Vaduz

Vaduz is the capital of Liechtenstein, a country that some people have probably never heard of before, and people who have heard of it probably don’t know where it is on the map. In fact, it’s a tiny country that’s sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria. Miraculously, this country, originally a part of the Holy Roman Empire, never got conquered. It survived empires rising and falling around it, namely Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon’s French Empire, Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, and Nazi Germany, just to name a few. Because it survived the political upheaval around it, it is still ruled by a prince (i.e. a principality) like it always was.

The above image shows the residence of the prince. It feels like some strange anachronism – a prince living in a castle on top of a hill ruling over his subjects, but in a modern time.

Even though it’s the capital of Liechtenstein, it only has ~5000 inhabitants – by no means large at all. Its vibe is quite different from other European cities – it doesn’t have a fancy old town or anything, but there are several museums of art and history, as well as the Princely Wine Cellars, which is a vineyard where guests can do wine tastings.

I jokingly asked the fellow at the tourist info centre if he’d ever met the Prince of Liechtenstein, and he actually said yes! He said that everyone who turns 18 gets invited to an event called the Young Citizens Celebration (Jungbürgerfeier) to meet the prince.

Hohenzollern Castle

From Vaduz, we drove into Germany, to where the House of Hohenzollern began, Hohenzollern Castle. These are the same Hohenzollerns, whose family members once ruled Prussia and the German Empire, among other places. Even the last Kaiser of the German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm II, is a Hohenzollern. Today, the castle is still privately owned by the family,

The only way to see the interior of the castle is to pay for the guided tour, and on that guided tour there are no photos allowed. The coolest part of the guided tour is the room showing the entire known family tree of the Hohenzollerns. It even goes into detail as to which branch of the family is part of the Catholic Swabian branch, or the Protestant Franconian branch.

Today was the first day of the trip that actually snowed! The last several days were a bit windy and cool, but still above zero centigrade, but suddenly today, the weather dipped and it started snowing!

It’s kind of nice driving while it’s snowing as long as it’s not a total blizzard.

Stuttgart

In 2011, I spent eight months in Stuttgart for an internship while I was in university, and since then I went back again in 2013 and now again in 2020. I remember in 2013, it still felt pretty nostalgic, but now nine years later, I found that I’ve forgotten a lot of places and barely knew my way around. The feeling was totally different. It felt a lot more distant – like a place I used to know.

Before we left, we planned to eat at Sophie’s Brauhaus, the brewery that my friends and I used to go a lot to. I knew what I wanted to order before we even went – spaetzle with lentils and sausage. Spaetzle is a German pasta with eggs (as a opposed to other types of pasta which may not have as much egg in it). It’s easily one of the most Swabian dishes there is (Swabia is a region in Germany with its own culture and language). And of course we ordered beers, because after all we were at a brewery. I even ordered a bananenweizen – a wheat beer mixed with banana juice (yes, it’s a thing).

When I ate the dish, it didn’t connect with my nostalgia at all, I just remembered having nostalgia for it. Same with the beer I had. This was the place I had my first real German beer, and now there was zero connection between what I tasted now and the nostalgia. I mean the food and the beer was still delicious, but in my head, I definitely was looking for that emotional connection.

Photos

• Vaduz
• Hohenzollern Castle
• Stuttgart

This gave us a lot of opportunities to find out what was wrong with our robots before the real competition began. We found out that are mechanical and electrical systems were quite robust, while our software system was the weakest link of the three.

In the downtime, we were taken on a tour of the nearby Eichbaum Brewery. The tour was quite difficult to follow because it was pretty much all in German. Even though I had learned some German, it was still quite difficult for me to follow.

I had been to Mannheim before and both times I went to Mannheim before this time, I had a very negative experience. The first time, I got food poisoning (I still remember which restaurant it was), and the second time, my friends and I waited at the Mannheim train station for 4 hours for a train to Berlin with a scheduled departure time of 12am.

Having had lived in Germany before meant I recognized a lot of brands like food chains, department stores, cell phone companies, etc. Because of that, my teammates often asked me different things about Germany such as how German phone plans worked and how to sign up for a plan. I explained it to them and even asked the cashier at the supermarket who didn’t speak English about phone plans.

On another day, we were also taken on a tour to the nearby city of Heidelberg. I had also been here before and vaguely knew my way around. We hiked up to the castle again, but we were there in the evening so the inside of the castle was closed by the time we arrived, so we just went as high as we could.

After spending a few days in Mannheim, all three of the teams organized transportation together to Eindhoven, where the real competition would begin. The workshop allowed us to see what our robots were capable of and what we could improve on early, so that we would be better prepared for the real thing.

Link to photo album here

The day after my friends and I went to Berchtesgaden, we went to Wilhelma, the Stuttgart Zoological Botanical Gardens.  It has a fancy name, but it basically is a zoo with exhibits for other life such as plants and insects.

