Good Night Frankfurt And Good Night To Our Vacation

May 2, 2012
Today was our last full day in Europe.  Tomorrow we are driving our rental car to Frankfurt Airport and we are going home.  The last couple of days have felt a little weird because almost all of our trip was planned out.  The portion of the trip that was not planned out were these last two days in Frankfurt.  We knew we were coming here and knew that we would "figure it out" when we got here.  It felt kind-of weird because over the last couple days we felt like we were, sort of, wandering with no specific direction.

The direction we took today was to hop on a double-decker bus and take a guided tour of Frankfurt that way.  While walking to the bus stop though we crossed a pedestrian bridge that is unique and known for its "Locks of Love".  From one end of the bridge to the other people have attached a "lock of love."  See the below picture and you'll know what I mean.

The bus tour was actually very interesting and we learned that although Frankfurt is not the biggest city in Germany, it certainly seems to have a very big upside with a lot of future planning and construction for the future going on.  They have a very busy and bustling Galleria shopping area and this is a central hub for much of what goes on in Germany, to include banking and many other business ventures.

 Signifying the financial center of Germany, these towers are called Credit and Debit

 Construction is everywhere in Frankfurt!

Our evening ended with a very nice meal outside on a patio of a nearby restaurant, followed by a walk down to the river for a good night Frankfurt picture.  After that we could not resist a nice glass of wine and Apple Strudel.

Good night Frankfurt and good night to what turned out to be a very nice vacation.

It's May 1st and that means May Day !

May 1, 2012
On this May Day, 2012 we got up, ate breakfast, checked out of our Heidelberg, Germany hotel and went out to retrieve our car from the parking garage a block away.  When we went outside we heard a band playing so we went around the corner to check out what we were hearing.  What we found was a May Day rally, complete with a live band and a march through the pedestrian zone next to where we had stayed.  Below is a picture of the May Day rally in Heidelberg.   

From there, with my 3rd Starbucks in 2 weeks in hand, we headed north to Frankfurt.  Nika asked what I was going to put in the blog today and I told her I was going to write, "There's not much to write today so here's a few pictures from our day."  As the day closed I realized we did have a fairly interesting day.  It was a short drive (95 kilometers) from Heidelberg to Frankfurt and we got checked into our hotel.  From there we took off walking along the Main River, across the bridge and into the older section of town.

We ate a nice, late lunch and then took a 50 minute cruise up and back on the Main River.  One of the things from the cruise that struck me was they pointed out that Frankfurt has plans to build 200 skyscrapers.  They must have big plans, because along with 200 additional skyscrapers comes people, housing, transportation and so on!

After this we walked some more, went back to our hotel to take our car to a better parking area, nearly got run over by a tour bus, had a fruity drink at the "Crazy Bar", before retiring to our hotel room above the "Hot Bar".  Tomorrow is May 2nd and will be our last full day on this European vacation. 

Apparently at this stop sign, in order to avoid getting run over by a tour bus, green means GO !

Plan B turned out to be pretty cool !

April 30, 2012
We spent our day walking around Heidelberg, Germany.  We walked through the pedestrian area of the city, alongside the shops, cafes, churches and hotels.  We stopped and toured Heidelberg Castle, also known as Heidelberger Schloss.  Nika had promised me that this was a really cool castle on a big hill that we would ride a cable car up to.  I was all excited about the cable car ride and when we got there, we climbed an enormously steep hill and arrived, dripping in our own sweat, at the entrance to the castle.  Nearly 3 hours later, we exited the castle through a different area, and I saw there really was a cable car that we could have taken up to the castle.  Nika tried to calm me by telling me how healthy it was for me to have walked.  We then descended 303 stairs back to the street level.  If you've been reading this blog, you now know that we have climbed and descended a minimum of 1369 stairs in just two of the places that we visited!

