The train journey home was supposed to be easy - one connection and very simple, but the language barrier meant I bought the wrong ticket and ended up on a three-leg journey. This would have been fine, except leg two was late, and that made us miss our connection. We ended up taking the second train on to Frankfurt airport, rather than the train station, which was right next to our hotel. This worked fine, and we found the metro had a short hop to the train station, but we managed to get on the train going the wrong way, and lost a good hour to the mistake. We got off at the next stop to switch directions. By this time it was after midnight, and the trains weren't running very frequently. It was dark, the area was remote, and we found ourselves nervous for our safety for the first time this trip. (It didn't help that we were carrying two harps and all of our luggage, which made us obvious targets.) A group of three locals showed up separately, talking to each other excitedly in German as they showed up, and walking around the area in a way we found suspicious/scary. It looked like they were surrounding us, and checking out what we had. We made our safe-exit plans and tried to act nonchalant. Luckily, we were totally misreading them, and our train arrived and took us to the train station. I was so exhausted from the nerves from this and from carrying a heavy suitcase and a seemingly heavy harp that I nearly gave out before we made it to the hotel.
| That night, after getting back to the hotel after 1 am, we decided to book a tour bus trip somewhere for the next day, to see some of Germany. I tried for some of the Bavarian locations, but they were all booked, so we settled for Rothenburg. The "bus" proved to be a van, and we went with only one other couple - a couple from Australia. The town was lovely and wonderful, but the tour was quite frustrating, because the "tour guide" gave us no guidance other than telling us when and where to go. He started to read us the tour information from a pamphlet, but I think he picked up on our frustration with that and quit soon after. (We all had copies of the pamphlet, after all.) I would like to go back to the town sometime and explore it on my own schedule, as it seemed very interesting. We did see the clock strike the hour, with little figures appearing from behind closed doors. We visited the museum of crime, which was more like a torture museum. We saw St. Jacob's church. |
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| Since this tour proved so frustrating, we chose to make our own way for our final day of touring, and took the train to Heidleberg. Here, we picked up a bus to the castle, and wandered about. They had a tour in English, so we signed up, and this time got our money's worth hearing about the history and stories of the castle over the years. The tour guide was one of the best I've had anywhere - a Canadian who had learned all the history of the castle by research when he couldn't get an English tour, and then signed up to give the tours himself. |
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That evening after touring Heidleberg, we managed to meet up with Wayne's cousin Harold and his wife Stacey, who are stationed in Germany by the army. (Harold spent a six-month tour in Iraq, and we are relieved he is now safely away from there. He is an orthopedic doctor.) We had a great time visiting -- we went out to a terrific Indian restaurant, and then took them back to our hotel room so they could see and hear the harps.
The next day we were up early and on the plane back to Scotland. (What is it with all these early days? Isn't this a vacation?)