Seeing as how I’ve never been to a zoo before (at least I don’t remember), but I have been to the safari and Biodome in Quebec, this trip to the zoo was quite interesting for me.

To get in, my friends used their student ID’s to get a student discount, but I however, didn’t have my ID anymore since I lost it.  I ended up using a letter of enrolment from my university to prove my student identity.  The best part about doing that was that I managed to communicate what I wanted speaking only German.

When we entered, we looked on the park map to see the best route we could use to see everything, but since the zoo had a plan for that, we decided to follow it.  It had a strange system of showing visitors which path to follow.  The intended path was marked by a yellow elephant with a direction to walk in and the path back to the beginning was marked by a blue elephant.  We tried our best to follow this route, but we didn’t really manage too well.  We still ended up diverging from the path.

Our first destination was a group of greenhouses that had plants from all over the world, but in particular, we saw a lot of cacti.  For some reason, the people at the zoo really like cacti.

Moving on, we saw a flock of flamingos just chilling there.  They didn’t really do much except just stand there and drink water.  We did get to see some flamingos standing on one leg just like what a lot of animal documentaries show.

Moving further along, we saw a peacock just wandering around the park.  We didn’t get to see it open its tail, but it was still pretty cool to see one live.  It kept trying to move away from the little kids that kept trying to chase it, but I still got a picture.  Apparently, according to Wiki, the umbrella term for the animal is “peafowl”, while the name “peacock” only refers to the male peafowl.

While we walked around the zoo (while deviating from the yellow elephant path), we came across a lot of signs that pointed to the “Titanenwurz”, which in English means “Titanum”, the tall and large plant local to Sumatra that has a smell similar to rotting corpses when it blooms.  Apparently, this zoo holds the world record for the tallest Titanum plant during blooming.

Moving further along, we ended up indoors and the only lights that illuminated the inside were a set of blue lamps inside a display.  In the display, there were bats.  Some of them hung there while others flew around randomly.  They didn’t shriek or make any noises for echolocation or anything like that though.  They were also bigger than I thought they were.

Moving further along, we came across plants that reminded me very much of Pokémon.  I guess the Pokémon were modeled after this plant.

The next part was the best part of the zoo: monkeys.  The monkeys here were really small and all they did was jump around from one branch to another.  While I was taking pictures of them, I moved my camera a little too close and it tried to grab my camera strap.  I felt its fingers brush against my hand before I moved my camera away.  While watching the monkeys, I kept hearing little kids yelling “baby monkeys!” in German.

There were other monkeys too, but those weren’t as interesting because they mostly just sat around eating (especially the apes).  Next, we moved on to see the more exotic animals – the big cats.  For some reason, these animals weren’t really in the mood to do anything.  Instead of sitting around like the monkeys, the big cats pretty much were just lying there.  None of the cats did anything special except the leopard when it got up to eat.

Next we saw other exotic animals like okapi (never even heard of this animal before) and various African/South Asian animals.  It was pretty cool to see an elephant duck down to grab food with its nose to eat.  I’ve never seen anything like that before.  The giraffes were cool too, but they weren’t quite as tall as I expected, but maybe these ones are of a different species or are just younger.  The rhino wasn’t very cool either since the zoo staff got rid of its horn, but maybe it’s safer that way.  But then again, a pissed off hippo could probably destroy a rhino.

The zoo also had some less interesting animals such as cows, chickens, lambs and various other farm animals that people eat on a regular basis.  This was probably the most boring part of the zoo.  These animals smelled absolutely terrible and weren’t very interesting to look at.  The cows here were only penned in by a electrified rope (which my friend touched and received quite a nasty shock – that was quite hilarious).  The next bunch of animals were saw were the bears.  Seeing the bears promptly reminded me of Stephen Colbert’s famous quote, “bears are godless killing machines!”  They do look quite menacing, except for the polar bear, who didn’t really feel like doing anything at all.  Maybe it was too hot or something.

The zoo even had some animals from Australia like crocodiles/alligators (I know the difference between them, but I don’t know how to “see” the difference) and kangaroos.  We didn’t get to see the kangaroos up close because some zoo personnel were cleaning the area at the time.

At this point, I realized that the zoo was a lot bigger than I thought.  We had already walked around for about 3 hours but there was still so much more to see.  Here are some more animals we saw.

Here comes the nastiest part of the exhibits – the insects.  Here they showed a lot of just purely disgusting pests like cockroaches, although, there were some cool ones like the insect that is able to disguise itself as a leaf.  They camouflaged themselves so well that it was almost impossible to see them.  However, on the more pleasant side, butterflies are always nice to see.

To finish our adventure at the zoo, we saw penguins.  I had no idea that there are some species of penguins that can survive such warm temperatures (or maybe all of them can – I don’t know).

