Yes, we have left Heidelberg a few times

We recently realized that if you read our blog you might get the feeling that we've never really left Heidelberg, so I decided to catch up on all of the trips we've taken. Initially, we thought that we'd be doing a lot of traveling to other countries, but this Germany is so beautiful that we've really focused our time on nearby towns and cities.

LINDAU

Our first overnight trip was to Lindau, a place that just might have become my favorite place on Earth. It's a little island town on the Bodensee (Lake Constance), which is at the border of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Looking out across the harbor, past the New Lighthouse (which was built in the 1850s, in contrast the the yellow-topped Old Lighthouse built in the 1400s), you can see the alps on the far side of the lake. One day we rented bicyles and had what we all decided was a perfect day-- riding around town, riding over the causeway to the mainland, riding along the coast of the lake, and then finishing the day with a vigorous game of minigolf.

STRASBOURG, FRANCE

Our first trip out of the country was to Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France. The entire old part of the town is surrounded by a series of rviers and canals, so we took a boat tour around the town before touring it on foot. The cathedral there is breathtaking, and we climbed to the spire for a priceless view of the city.

TRIER

We went with the students on a day-long field trip to Trier. The boys loved playing in the ruins of the Roman amphitheater, and it was amazing to see how well-preserved the Roman gates, the Porta Negra were.

DAY-TRIPS TO NEARBY TOWNS WITH MY PARENTS

My parents were able to come visit for over a week, and we had a great time showing them around. Although we had hoped to go on a weekend-long trip, that weekend there was a train strike, so we ended up deciding just to visit several of the small towns that we could get to on local trains. First, we went to Ladenburg, a town with some Roman-era ruins.

In Ladenburg, we had a very unique dinner-- a restaurant there specializes in a really unique cooking style. They bring out a slab of marble that has been heated at 1400 degrees, and then you cook your steak directly on this searingly hot stone. Can you imagine an American restaurant with a children's menu that includes placing a 1400 degree stone in front of a kid? Dom felt like such a big kid, cooking his own steak (Notice Stacy deftly stopping Ian's hand as he's reaching for the stone!)

We also took them to back to Speyer, as well as Schwetzingen, where the castle gardens are beyond belief.

ROTHENBURG OB DER TAUBER

While my parents were here, we also went with Karl Drehsel to an incredibly picturesque medieval town, Rothenburg. The town still is surrounded by its medieval wall, which you can still walk around. Karl also took us by a local glass factory, where Ian decided that his new career goal is to be a glass maker. We enjoyed the scenery, the wall, and Stacy found Kurbiscremesuppe (Pumpkin Cream Soup).

WIEN, OESTERREICH (Vienna, Austria)

The educational field trip this semester was a five day trip to Wien. I was completely caught off-guard. I expected a quaint little city, but I had no idea what grandeur we would see there. Most of the buildings were just too large and too impressive to capturn in pictures. But what an incredible week! We went to the Schoenbrunn Palace, and had fun with a group of our students running around in a giant hedge maze in the palace gardens. Stacy and Dominic went with one group of students to a museum that houses the works of a modern artist named Hundertwasser, a man who believed that straight lines were immoral since you don't find straight lines in nature, so all of his works were based on naturalistic curves, while Ian and I went to a military history museum, where we saw the car that the Archduke Ferdinand was riding in when he was assassinated-- along with his 90-year old blood-stained clothers! Stacy and I got to hear a concert that featured Strauss and Mozart music, and all of us saw the Royal Treasury.

We even had a chance to go see the house of Sigmund Freud. It was interesting to see the place where one person, single-handedly, came up with ideas that set the field of psychology backwards for about 40 years. Even more fun, however, was getting to eat cake at Freud's favorite cafe, Cafe Landtmann.

One of the boys' favorite places was the art museum. This wasn't because of the great Egyptian, Roman and Greek exhibits. It was because they learned that several of the hallways were used as sets for the Naboo Palace scenes in Star Wars Episode I (The Phantom Menace)-- if we imagined digitizing out a few sculptures and digitizing in a few battle droids, we felt like we were there.

TRIBERG

Last of all, yesterday, we went for a day trip to Triberg, which is in the Schwartzwald (Black Forest). The town is beautiful. It's known for two main things: Cuckoo clocks and having the tallest waterfall in Germany. The wasserfall is actually made up of about 6 or 7 smaller falls, all linked together. We didn't get a cuckoo clock, but we had a great time walking around this beautiful little forest town-- especailly since tourist season has officially ended!

Thanks for reading up on our journeys!
Steve