Hanau, Heidelberg, and Trains, Oh My!

So yesterday was quite the little adventure. 14 hours and 40 minutes of actual flight with a 1.5 hour delay after leaving at 8:50am on Sunday from Portland got us here around 10:15am on Monday in Frankfurt. We checked in through customs which was a breeze and then we were off to the trains!

The little kiosk had an interface that allowed the user the pick between a ton of languages which was great, unfortunately the ticket is still printed in German. So this is about the point when Megan realizes that when I say I speak a little German, that it means a little and that the semi technical stuff on the ticket I have zero recollection of. Fortunately we are able to hop on the train to Hanau just in time and make our way out there.

"Why Hanau?" you might ask. Hanau was the birthplace of and the starting point for the Brothers Grimm as they set about their long journey to gather fairy tales from many places all over Germany. In the Marktplatz, right in front of the historic Rathaus is a national monument statue of the brothers.

 

 



After that we did a little walking around town, and then it was time to hit the train to our first overnight stop in Heidelberg. More fun ensues as we have a hard time figuring out how to even use our rail passes and where we can sit on the trains, but with the help of a couple friendly people we are able to get straightened out and manage to get our connecting train in Mannheim.

 

We then make it to Heidelberg and manage to navigate the bus system, with a little help from the information station nearby, and make our way to the Bismarckplatz to meet our first Couch Surfing host of the trip. After getting settled in we all go on a quick tour of Weststadt where we went by the building that the Nazis had their Heidelberg headquarters in. 

 

We then continued on to dinner at a traditional German food restaurant near the Alt Stadt called Essighaus.

Where we all had a great meal which Kelly had a dark beer so black it actually deserved the name schwarzbier, and Megan tried a local non alcoholic drink that was banana nectar mixed with cherry juice. Everything was really well cooked and tasted fantastic.

 

 

We then went back to our hosts home to get showers and to get some sleep because at this point we had been up for just about 30 hours with little or no sleep. Thinking we had  a pretty good leg up on the whole jet-lag thing we set the alarm and crashed out.

 

Kelly