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

It’s a small world and it’s 533 steps up to the top of the “DOM”

April 25, 2012

When I go on vacation I hope to NOT see people I know.  On this trip I have not met anyone that I know but I have to say it is a small world.  The hotel we are staying at is operated like a home.  The wife coordinates everything, is the hostess, our waitress, etc.  The restaurant here serves home cooking, prepared by her husband and I must say, it is great food!  The restaurant is very easy going and usually the guests all interact with each other during the meal.  We have spoken with people from Victoria Island, Canada, a guy from Seattle and a couple from San Diego.  Last night we were sitting at dinner and there were only Americans left in the dining room.  The couple to our left currently lives in Austin, Texas and the female of that couple is from Ft. Worth!  Then there was a single guy sitting to our right.  He heard the female say she was from Ft. Worth and he said he was stationed at Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth.  That peeked my interest because I too, was stationed for 4 years at Carswell AFB between 1985 and 1989.  This guy was there from 1986 to 1989 and said he was in the career field 81150.  I was the only one who knew what that meant because I was in 81152.  You see, 81150 and 81152 were both part of the 7th Security Police Squadron, Strategic Air Command.  81150 were Security Specialist and 81152 were Law Enforcement Specialist.  We all reported for work each day to the same place but the security guys worked on the flight line and the law enforcement guys worked on the main part of the base and sometimes we worked together when we conducted “exercises“ to simulate what the base would do if we were at war.  I didn’t know this guy or the couple from Texas, but what a small world to be in a small town in Germany sitting with people who share a common Texas interest.  

Our adventure today started again on the Autobahn.  Eighty Five mph in the slow lane and in the rain!  We started the day with doors on our car but somewhere along the A61 between Bacharach and Cologne a Volvo and a BMW blew them off going well in excess of 100!  J  

We made it though and parked underground in a parking garage.  When we emerged at the top of the stairs we were standing in a huge square in Cologne Center with the Cologne Cathedral in front of us.   I started taking pictures of this magnificent structure in front of us and a guy asked me to take his picture too.  I did and he explained that he was currently from Atlanta.  He asked if we were going to tour the Cathedral and we said yes.  He asked if he could tag along and again, we said sure.  He tagged along for a little bit before trying to join in on an English speaking tour and explained that his sons were part of the musical group Naturally 7.  They were in Cologne as the opening act for Michael Buble….Anyway, that was just kind of interesting.  

We spent a good deal of the afternoon touring the Cologne Cathedral.  It is quite the impressive place and, as many places in Europe go, it has been around for almost ever!  As we walked around with our pamphlet as our tour guide we learned that there are stained glass windows from the 1500’s, an altar from 1350/60,  the oldest remaining monumental crucifix in the Western World and a statute of Milan Madonna dating back to 1290 that was considered to be one of the three most important relics of the Cathedral because it was considered to work miracles.  We then wanted to see what we could from the belfry of the church.  In order to do that we needed to be 332 feet above where we were and would have to climb 533 steps up a circular staircase about wide enough for 1 ½ people.  It was one way up and one way down and all stairs!  The view was well worth it and wasn’t scary, but at one point was quite startling.  We were standing in the bell tower taking a few pictures of the five or so huge bells.  At 15, 30, 45 and at the top of each hour at least one bell tolls.  We were “fortunate” enough to unexpectedly be there at 15 minutes after the hour, standing about 15 feet from a bell that tolled right while Nika was about to pose for a picture!  Priceless!!

                                    
From there we walked around the City Center of Cologne, drank coffee and had a small sandwich (while watching some street entertainment) before getting back on the high speed road to our hotel.  A good meal of boar in a nearby restaurant and tomorrow we will be on our way to Switzerland!    

The castle and the merging of the Rhine and Mosel Rivers

April 24, 2012
On our anniversary we spent an easy travel day by car in the middle Rhine River area.  Our hotel overlooks the Rhine River and we had considered a Rhine River cruise but since we have a car, we are driving up and down the Rhine River to the same places the river cruises go.

We started our day with at visit to the Eltz Castle.  This is a pretty well preserved 8-story castle that is one of the few castles that was left standing after all the wars in European history.  They told us on our tour that the primary reason the castle remained standing after all these wars was because the owner played politics to keep it from getting destroyed.  We took a few pictures here but once inside, they prohibit pictures to preserve what is there.

After the Eltz Castle we went to the City of Koblenz.  This city is where the Rhine River merges with the Mosel River.  This looks like a very nice and fairly modern city with cable cars crossing the river near the point where the rivers merge.  There is also an enormous statute of Kaiser Wilhelm at the point where the rivers merge.  He is the dude that united Germany and I guess when you're that important you get a big statute.  :-)  During WWII the statute was damaged and partially destroyed by an artillery strike but it was repaired and rebuilt.  In 1953, Germany created a new anthem and united at this location to sing their anthem together for the first time.  

Point where the Rhine and Mosel Rivers merge

Kaiser Wilhelm statue

Koblenz, Germany

 2000 year history statue in Koblenz

Rhiner River area countryside