Birthday

Wednesday the 18th was Kate's 21st birthday!!! Unfortunately, she was sick most of the day, but after having most of the day to rest she was still able to go out to a nice birthday dinner (yay!)
We went to a restaurant called Alt Hall, which we originally thought was German, but now we think it was Greek. In any case, it was pretty fancy, and really nice.
So, we ordered our drinks (the birthday girl got white wine; pretty fancy). Then it was taking us a long time to order, because it wasn't familiar food and the menu was in German. Kate and I both have decent German, but some food vocab is REALLY specialized, and Courtney and Simona (from Italy), are both new to German. After a while, the waitstaff must have figured out how confused we were, because they brought us English menus, lol! Turns out they had them all along, and we just didn't know to ask! On the other hand, it makes me feel good to think that we are passable enough for them not to give us those right off the bat!
Food:

Me - pork made into rolls and filled with sheep-milk cheese.
It was pretty good, but I had to squish out most of the cheese because it was so strong.
Courtney - some dish that is basically a Gyro minus the pita bread.
Kate - Calamari
Simona - Something that looks like lasagna but is apparently the Greek version, made with eggplant and not pasta (this is how she explained it to me, anyway)

Ooooh, and then Courtney and I split ice cream with hot chocolate syrup (which came on the side in, like, a miniature gravy boat), and it was REALLY good.
The wait staff was really nice, and they talked to us, and one of them took a picture with us. It was really fun. That is all.

Sorry I'm not in the picture; I was taking it. I'll try to steal Courtney's pictures. Hey, at least this way you can see who my friends are!!

Hallia Venizia

On Sunday morning (February 15th), Courtney and I went to the Methodist church near our Wohnheim. It was much more casual than the Evangelical (and in a newer building), and in fact wasn't that far off from what I'm used to at home. The people seemed really nice too.
Unfortunately, I was just having one of those random days where I couldn't stay awake in church, which was really embarrassing (but I was trying hard, honest!). But after church they made heart-shaped cocoa waffles with powdered sugar on top, which were really good!
Anyway, after church, we went to lunch, and then out into town for Hallia Venizia.

Hallia Venezia is the version of Carnival that is celebrated in Schwabisch Hall. The version we're most familiar with is Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and that's what most German "Fasching" or Carnival celebrations are like, with a big party, and dancing, and a parade. Anyway, this is completely different. They celebrate Carnival the way they do in Venice. They still have the bright, crazy costumes, and the "Maskers" (who work year-round to hand-make the costumes) walk around the streets of the city from 12-2, in complete silence. They just walk slowly through the streets, separated, and people take pictures of them, but they never say a word.
At 2:00, they gather on the steps of St. Michael's (the big church in town) for a presentation. Basically, while classical music plays from the loudspeakers, they walk up and down the steps, and interact with each other (but never speak). Eventually (after what seemed to me like a really long time), they come down and sort of dissipate back into the crowd.
The number of people who come to see this presentation is incredible. The main square of town was packed full. We were lucky enough to get near the front, albeit off to the side a bit. It was a pretty cool experience, and the costumes are just fantastic.

Heidelberg Part II

Okay, to resume where I left of yesterday...

After lunch we met back at Karlsplatz (the square with the crazy trees) to head up to the castle. It was a rather steep road up, and most of it was slicked over, so there was only a single-file area near the rail that was clear. We eventually made it up safely.
The castle was built a long time ago (1200s), and has been repeatedly destroyed/added onto/renovated throughout the years, so who knows how much of it's actually original (but still really cool!) Basically every time a new prince came into power, he would renovate to his liking, sometimes drastically. Then there's war, or growth, etc.
Anyway. Pictures.



This is one of the fantastic views of the city from the castle.

Me enjoying another fabulous view.
Lol, the tower makes it look like I have an antenna...

