Last year and this: a quick review

Last summer, my sister and I went to Frankfurt for 3 days of a 2 week long European red-wine-art-and-religious-monument bender. We also saw Amsterdam, Paris, and London—it was a whirlwind but completely fantastic trip. Part of my astonishment had to do with the fact that I had never really traveled out of the US (unless you count Tijuana, or a couple brief trips over the border into Canada), so I had 23 years worth of accumulated images and expectations of Europe. To finally encounter it in real life—populated! with real people!—was crazy! A quick recap of last year’s trip:

In Frankfurt where I flew in, my sister and I went to Goethe’s house ("Goethe was here!!! Right here! This is so insane."), and, totally jetlagged and under slept, lazed around the river in the sun eating apple strudel like everyone else. After a couple days of this kind of lazing, we took the train to Amsterdam, saw the Van Gogh museum (quite awesome) and had various reactions to hash brownies and the redlight district. In Paris we spent 2 days in a row in the Louvre, went to the cemetery in Montmarte, the Sacre Coeur, the Eiffel Tower (which was actually a lot cooler than I’d cynically predicted, given all the hype and its iconic omnipresence), and stumbled upon the Notre Dame at night, still open and lit entirely by candle (perhaps my favorite part of the entire trip—very eerie, or gespenstisch, as I’ve recently learned to say in German). In London we spent a day in the Tate Modern, a day in the British Museum (was very curious re: Elgin Marbles), a fair amount of time walking around the Thames ("Shakespeare was here!!! Right—" etc…).

Needless to say, I didn’t learn a lot about Germany in such a quick and completely packed trip, and of the places I visited I felt I probably saw the least in Frankfurt. Which brings me to nowish—the past week or two, I’ve been trying to catch up a little. That is, as much as one can while also trying to fill out paperwork and become bureaucratically indoctrinated by the labyrinthine world of German administrative process and policy for the Auslander. But as I have the luxury of more time here, I’m trying to see without turning my experience into the caffeinated, top-speed jaunt I did last year. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

I have spent unavoidably huge amounts of time in the Altstadt and eating pretty much obligatorily at the many, many Eis cafés on Haupstrausse;

I went to the Heidelberg Schloss (castle), where I swallowed my dignity long enough to take a guided tour in English, and also checked out the exhibit of many Romantic paintings that take the Schloss of Heidelberg as their subject. This was pretty interesting actually, as apparently the Romantic painters considered the Schloss a sort of perfect formula for the aesthetic of the time—a confluence of ancient ruin, dense forest growing up on the hills around it, the Neckar River below, and the town situated along its banks.

I went to Herbstfest (fall harvest, which is celebrated with 80s/90s coverbands, street vendors, and the erection of small, fake villages in which performers juggle, wear Medieval costumes (regretably no pictures of this, though I think you can imagine it), and sell mulled wine, beer, meat sandwiches, and various kitsch.) I’ve spent some time checking out the Alte Brucke (Old Bridge) and trying to appreciate it—personally, my taste in bridges is more like triangles triangles triangles! But if I can't agree that it's spectacular, one thing I can say is that the Alte Brucke is certainly practical--I can use it to, you know, cross the river.

And, encouraged by the tour guide experience at the Heidelberg Schloss, I also took a day trip out of town on a tour bus, no less, to see the Reichsburg Trifels castle, the Abbey at Maulbronn, and German wine country in the Palatinate, or Pfalz. I’ll say more about this later, though, as I still have to sift through the pictures, which I'll try to post with each entry from now on.