So the first few days have past after arriving at Frankfurt airport on January 5th, at 7:20am. Not only was the plane ride rough being crammed between two people on an 8.5 hour flight, but I experienced all of the cliches; crying baby, person kicking my seat, guy in front of me reclining and refusing to ever sit up, weird neighbors, you know, the whole shabang.
After arriving in Frankfurt, I rushed to get to baggage claim in order to receive my bags asap. That was no use as I ended up standing there for a half hour anyways.
After collecting my luggage, I made my way to customs where a blonde haired man asked me to "remove my hat" in German. I did just that and he compared me to my passport for a good minute before grilling me with questions about my stay.
Soon I was making my way to the concourse where I was to meet my driver. After a while of waiting, two other girls showed up who were also in the program and we compared our experiences on our flights, which coincidentally were the same! Our driver eventually showed up and we got on our way. In our van, we also had a Chinese family who lived in Heidelberg who were going home after two weeks in the Sahara and Dubai. They were lovely to talk to.
We eventually made it to our school/dorm/house/mansion about an hour later. It's a beautiful estate built in 1914, just before WWI. My room was nice and the facilities were pretty similar to those in the US.
Our study group eventually all met up and we took a tour of the city. It was amazing and beautiful. I was pretty overwhelmed with the amount of information they were giving us about trams, buses, shops, restaurants, and the like. Something I did notice and already had an idea about from learning about Germany before hand was that many shops weren't open everyday and there is pretty much no such thing as a "24-hour" shop. Seeing that we have to buy all of our own groceries and cook our own food, this was going to be interesting.
The next day (yesterday) was filled with orientation stuff; signing papers, release forms, and visa/housing applications. All in German of course which was fun.
That night, the school took us out for a traditional German three course meal. Salad, pork and red cabbage, and a strudel for dessert, at a restaurant that has been there since early 1700. It was delicious! Here I delved into the nectar of the Rhineland; bier. I chose a local brewery and it was as great as you'd expect from a traditional German bier!
Later that night, I went out with a couple of friends to some local bars (or tried to at least as Friday is pretty dead in Germany as Thursdays are the nights when most students get #turnt). We ended up at a lounge bar where I spoke with a couple younger locals about Germany and our bar tender about their bier selections. I had fun, especially when it came to watching my new friend from Mexico try to ask where the bathroom was; funny enough, she was quite good at it. We sat and talked for a few hours, soaking in the nightlife of one of Germany's oldest cities.
We eventually made our way back to school using the tram. Most locals are asleep at the hour we returned at so the tram was only filled with drunk students (except us of course) so it was cool to experience a different side of the city's people as we've only rode the tram during the day when the older folk were riding home from work or going out to the shops.
When we got back to school, we rang ourselves in and proceeded to our rooms.
Today, the 7th, we are touring Heidelberg's most treasured relic, Schloss Heidelberg, or Heidelberg Castle. It's gonna be dope.
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Update!!! 01/08/2017
We toured the city's universityplatz or university square. Filled with history and stellar architecture. We had an awesome guide named "Christian" who loved his job...very much so. He was very informative and gave us many historical insights on things such as the "student jail" which was created as a way to calm locals down in the 1700-1920's when it came to university students taking over the city. It was almost a right of passage, Christian says, to be brought to the jail, and because of this, most students left their mark through way of art. A common form was with the classic "selfie". They did this by shining a light at their profile and tracing the shadow on the wall. Check out the video below I shot for some examples and the interior of the jail. (The video may be too big, so I'll add some photos just in case)
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| That's Christian :) |
A cool fact about the jail is that foreign students were put into a "solitude" room which is filled with artwork from France, America, and other foreign countries. It was pretty unique!
After that, Christian led us to Schloss Heidelberg. It was beautiful! He led us around the "touristy" parts of the castle such as the bridge (to which a very unique love story is attached between a prince in Germany and the princess of Great Britain), the wine cellar (home of the world's largest wine barrel), and the terrace; the most photographed area in Heidelberg. This is where Christian left us to fend for ourselves and for the girls to take selfies for the #gram.
After the terrace, my friends Matt, Derreck, Teresa, and myself adventured around the castle to a couple locations that were not on the tour and not popular with tourists, such as the English garden (this is involved in the love story, hence it not being a Bavarian or German garden), and the fallen tower, which was the most beautiful thing I saw. I'll add some of those pictures below.
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| Christian made fun of us for all taking this "highly creative photo"; "so original, you don't look like tourists at all!", funny guy 😄 |
After our adventures around the castle grounds, we made our way back to town and shopped for groceries. Here is where I purchased my first things at a German grocer. Pretty intimidating. Everything is quick and you bag your own groceries. No small talk. Get in, pay, go; nothing more. It was interesting that they only played American music in English while I was there. That is something I have noticed; Germans only listen to American top hits it seems (even in the lounge I went to)
Fin.
