Last Monday I went to school with Dara, and she showed me around her campus. After lunch in the cafeteria I grabbed my things and left Stuttgart by train. My second destination, only 40 minutes away, was another university town called Heidelberg. This town is home to the first university in all of Germany, which is still one of the best to this day; It is even more famously known for its world reknowned Heidelberg castle ruins, an example of gothic/renaissance architecture. My host in this town was Barbara Weekes, my Uncle Bob's niece (his brother's daughter). After growing up in Geneva and around Europe, she now lives in Heidelberg with her husband, Werner, and two kids, Lucas (who's in grade 1) and Olivia (kindergarden). These Olivia and Lucas speak german with dad and english with mum, and everyone jumps back and forth so often that it made it very interesting to follow the conversation :) This family welcomed me into their beautiful home right in the heart of the town; I didn't want to leave, and would love to return and work as an aupair,... someday.
Upon arriving Werner had just returned from work and took me on a bike tour of his city. Having grown up and lived all of his life here, he had many entertaining stories to go along with every place that we passed. We eventually made our way up to the castle to take in the view of the city at night. There is a pub within the castle famous for it's huge keg of beer that when full can hold up to 221,726 litres. After the castle Werner and I went for a drink and then picked up some Thai food for dinner (I had been missing my curry). That night after the movie 'watching 4 weddings & a funeral' with Barb I slept very well in their guest room up on the 3rd floor.
The next morning I went for back into the old city on my own and went up to the castle to see it for myself. After lunch in the city I grabbed my things from Barbara's house and she dropped me off at the train station. I began my first trip on my newly purchased Eurail pass. This trip would land me in Salzburg, Austria at 8pm that night. I found my way to the Yoho youth hostel very easily, checked in, and was asleep before I knew it.
Wednesday morning I was up pretty early, showered, had breakfast at the hostel, and left to explore the city by foot. A 5 minute walk brought me to the Mirabell Gardens (where the Doh-Ray-Mi song from the Sound of Music was filmed). I crossed the Nectar river which runs through the center of the city, and over to the old part of the city. Here the streets are familiarly narrow having been built long before there were cars to accomodate. I made my way through to the cathedral, then to the katacombs (a relatively beautiful graveyard as cemetaries go), and finally to the pathway which would lead me up a steep hill to the magnificant white castle that overlooks the city, the Festung Hohensalzburg. I toured the rooms of the castle, and the museums they have within the walls, getting a feel for what it would have been like to live within this fortress (which by the way was never forcefully captured,... but was given over to Napoleon during his invasion). Before returning back down to the city I walked some of the paths up on the castle hill providing some amazing lookout points to the panoramic mountain ranges surrounding this city.
That night I went and heard some Mozart (who was once a local of Salzburg) in a stunning room in the Schloss Mirabell (schloss ='s palace). The piano concert was performed by a woman from Vienna on a white grand piano (how glamerous). :)Thursday was a day of tours. My first one was called 'The Original Sound of Music' tour. The tourguide was a bit annoying with too many horrible jokes, but the trip was entertaining enough, and we saw many of the different sets of where this hollywood production was filmed.
In the afternoon, my second tour was through the Bavarian mountains and down into the Salzburg Salt Mine. Again, annoying tourguide, but very cool to see.
This meant that as of Friday morning Germany's train system was completely shut down, and no trains were leaving from Salzburg in the morning. Although it wouldn't have been the end of the world to be stuck in the city of Maria von Trapp and Mozart another night I was happy to be on the move again. By mid afternoon they were pretty much up and running and I was able to catch a train to Graz (with 2 Aussie girls that I'd met at the hostel). Of course, as we should have expected, our trip South wasn't nearly as easy as we'd anticipated. After 2 hours through the mountains we were switched onto a bus, driven for about 30minutes to some other train station, and then another trip of 2 hours. All of this meant that I arrived in Gray 1 hour late, but thankfully my host was patient enough to wait for me. Neil Bird (a Canadian from Belfountain), and his girlfriend, Uschi, and her younger daughter, Katia, were all there to great me and wisk me off to a Greek restaurant for dinner. Yum :)
Neil has just recently moved in with Uschi and they live in a house just North of Graz (about 20 minutes from the city). After my adventure of a trip I just collapsed into bed last night and, as always, slept very well.
Today (Saturday), Neil took me on a tour of the city of Graz. Just beautiful!!! Here are some picture of our day.
(more pictures of Stuttgart, Heidelberg, and Salzburg to come; they are just on a cd in my backpack at the moment,...)
I'll leave you with a picture of Uschi's cat, Joey :)
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