This is one of the parts of the castle that was rebuilt after the mass destruction in Heidelberg in the 1700s (as Ursula put it: "It was a really bad century for Heidelberg..."). If my guess is right, it's in the baroque style.

You can't tell very well here because Tonatiuh walked into my picture, but this is a MASSIVE wine barrel in the castle cellar. I believe Ursula said it holds over 120,000 gallons of wine. Let's just say there's a platform on top that lots of people could walk around on.

Courtney and me in front of one of the "smaller" wine barrels.

An old archway into the castle. Now part of the ruins, as you can see.

A part of the ruins that has an unusual Roman flair...

A ruined tower -->

One last panoramic view before hiking back down into the city...


















Two rather picturesque little houses just down from the castle. I believe Ursula said they were used to house some sort of university club, which sounded a lot like a fraternity. Even if that is quite a hike up the hill, fairy-tale cottage/manors sitting just below an 800-year-old castle are WAY cooler than any frat house in the US!!!!


This theater (the Harmonie Lux) must be dedicated to showing Hollywood films, because these are all American movies. 2 of them are even pretty new (despite the fact that they usually take a while to come to Europe). For those who didn't work at a theater and therefore don't recognize movie posters on sight, they are: Benjamin Button, The Spirit, The International, Bolt, He's Just Not That Into You, and Twilight.



Ah, the Swatch store... We went through all kinds of things to get Courtney to this store to buy a watch. We saw it on the lunch break, but then didn't have time to go in. We contemplated parasailing down from the castle and landing in front of the store to save time, but we couldn't find any parasails, lol (people do parasail down from the castle, though) Anyway, once we got there, it took so much time that we could hardly to any other shopping. The kicker: once we left the store, she realized the watch didn't work. It started working, randomly, about 4 days later. The watch's design name? Irony.


One last picture. This is the oldest house in Heidelberg (other than the castle). It was the only one to survive the wars and fires of the "bad century for Heidelberg". It is now a hotel.










On the way back from Heidelberg (about 4:20 in the afternoon), about 20 minutes into the trip, a girl realized she had lost her wallet in Heidelberg. So we turned around. Fortunately, she knew exactly where she'd left it (in a restroom) and, by some miracle, it was still there. After that, it was a relatively uneventful ride home.
Back in Schwabisch Hall, Courtney, Andrei and I went to eat a Bali Kebap (our typical go-to restaurant), and then we headed back to the Wohnheim, chatted with Kate up in her and Courtney's room, and then went to bed to prepare for church and Hallia Venicia on Sunday.

The End.

Heidelberg (Saturday, Feb. 14)

On Saturday the 14th, a group from the Institut went to Heidelberg, which is roughly 1.5-2 hours away from Schwabisch Hall. The bus left at 8:30am, and the meeting place was listed as "ZOB". The morning of, on the way out the door, Courtney and I realized that we had no idea what that stood for. Oh no! We were terrified that we were going to miss the bus. Just in case, we went to look in front of the Institut (a typical meeting place), but, alas, no group was to be found. Desperate, we asked a bus driver who was stopped at the nearby bus stop if he knew what that meant and where we could find it. Luckily, that was the perfect person to ask! Turns out, ZOB = Zentraler Omnibus Bahnhof, or in English, the central bus station. He kindly gave us directions. We showed up just in time to make the bus (part of which we suspect was because Ursula Utz, our wonderful hostess, was the tour guide, so she didn't want to leave people she knew).

On the way to Heidelberg, the bus stopped in a little town (I forget the name), and Ursula went and got pretzels (a regional specialty) for everyone. She told us we would get pretzels at some point on the trip, but neglected to mention when. This stop was about 20 minutes in. By an hour later, Courtney and I were both quite concerned about the fate of our pretzels, and when on earth they were going to hand them out. "PRETZELSSSSS!!!!!!"
Anyway, turns out we were waiting, for some even-now mysterious reason, to get to this little picnic bench about 15-20 minutes from Heidelburg, so we could all gather around and stand, in the cold, eating our now-cold pretzels and (for those who like it) drinking coffee/tea.