Anyway,  the Heidelberger Schloss is enourmous!  The castle dates back to 1196 and has been partially destroyed through the years, including during the 30 year war in the 1600's.  It sustained more damage from a lightning strike in the 1700's.  The castle tour included seeing gorgeous views overlooking the Neckar River and the City of Heidelberg.  It also contained sights of all the history involved with this castle including an oven that could roast up to 3 oxen at a time.  There were also several large wine barrels inside the castle, the biggest of which could contain 58,100 gallons of wine!  It is said the be the biggest wine barrel in history....period.  :-)  It is also said that 130 Oak trees were used to construct this barrel.  During the tour, they told us this barrel was filled 3 times.  

At the end of our castle tour (and after descending on foot from the upper elevations), we had a nice lunch and walked back through the shopping and pedestrian area nearby where we are staying.  For dinner we had a very nice and relaxing time at a local "meeting place"  Hemingway Bar and shared Schnitzel.  This is our last night here in Heidelberg.  Tomorrow we will go to Frankfurt for our last stop on the trip. 

      

The 10-year storm

April 29, 2012
Plans have changed!  After a high speed stroll north on the autobahn, we are now in Heidelberg, Germany.  This is all thanks to the 10-year wind storm that shook our hotel last night in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.  We had planned to go specifically to two places in Switzerland.  One of them in called Jungfrau, also known as the "Top of Europe".  The other is known as Schilthorn, which is reachable after a 30 minute cable car ride.  The Top of Europe is accessible by train and takes about 2 hours to get there from the town we were staying in.  The railway was closed at higher elevations yesterday because the wind gusts were too high for the trains to travel safely.  We were hoping to be able to go today, but after the windstorm we had last night, we knew it would be questionable.  Below is just an internet picture of The Top of Europe that we had hoped to see in person.

Yesterday's winds were strong during the day and they said the gusts at high elevations were strong enough to possibly take a train car off the tracks.  It only got worse last night as an intense wind storm blew through the valley we were staying in.  Our hotel sustained winds of at least 80+ kilometers per hour and probably stronger.  We we told there was no major damage to the hotel but some things blew from the balconies as the wind shook our hotel.  After breakfast we spoke to the owner who told us that trees had been blown over at higher elevations and were laying on the railroad tracks that led to The Top of Europe.  It didn't look good that we would make it to either of our desired destinations.  The hotel owner said she last remembered that type of a windstorm about 10 years ago!

Plan B

After breakfast we did some brainstorming and planning.  The hotel was kind enough to let us go early from our scheduled reservations and off we went, headed north with a purpose to make it about 400 kilometers to the City of Heidelberg.  It is a very nice city on the Neckar River.  When we got here we drove into a very narrow alley and checked in to the Goldene Rose Hotel.  The room is extremely nice and quite modern.  Our room overlooks a pedestrian only shopping area and we are about 2 blocks from the river.

After getting settled in, we walked to a German restaurant, had a nice meal and hustled back to the hotel in the rain.  We will see tomorrow what Heidelberg has to offer and wonder what the Top of Europe and Shilthorn would have been.

 Heidelberg, Germany

 Disco is alive and well here in Heidelberg.  The hours are 11pm to 5am!

Heidelberg architecture

The Top of Europe and, The Waterfly

April 28, 2012
Today is Nika's birthday and she had made special plans to go to the top of Europe.  The top of Europe is a place called Jungfrau and is almost literally the top of Europe!  That's all I'll say about it for now because, unfortunately we don't have any pictures to support it.  We don't have any pictures because, apparently on a rare occasion it is too windy for the train to take us there.  Guess what?  Today was one of those windy days that was too windy for the train to travel there.  Those special plans had to be postponed.

"The waterfall that is a waterfly" is Nika's translation.  If you have been reading these blogs you know that we are in the valley of 72 waterfalls.  The water from the waterfalls that we can see from our hotel balcony are not waterfalls this evening.  They are instead, waterfly's because the same wind that kept us from the top of Europe is keeping waterfalls from reaching the ground.  There is a waterfall within view of our hotel balcony that has snow at its' base where it reaches the ground.  As we drove through town tonight, we saw that the water is not reaching the ground and thus, Nika said "It's a waterfly!"

