Heidelburg

Saturday May 21^st

Today had its ups and downs!   The Schmid girls had some activities this morning, as is common for most kids on Saturday, so while Luzie went to swim practice and Vreni went to golf lesson, Katie played with the ripstick or waveboard as they call it here.  She was doing great and riding up and down the street in this quiet German neighborhood.  I went upstairs to get the Flip video camera and next thing I knew Katie was sprawled in the street clutching her arm.

Her elbow was totally covered in road rash and her arm “felt funny” and was tingling very badly.  I had visions of spending the day really getting familiar with the German health care system.  We cleaned it up, put ice on it and it started feeling better. Luckily it is not broken, and with all the ice it did not even bruise badly.  She did hit her funny bone straight on so it tingled for quite a while, but no lasting damage!

We picked Luzie up from swim practice and noon and Karin, Luzie, Katie and I bought tickets for a boat tour up the Neckar river from Heidelburg.  We had a little time before the boat left so we walked along the river, watched a crew regatta and walked into Heidelburg. 

There is one main main street in town that is a real tourist street – with lots of souviener stands and fancy shops side by side, and plenty of little cafes to get a coffee.  However, just back one street, parallel to the tourist street you find a street where the actual Germans do their shopping.  We saw a fabric store, a picture framing studio, a dry cleaner and most important to Luzie and Katie the “Sugar Store”.

 This is a very strange candy store, kind of dark and spooky.  You crowd into a small narrow passage lined with candy barrels. But you can’t pick yourself and then take to to the counter, you have to wait in line and tell the helper what you want to have. She will put what you pick into a paper cone for you. Or you can pick a pre-packaged assortment of sweets, many of which are made to look like cakes or cupcakes or other foods even though they are just layers of different  gummy candies.  Katie and Luzie waited in line for their candy (a prepackaged assortment) while Karin and I went to a local bakery to pick up sandwiches for the boat ride. In the time it took us to in a bakery, pick out the food, package it up and walk back the girls almost made it to the front of the line at the sugar store. When they did make it to the front of the line, the proprieter, a funny old man with white hair played a game with them. They had to roll a dice and land a number higher than the man’s number.  But the game worked that if they won, they got extra candy and if they lost they got extra candy – so either way it worked out for them. As Katie put it, “I don’t really know what happened, but we got more candy, so it all worked out.”

Candy and sandwiches in hand, we headed to the boat.  We got seats right up front on the second deck so that we could put our feet on the prow.  It was a bright sunny day and quite hot, and unfortunately the boat did not move fast enough up the river to really make much of a breeze.  The boat made its way slowly upstream, giving us a great view of the Heidelburg castle.  We went through two sets of locks both raising our level as we moved upstream and along the stunningly beautiful German countryside. 

We saw people riding their bike on paths along the river, and plenty of people in canoes (they have to portage around the locks).  We saw fields and hills leading away from the river and the mountains in the background. We stopped in two small towns with half timbered houses and local brewpubs. At one point we could see four different castles from our location – two in ruins and two still actually occupied by private owners!  The round-trip was three hours, and while Karin and I really enjoyed it, the girls got hot and bored and we had to bribe them with ice cream.

 

Upon returning to Heidelburg, we gave the girls some money and sent them off shopping together. Karin and I settled into a coffee shop on the main tourist street to people watch and chat.  While the girls shopped and shopped, we talked about navigating the teenage girl years, with the inherent issues of clothes, cellphones, and on-line chatting, not to mention boys,  that can occur in any culture. The girls turned up about 90 minutes later laden with bags and the four of us walked around a bit together.  We found a new build-a-bear shop and the girls begged and begged for animals but we resisted their pleas. Luzie got a snack at Subway, and Katie bought a Christmas ornament and a German flag at a tourist shop. The tourists had died out by this time, all the bus tours having moved on.  The streets were now full of groups out on bachelor and bachelorette parties, doing their walking around before hitting the beer halls apparently.  The bachelorette arties were very obvious as most of them wore matching shirts or even costumes.  We saw one group where the bride to be was snow white and her friends were the dwarves in overalls.  We saw a group of guys where the groom was Mario and his friends were all Luigi. It was very interesting and very strange.

 It was now getting towards 9pm so we headed back to Waldorff and got some pizza for a very late dinner!