Upon arriving in Heidelberg, we walked from our drop-off point (Neckarmunzplatz) to Karlsplatz, a square with some crazy trees and also to a science school.


The sign with the "H" on it is a bus stop sign. They are everywhere.


Our first stop on the sight-seeing tour was the Heilige Geist Kirche (Holy Spirit Church), the historic cathedral in Heidelberg. It was originally Catholic, and after the Reformation it kept switching back and forth between Catholic and Evangelical (depending on the religion of the local prince at the time), then they actually built a wall in the middle of the sanctuary and shared it for a time, and now the wall is down and it is an Evangelical church.




This is the church from the back. The whole back wall is lined with shops (and has been for hundreds of years), and nowadays they mostly sell tourist junk. :D Between me and the church is also a small market selling fresh produce and flowers.






This is the inside of the back part of the church. The rounded wall is a series of stained-glass windows, and the pointed archways and soaring ceilings are in the Gothic style. And someone's head is in the picture...







This is a sample of the wonderful ceiling decorations, from the middle part of the sanctuary.







This is a view of the sanctuary from the balcony, with me in it to prove I was actually there. ;)





After looking at the church and hearing a bit of the history from Ursula, we went up this crazy-narrow staircase, AAAALL the way to the top of the church (well over 200 steps, I'm sure). The view of the city from there is fantastic, and you can walk all the way around to see every direction.

View of the castle from the church:

View of the university:

View of the Alte Brucke (Old Bridge):

The old bridge was our next stop. Nearby was this crazy baboon statue/mask thing that seems entirely out-of-place, but sort of fun:







<--- The entrance to the bridge (taken from on the bridge)

Statue of the prince who had it built --->

Next we visited the Studentenkarzer (Student Prison), where for over 200 years (1710-1912, I believe...), misbehaving students were incarcerated for up to 2 weeks. During this time period, the city had no jurisdiction over the university students, so it was up to the school to discipline students when they, for example, were being too loud during quiet hours or were drunk in public. The walls are covered with art and poetry, and I'm not really sure how it got there; I must have missed that part of the discussion...

We also saw the grand hall where the Universitat Heidelberg has all of their graduation ceremonies and everything.



At this point, we had lunch/shopping time. Me, Courtney, Alexei (super-cool Romanian who played FussWasser with us, has lived in the US for the past 8 years, and has a PhD in Chemistry), Tonatiuh (Mexican guy who hit on me a lot the first week, but has since chilled), Marwan (Saudi Arabia), and one other person I can't remember, went with Ursula. We went to a sit-down restaurant that is apparently frequented mostly by students, and somehow lost Marwan on the way in (we never did find him, but he managed to make it back to the bus in time to leave). I ate sub-par Schnitzel with broccoli and cheese on top (the schnitzel on the 3-Euro Schnitzelburgers at a stand in Schwabisch Hall is way better), and we had no time left for shopping (we might have gone to a quick place, but Ursula wanted to sit down to eat), but that was okay I guess, because we had time to sit and chat, and Ursula is really nice. On the way to the restaurant we saw some pretty interesting shops and restaurants, including Subway, Pizza Hut, and Hard Rock Cafe.

Somebody remind me not to write posts this long. I have to take a break now. Part 2 to come.

Schwabisch Hall in the Snow

It has been snowing frequently here for the last week or two, so there has consistently been a beautiful light blanket of snow over the city. Here are some pictures of what the town looks like in the snow.


Also, this is Wohnheim 2 (where I live here). I recently realized I had never taken a picture of the outside for you guys; that is now remedied. I am extremely grateful that I live in this Wohnheim and not the ones up that massive hill...

Pictures from Dinner at Ursula's

Spaetzle in the making...










I got to make some. :)

Kaese-Spaetzle.
Yum.
That is all.