Heidelberg
28.07.2010 - 29.07.2010
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Summer Travels - 2010
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Thursday morning -- we are all a bit sad as we pack up our things and get ready to leave Paris. Well, all of us except for Scott who is secretly very excited about testing his mettle on the autobahn. We have reserved a car for the remainder of our trip and it is waiting for us in the parking garage of the Louvre. Scott's excitement sputters a bit at the sight of it…a Ford Fiesta with 50,000 kilometers. Nevertheless, we stock it with drinks and baguettes and head out of town. Destination: Heidelberg.
Though it is the height of summer, signs of Fall are making their way into the French countryside and you can smell just the faintest scent of Autumn in the air. The fields of sunflowers are beginning to fade and I hear Langston’s camera from the back seat madly clicking as he attempts to capture these beautiful fields against deep blue sky. 
This, I suspect, becomes especially challenging once we leave France for Germany and join the ranks of autos flying down the highway. Powerful sedans zoom past us on both sides leaving our brave little Ford Fiesta shuttering in their wake. Even while we travel at a speed of 100mph, we barely have time to register the make of car as they whiz past us, their sleek shapes and darkened windows giving them a sinister-like appearance. I take some small measure of comfort in the word “airbag” stamped across the panel in front of me and escape my anxiety in a book, figuring if we die before we reach our destination, I will at least have ended my days in Paris.
We reach Heidelberg around 7:30. Scott is exhausted from the challenging drive and elects to spend the evening catching up on sleep so the rest of us venture into town and hunt down our first Bavarian meal. Heidelberg is a University town and we wind up in a college pub surrounded by what we presume are academics – students sipping from coffee cups as they type intently into their laptops, men arguing over journal articles while drinking from huge steins of beer, and families laughing over meals of sausages and sauerkraut. 
I make the shift from my nonexistent French into unrecognizable German and attempt to order from the menu. I end up with something resembling thick mortadella cut into strips and mixed with vinegar and red peppers. Analiese and Lang are content with wiener schnitzel and spaetzle and we find ourselves finally beginning to relax after our day in the car. As we leave to make our way back to our hotel , a storm of hailstones– the biggest I’ve ever seen – fall from the sky. God, perhaps, reminding us to give thanks for sparing our lives.
Posted by Queen Anne 28.07.2010 22:38 Archived in Germany Tagged family_travel
