out after a long day, but if you’re a smelly person it might be better to have the new stuff inside out instead so the oils and sweat are less likely to mingle.
P.S. I’ve noticed when I do a lot of walking I start to get a sharp pain right where each of my shoulder blades stick out of my back. It’s not a terrible pain, just the sensation like a bruise being pressed down upon. The pain grows in intensity when I inhale deeply and cause that part of my back to stretch across the shoulder blades tightly. (Try it and you’ll see). The pain does not affect me in any other situations and it seems to only crop up after I walk a long ways, I remember having the same problem a couple years ago but I walk a lot at work and it’s never affected me there. I sometimes think it might be walking in public perhaps is stressful at some level and the muscles tighten up? Does anyone know what is happening?
After a ten hour train ride, with us hopping on five different trains, I'm finally in Prague. There was some small difficulty on the last train when the conductor tried to tell us in halting English that our ticket purchased in Germany was no good for the ride from Chem to Prague. Balx and I held our braced for a large fee as he grumbled for a very long 5 minutes before producing the number 26 on a piece of paper. 26 Euros per head? Nope. That was the translation rate of Euros to Czech crowns, our total fine for not purchasing a ticket turned out to be 150 Crowns for the both of us, That's roughly 6 Dollars! A victory in a stresful situation.
Today though, I feel sick. My nose is stuffy and I sneeze every 20 minutes, my throat is constantly dry. We walked around the city for a bit (which is amazing in every way that's been written) before I had to go crash and sleep for most of the day. It's the off season for the Hostel, so that means Balx and I get a full dorm room for a the price of a double at around 7 bucks a day. It's no place to raise children, but it's clean and safe, with an abundence of English speakers form all around the world to share stories over the communial dinner table.
