Since I saw Mark Twain's autographed photo in the touristy inn advertised as a "Historisches Studentlokal," (ha ha) where I ate yesterday among Hoosiers and Iowans, I downloaded the part of "A Tramp Abroad" where he talks about student life in Heidelberg (Click here). It's not like that nowadays.
I passed a sign that said "In this house lived the scientist Robert Bunsen." But in my opinion, just because you invented some new kind of burner doesn't mean you're a scientist.
I stumbled on the birthplace and museum of Friedrich Ebert, the lefty Labor organizer who became the first president of the Weimar Republic in the early 20's. Sort of an FDR of post-war Germany. The say if he hadn't died of appendicitis, maybe there wouldn't have been any Nazi party. The place was all photos, letters, and wall explanations of German politics after WWI, very comprehensive and well-done, and in German only. I spent over two hours in there, and made 25 more German vocabulary cards on my phone (e.g., Umstürzler = subversive. Rufmord = character assassination)
Then I came across the footpath up to the castle, so I walked up. It's was a very good evening view of the old tile-roofed town with its churches, and the River Neckar winding away toward the Rhine.
Sign in the window of a Heidelberg bar:
"We have no wifi. Talk to each other. Pretend it's 1995."
Thursday I took the train back up to Frankfurt, passing through Darmstadt where the murdered last tsarina Alexandra of Russia (Queen Victoria's granddaughter) was born. Incidentally, Darmstadt means "Gut City." What were they thinking?!
In Frankfurt I changed for Erfurt, out of Hesse and eastward into Thuringia. Horses, sheep, brown and white cows. Free wifi on the train, so I whatsapped a lot with Missus Slade.
Erfurt is pretty big but it wasn't bombed much so it has very many really old apartment and office buildings with attractive 19-century architectural touches. And maybe it wasn't fiddled with much because it was in the Communist DDR so it was sort of in economic suspended animation.
I had some trouble getting into the apartment. Tobias's flatmate Christian had emailed me that they were at work, but I was to ring Frau Schroder's flat, and she would give me the key. I rang her when I got there. She is an odd little woman with a peculiar manner, and I really couldn't understand anything she said.
She went out to her mailbox but there was no key in it. So I called Christian on my Mobal euro-phone, and he said the previous airbnb tenants must have put the key in HIS mailbox instead of Frau Schroder's. And he couldn't leave work until 4:30 (it was only 2:00 at the time). So I was ready to get kind of pissed, but then Frau Schroder came out of her flat with a long pair of tongs, which I managed to insert into Tobias's mailbox slot and, after quite a lot of fiddling, snag the keys. Ta-daah!
"Theatrum Mundi," a mechanical puppet and doll manufactory on a narrow old street in Erfurt. A little gnome-like man was inside there fiddling with many tools and doll parts. The sign says "Insert a coin."
The old part of town is a pedestrianized labyrinth of very pretty, almost medieval-looking buildings and churches. This afternoon it was full of people walking and shopping and eating, and THEY WERE ALL GERMANS! I didn't hear any other language, except one Australian guy in a restaurant. There was also a busker in one of the platzes singing like Bob Dillon, who was probably an Anglophone, and a skinny guy in another platz playing the didgeridoo, but he was probably a German. So anyway, anybody who wants to discover a charming part of Germany that is very German but off the tourist paths, this is it.
"Thüringer Sauerbraten mit Apfelrotkohl & gebratenen Kloßscheiben" - Thuringian sauerbraten with apple-red-cabbage and roasted dumpling discs. It was pretty good - very much like a London Sunday pub roast, with dumplings instead of Yorkshire pudding. The street outside is the medieval "Via Regia" which ran east-west across the Holy Roman Empire. Erfurt was a main stop on the highway, since it was a center of woad production. Can't live without woad!
Incidentally, wine, beer, and spirits are astoundingly cheap here. A bottle of nice Barolo docg is only $10. It makes you realize how much tax we pay in the U.S. just to get tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment