Hello again! It’s been a couple days since I’ve posted… Andrew and I are doing fine though, just crazy busy and I’ve lately been too tired to blog at night :P. On Friday, it just happened that there was really nothing to blog about. We didn’t have class, we had a session on “travel information” at which it was explained to us where we could go and what we could use with our transportation cards called “Entdecker Tickets.” Then we were also filled in on where and how to use our German Rail passes. The Entdecker tickets are what we use to get on the Straßenbahn, the busses, and the Sbahn.  They cover a pretty large area: about 40km from Heidelberg in every direction. This means that we can travel to any of the cities in the surrounding area and use all of the public transportation there for the duration of our time here.

The German Rail pass is different in that it gets us on the ICE, the German high-speed rail train. We get eight days on the train for our month here, and will be using to get to and from Berlin in two weeks and to get to and from wherever we decide to go this upcoming weekend. 

After all of this was explained to us, and some suggestions were made about where we might want to visit, etc. we did a scavenger hunt around Heidelberg. This was slightly annoying to me, it was hot and I’m getting rather tired of walking around Heidelberg for the fun of it. Once we finished that, we ate lunch, hung out by the river for a while, ate dinner and went home.

Saturday was more exciting than Friday; we had our excursion to the Black Forest! (Schwarz Wald) We got on the bus in the morning and the ride there took a couple hours. Our first stop was a museum consisting of all sorts of information about the traditional way of life in the Black Forest. This mainly consisted of numerous farm houses imported in from all different areas of the Black Forest. 

One of the old houses. They kept the animals in the house with them, on the first floor, and lived in the top floors.

A grain mill, powered by a water mill.

These were very interesting to walk through; most of them were at least two hundred years old and some of them as old as four hundred years. In one of the exhibits in these houses I learned that Hans Thoma (from Hans-Thoma-Platz, where I meet Andrew every day) was a famous artist from the Black Forest from the 19^th century. They even had some farm animals in place, to make sure you really got a feel for the way of life I suppose.

Once we had spent a couple hours working our way through the museum, we got back on the bus and drove another hour or so to our picnic location. We found a spot on the top of one of the hills, to afford us this outstanding view of the mountains of the Black Forest.

Finally, we rode for a while longer on the bus and came to a small town in the Black Forest to see a cloister ruin and some waterfalls. The cloister was built in the 12^th-ish century, and unlike most other ruins, which were destroyed by war, weather and time simply got the best of this one. The waterfalls were obviously beautiful, but the best part was that our bus was waiting for us at the bottom of the rather long decent. :P Just kidding.

Andrew and I took a few pictures together today, it took a few tries before Andrew could get his act together and take a nice picture. :P

And then there was this thing. :P I don't know what it is, or why it's there, but I thought it was kind of cute.

We made our way back to Heidelberg at about 7pm. Andrew and I tagged along with a few other students; we went to grab some dinner and then headed to the riverside park to relax and wait for the lighting of the castle. On that day several hundred years ago, the French destroyed the Heidelberg Schloss, I’m pretty sure we were celebrating its survival and reconstruction though, not its previous demise. The castle was lit up yellow, and then red, and then there were fireworks. It was pretty cool, but I didn’t catch any pictures. After that, we waited for the Straßenbahn for half an hour. We had to fight to get a place on it; I have never seen it so crowded, we were packed even more tightly than sardines! When I got home after that, I fell straight asleep.

Today was a relaxing day. After shower and breakfast, I went on a hike with my host-father up the mountain where they grow grapes for wine, as well as strawberries, cherries, chestnuts, blackberries, and more. It was a very very hot and humid and steep hike up, and I’m pretty sure I just sweated off all of the sunscreen I was so sure to put on. But, it was still fun and I learned a couple things and was rewarded with a breeze and a lovely view on the top.

The mountain is named Madonnaberg, and there is a statue of Bella Madonna on it about ¾ of the way up. My host-father is part of an organization that tries to ensure that nature is open for the public to use and explore. We made the hike because there is a vineyard owner who put up fences to protect his grapes from the wild boars, but cut off access to that part of the forest in the process. Johannes and a few others had been writing letters asking him to create an access point, and today we found out that he actually had. I also learned a few more German words for different plants (Castanien for chestnuts, for example). 

The Madonna, surveying the lands.

The vineyard! Already thick with baby grapes. :)

I met up with Andrew for lunch after that, and we enjoyed ourselves walking around and then chilling in another, quieter section of the riverside park, this one by the old bridge instead of the new. I then went back to Schriesheim for a cook out with the other Schriesheim residents housing American students for the next few weeks. That was pretty fun, too. :)

My understanding of German is definitely progressing, but I’m not sure about my speaking. If I can express more than I could before, I can’t tell. I do know I speak more, but that’s just because it’s much more mandatory here than at school where I can get away with being quiet. :P But, I’m really happy that I can understand so much more than before! I can now read most of what I see around town, and can understand bits and pieces of conversations I hear as I’m walking around. It’s not such a headache to try and concentrate and understand what is being said anymore. I watched the bee movie in German the other day, and actually understood most of it. :) So, I guess this trip has already been pretty beneficial, here’s hoping I make some more progress before it’s all over!