What amazing day today in Heidelberg!
After eating a late breakfast/lunch, Lukas, Emily, and I traveled with Lukas' dad to the utterly beautiful city of Heidelberg. It was such a beautiful place! On the way there, we were able to drive on the Autobahn (and yes, there is no speed limit!) to get from Darmstadt to Heidelberg. I didn't get to drive, but we hauled pretty fast in some places. Lukas' dad has a nice VW, so we got to go pretty fast.
In Heidelberg, we parked above the famous castle. We walked around the castle and looked at the city below from one of the many balconies. It was gorgeous. I'll post pictures sometime. It was chilly, but we managed :). The city has many old buildings still around because it was not bombed during WWII by the Allies. The reason was because the Americans chose to make Heidelberg a place for their headquarters, and so many Americans are still here today.
After visiting the castle, we walked down into the city. It's a quaint place with gobs of shops, pubs, bakeries, etc. We stopped in one place and had some coffee and apfelstrudel (apple strudel). The apfelstrudel with whipped cream was delicious. When we finished, we continued walking around and seeing neat places, like the cathedral which used to be divided into two separate denominations for over 200 years (they had a literal wall dividing the inside of the church (the wall is now gone). They also have two separate organs).
I bought some chocolate and also a piece of linzertorte. I haven't eaten it yet, but the linzertorte is supposed to be like what I know at home to be a big "thumbprint cookie" (a crust of crushed nuts with a berry jam on top). Oh, I cannot wait to eat it!
We walked on the bridge that crosses the Neckar river and then made our way back to the car.
On the way back to Darmstadt, we talked about all sorts of things, including assisted suicide. It was interesting to talk about :). I can't really explain it all in a blog post, so I'll just leave it at that.
Mr. Frick (Lukas' dad) took us out to dinner at one of his favorite restaurants, Antik Lokales. I had the most interesting meal....pizza with salad on top of it. Sounds weird, but it was amazing! I loved it. I had a regular cheese pizza (relatively thin crust, but not too thin :)) with a feta salad on top of it. You'd think it'd be soggy and gross, but it was really really good. I may try it at home, who knows :).
We talked a lot at dinner (well, actually, we talked a lot the whole day) with Mr. Frick, who is a 5th-13th grade English and German teacher (they have 13 grades instead of 12). He told us about his work teaching kids and about lots of other things. He was a fantastic tour guide. I was really surprised by how much he knew about the Heidelberg! I know hardly anything about Walla Walla compared to how much he shared with us about Heidelberg.
After dinner, Mr. Frick dropped us off at Lukas' mom and step-dad's home. Now us "kids" are sitting in the living room :) Almost time for bed :)
Happy Sabbath!
