Monday 22 April 2013

1000 odd km on the wrong (right) side of the road: Germany Roadtrip, Part 1.


Hello everyone!

Sorry for the rather large gap between blog posts, I'm a bit stressed at the moment writing my dissertation type thing due in soon so have very little energy or inclination to write for pleasure. Stress also spiked when my laptop gave up the ghost (interestingly Germans have a very similar idiom for this, den Geist aufgeben).

Also, since writing the above a few days ago my house caught fire. Everyone is ok due to someone raising the alarm early enough but we are currently all temporarily homeless and slightly in shock. As a result, I can't sleep, so I thought I'd catch up on my blog posts. I may write about the fire in a later post, but in the meantime we'll content ourselves with the stories of the Awesome German Roadtrip.

So, back in March Tylor, Whitney and I decided we hadn't seen enough of Germany and as Whitney only had a few weeks left before returning to the States we planned a haphazard road trip.

Our trip began Thursday, 21st March. Trier Hauptbanhhof was the launching pad, a 3 way happy clap was our official opening ceremony. We trained it to Koblenz, during which Whitney and Tylor discussed the first things they would do upon arriving back home in the States and Canada respectively. In a nutshell, a lot of barbequing. As a Brit, I naturally couldn't contribute a lot to this.

Upon arriving in Koblenz I started to get rather nervous, as we were to hire a car, and I was to drive it. Driving on the right + German driving (very aggressive) + Autobahns + Snow makes for a very nervous Beth. I was soothed a bit upon finding out our car was a Ford Fiesta, a newer version than mine at home but still, Fiestas I can do. Anyway, we set off and despite Tylor having to keep a close eye on the distance between our car and parked cars (not always big enough) I was doing it! We headed up to Hannover to pick up Heather, Tylor's friend from home, then headed to Kassel.

During my Autobahn driving experience Tylor fed me chocolate as a reward for not driving into oncoming traffic, basically.

I'm sad we didn't get to see more of Hannover. Here's some pictures (courtesy of Tylor) of the Rathaus and a cool ruined church we saw during our 2 hour stop though:



The drive to Kassel was the worst drive of the weekend, as it was so foggy you could barely see 50 metres ahead and also snowy. Luckily nothing happened though, and we arrived in Kassel safetly. We much delighted in telling Heather, who has only recently begun the adventure that is learning the German language, that her street in slang meant penis street. So mature.

Anyway, we made Heather's lovely apartment in Kassel our base for the next few days and did a few day trips to see some other cities.
I hadn't heard much about Kassel, but was interested to learn from Heather that Kassel is a mecca for modern art. Each festival they keep one of the exhibitions and erect it somewhere in the city. We discovered a few of them, and I simultaneously but completely independently realised I wasn't entirely keen on all Modern Art. Examples below:

Casual rock in a tree.
A silver lion being attacked by Ants. Tylor was not pleased.
 
OK so this one was actually quite cool. Who doesn't like a giant robot after all?

All in all though Kassel is very pleasant, and just outside of the city there is a beautiful castle, with a huge statue of Hercules on the top of the hill. We only went as far as the castle I'm afraid, as we hadn't much time and there was a high chance due to snow and ice of taking a speedy and slippery trip back down the hill:


For Tylor's much better description of Kassel, with more historical stuff, click here.

The next day we headed to Göttingen, a beautiful old university city just over the Bundesland border back into Niedersachsen. Sadly it was "a bit nippy" so not much exploring was done. We also accidentally crashed a wedding when looking for the Information Centre, oops. Who has a wedding in a tourist information centre anyway?!

Hoover purchased (don't ask) and the sights seen, we headed back to Kassel to warm up a bit (and y'know, sleep). The next day we headed to Würzburg, in the Franken region of northern Bavaria. I'd heard about Würzburg and its beauty from a uni friend who's from there (Hi Fred if you're reading!!) so was excited to see it for myself. We checked into our hotel and set off to see the sights. We had about 3 hours that afternoon to see as much as we could, so we sketched out a strategic plan of attack. Our first stop was the Würzburger Rezidenz, a baroque castle near the city centre.

For all the "Must Sees!" follow this link: http://www.wuerzburg.de/en/visitors/must-sees/index.html

 
Heather, Tylor and Whitney making a W for Wurzburg.
We also taught Heather some useful German over dinner.
 

We were on edge, wanting to see as much as possible in 3 hours, which seemed an impossible task. However, 3 mins walk from the Rezidenz we found ourselves at the next Must See, 4 mins later we were standing at the next one Würzburg Cathedral (see below). We stared at the map, surprised. How could we have crossed the city centre in a matter of minutes? The answer came to us simultaneously: Würzburg is bloody tiny.

No matter, it just meant its beauty was concentrated into a more manageable arena.
After a small run in with a casual football riot, we headed to the Main Event of the Day, the Würzburg Festung Marienberg (fortress), which has been a defensive site since about 1000 BC. The Fortress itself has been there since roughly 1200 AD. Unfortunately, we managed to get lost when trying to find a way up to the fortress twice, proving it to be a very well designed fortress in doing so. We eventually found a winding path up through the vineyards. We took a shortcut up an incredibly steep hill, and Whitney and Tylor (cool kids that they are) decided to charge the fortress. Fun, until Whitney woke up with a sprained foot for her troubles the next morning. Battle wounds aside, we still took the fortress.

The Fortress, with a random bagpipe player in the foreground!

The view of Wurzburg from the fortress.
 
Anyway, the next morning we headed home, tired but happy, to Kassel.

Below is a screenshot of our route through Germany, 1,080 km in total, fun. Note the Netherlands for size reference.


We were due to say goodbye to the car (dubbed Pepe) by midday; we arrived in plenty of time, cleaned out the car, put the keys in the deposit box and called a taxi.


Here things took a dramatic turn for the worst though (dun dun dunnn), as we then realised we'd forgotten to actually lock the car, and the keys were irretrievable. To make things worse, the new Fiesta is missing the manual door lock buttons by the windows, stupid modernisation. Even better, the door lock button on the dashboard we tried pressing sat in the car reversed itself once any of the doors were opened to then get out.


Thoroughly stumped and starting to panic, the taxi arrived. We sent Heather in to stall, which, considering her aforementioned lack of German involved her going "Kleine Moment" and pointing at us. The taxi driver, bemused and concerned, possibly thought we were trying to steal the car.

Anyway, then Whitney, goddess of America, saved the day. She had the bright idea of closing all the side doors, opening the boot, clambering through, pressing the button on the dashboard, clambering back out and closing the boot, which locks automatically after itself. And hurrah! It worked. Cue us dancing around, wildly celebrating Whitney's intelligence.

As Tylor said, trust the Americans to have to come save us all from ruin (or a rather hefty fine).

I'll end on this happy note, Part 2 will be coming soon, depending on well, you know, my living situation.

Auf wiedersehen!





P.S you may have noticed an awful lot of war and battle imagery in this blog post. This is a representation of our mindset and determination to see as much as possible of Germany within 10 days, and we would stop at nothing. Woo!