 Instead of the top of Europe, we drove to the Capitol of Switzerland.  That means we went to the City of Bern.  One of the stories of how the town of Bern was named goes like this.  The founder of the city vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on the hunt.  This turned out to be a bear.  Once in Bern, we walked around the historical part of Bern that dates back to the 1220's.  On one end of this historical part of Bern is an area called Barengraben or, aka: Bear Pit.  In the Barengraben there are bears...brown bears!

Bern seems to be a very fashionable city.  We enjoyed our afternoon in Bern that included seeing the bears, walking along the Aar River, watching kids in a soapbox derby and walking through the markt grasse, also known as market street.

Overall it was a 45 minute to one hour drive each way from Lauterbrunnen.  A nice and easy scenic drive that, in part, goes along Lake Thunersee (Lake Thun).

20,000 Liters of Water Per Second

April 28, 2012

Today is Nika's birthday...Happy Birthday!  But, today's blog is not about what she did on her birthday.  It's about what she did the day before her birthday.  With that being said though when we went downstairs for breakfast and started to sit down, the owner came over to Nika and asked her if she minded changing tables for this breakfast?  Unbeknownst to us, she (the owner), had set Nika a special birthday breakfast table in the corner with flowers and a handwritten card.  Very nice!

From our hotel we walked through the town, next to the farmers fields, along the cliffs, through the valley of 72 waterfalls, across the river and, all the way (3 kilometers) to "Trummel-bach-falle".

Trummel-bach-falle is a series of waterfalls within a mountain.  The water in the falls is from ten glaciers and these falls are accessible by a tunnel lift that took us up part of the way and then we did the rest on foot.  Someone must have spent a lot of time and effort building this within the mountain including sidewalks, stairs and lighting.  Along the way we saw 10 waterfalls gushing and incredibly enormous amount of water.  Once inside it was easy to realize why there was a caution sign at the entrance that warned us to not lean over the railing and for parents with kids to pay close attention their little ones.  Up to 20,000 liters of water per second is falling inside this mountain!  For us Americans, I googled what that converted to and....5283.4 gallons per second.  That is 317,004 gallons a minute and 1,585,020 gallons every 5 minutes!  We estimated that we were there for about an hour so with my fuzzy math we saw 19, 020,240 gallons of water falling!  Quite a powerful site of our earth's nature!

The walk through the valley also revealed parachutes opening periodically.  Apparently this valley is known world-wide for base jumping.  We ate dinner last night in a local pub-type setting and overheard a guy from Portland, Oregon talking about his 2-week trip here specifically to base-jump.  Our trip schedule is already set and there's not a lot of room to fit extras in so we won't be doing any base jumping on this trip.  :-)

 

From What Might Have Been to Now

April 27, 2012
My birthday trip started in a small car in Germany pointed in a southbound direction.  Our first stop was the City of Wiesbaden, Germany.  In 1989 I was in the U. S. Air Force and stationed in south-central England at RAF Fairford AFB.  That base was closing and in 1990 I got orders to go to Lindsey Air Station in Germany.  I got out of the Air Force when RAF Fairford closed and never made it to Germany.  Lindsey Air Station is now closed but it was located in Wiesbaden.  We drove through the city to look around at the place where I might have lived had circumstances been different.  With that being said though, I might not be here, in Switzerland, right now, with Nika had I gone to Germany in 1990.  

The rest of the day was spent driving to Switzerland.  We drove about 530 kilometers in total and landed in a gorgeous place with what is said to be the cleanest air on earth.  Our view from our hotel room at Hotel Oberland is really great!  We can see numerous waterfalls from the rocks in the nearby mountains and we have a spectacular view of the Alps.

 Wiesbaden, Germany

 Interlaken

Lauterbrunnen

 View from our balcony

Majestic Alps