One of the things you get to do when you live in Europe but can’t work is you get to hijack….er….join other people’s vacations simply because you’re on the same continent.
It’s kinda the same principle at work as when you go home to visit family for Christmas and your friends ask why you didn’t stop by even though they literally live 6 hours away on the other side of the state (this hasn’t really happened so stop wondering if it was you) only in this case I get to take advantage of it. In this particular case Amy’s Dad, Uncle Jim, and brother were doing a little road trip starting in Germany, working through France and Switzerland, and then back up to Munich. Hey, my schedule just happens to be open those weeks! I could go with you guys and uh…you know…help you with the Euro or something. Yeah, that’s it!
Eric (Amy’s brother) and me actually got into Frankfurt after the two others who had flown in a couple of days earlier and just hung out (this included one of them almost getting a date with a lady they met in a park who was a banker of some sort, sadly it was not to be). Upon our arrival we met up with the two wandering brothers and we all piled into the rental car and headed towards our first stop in the trip, Hidelberg.
Hidelberg is a town South of Frankfurt on the Neckar River that still has an old stone and brick bridge that considering some rather well known world events last century is in remarkably good shape. It, however, is not the main draw of the city, nor is the fairly quaint look of the place. No, the real draw is the big honking Castle that was build on the side of a mountain overlooking the place. A piece of real estate that could be used as proof for the idiom, “location, location, location.”
We started at the castle. The short version of its history is that it started as a pretty small place on the side of the mountain and then over time was built up to be something not only to show off to foreign guests but also as a fortification. This worked out pretty well until a few wars swept through during the 1600’s and it was burned, sort-of rebuilt, taken over several times, struck by lightning and burned again, and finally hollowed out by the French out of what seems like sheer spite. It was a heck of a century.
A restoration process of sorts has begun and over a few years parts of it can be toured. As “ruins” go it’s in pretty decent shape. It actually looks like a castle. There have been a few of these where you kinda look around at piles of rock and think…yeah, I could have just used the Internet on this one. One of the most interesting things in this castle though was in the basement. You see, it was kinda customary to have something really cool to show off to people and the owner of this particular castle settled on a wine barrel. Not just any wine barrel though. A huge two story monstrosity that holds roughly 60,000 gallons of wine and has a dance floor on top. I’m fairly certain that’s on the list of things that make you an alcoholic. It was, however, impressive. Apparently it was also one of the ways he collected taxes. People brought in a certain amount of wine and added it to the barrel.
After touring the gardens and a walkthrough of the castle we worked our way down the streets into the old part of Hidelberg for lunch. Bratwurst and potatoes, you can’t go wrong really. A quick stroll around the town showed off some great architecture and a friendly laid back atmosphere. Nothing really beat the view from the edge of the castle gardens though. My only real complaint about this stop was our first dinner in the area was ironically an Italian restaurant. I blame Eric.