After about 5 hours of walking around the zoo, we saw almost everything.  By now, our legs were very tired and we didn’t really have the energy to walk around anymore.  Instead, we did have enough energy for video games because afterward, we all went back to my flat for a good Team Fortress 2 (thanks to Valve for making this game free to play) LAN party.

More photos here

I really should have posted this week ago when it happened; time did not work in my favor. After having worked for a while, I met a few interns, and I went on this trip with them. We met up in the morning to take the regional express train to Tubingen. Upon arriving, we made our way to the old town. While walking, we saw a river separating the town similar to Heidelberg. The streets also looked similar to many historic German cities. There are probably some distinct differences between each city, but I’m not knowledgeable enough about the architecture of the period. We then took a bus to the main attraction of the town, the Bebenhausen Abbey.

Walking around the monastery kept reminding me about Diablo II (the nerd in me talking). It was quite reminiscent of the Rogue Monastery, but we obviously were not being chased by sword-wielding skeletons. Located in the outer cloister is the tourist information center, church, cemetery, and various historic buildings.

Walking further into the monastery, we came arrived at the inner cloister. A large hallway enclosed the area on all sides, with doors in the hallway leading to rooms for public display. Along the wall were stone plaques dedicated to the history of the place. In the center is a fountain that has been dried up and I don’t know if it is used in the summer. It kind of reminded me of an exhausted health/mana fountain.

The rooms inside the monastery contained information and artifacts displayed for people to see. In one of the rooms, there was a entrance to the catacombs. Maybe if I went down there I’d find Andariel.

The next day, we went to visit Hohenzollern Castle, the ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern family. Two castles had previously been constructed there before, but were destroyed during war or due to lack of care. The castle that remains today was constructed for Frederick William IV of Prussia. The sole purpose of the castle’s construction was as a memorial to the Hohenzollern family and not as an actual residence for anyone.

Along the battlements of the castle stood statues of Prussian royalty. They probably didn’t fight in many battles and since they didn’t look very physically fit to me. They probably just ate a lot.

The castle possesses a lot of defensive structures, but since this castle was built only as a memorial, it was all just for show.

The top level of the castle was the central courtyard. Along the battlements was a view from 855 m above sea level.

We took a tour inside the castle, but unfortunately, they did not allow photography on the premises. The ballroom of castle contained pillars of pure marble even though nobody ever used it. Nowadays, the castle is open for tourists and private functions such as weddings.

Inside one of the rooms were paintings on the wall dedicated to remembering each member of the House of Hohenzollern. In the hallways were paintings of various people and of the two previous castles that were built. One of the paintings was of Baron von Steuben. He assisted the Americans during the Revolutionary War and received a thank you letter from George Washington for his service. Since monarchies dominated at the time, there was talk of choosing a king to govern the United States, but obviously that never happened. At the time, their choice was one of the members of the Prussian royal family.

Some rooms displayed some personal items of the Prussian Kaisers. Apparently, a lot of them liked tobacco and even had a really fancy looking box for tobacco snuff. Despite how unhealthy that sounds, one of those boxes took a bullet for one of the Kaisers and saved his life.

The most significant item was the Crown of Wilhelm II. It contained so much and so many different kinds of gems that it was worth millions. It sat inside clear glass display, but looking closely at it, there was a whole slew of motion detection devices around it for security. Unfortunately, because of my terrible memory, I can’t really remember much more. I thought the castle was Heidelberg was amazing, but this one completely beats it.

Photos:

• Tübingen
• Hohenzollern Castle

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to travel to Heidelberg to see many of the historic monuments and architecture that the city had to offer. To get there, my friend and I took the Regionalbahn and the Regional Express. When I got on the train, I happen to see a group of Asian tourists and they kind of gave me a strange look. The only reason I can think of to explain that is that they probably don’t see a lot of Asians around here. In fact, seeing Asians other than myself surprised me too. While taking the train, I realized how much more I enjoy train rides over car and airplane rides. Probably my biggest pet peeve is the lack of leg room. The train I took was quite spacious and didn’t have a lot of people riding it so I was able to extend my legs as far as I wanted without disturbing anybody.

Upon arrival, we found the nearest tourist information center and got a map of the area. We knew which sites we wanted to see, but didn’t know how to get there. A short walk later, we reached the Neckar River, the river that separates the two sides of Heidelberg. Walking a bit further, we reached the Old Bridge (middle and right photo), situated in the Old Town (Altstadt), the historic city center.

Walking through the historic city center exposed us to a lot of the baroque style architecture left over from the past (left photo). Instead of asphalt, the ground was made of cobblestone. Walking through the town made me feel like I was an anachronism. The only things that made the area feel modern was the addition of signage for cars, plumbing on the sides of buildings and the street lamps. In addition to the architecture, there was a German man that ran a souvenir store at the side of a church on Marktplatz speaking to group of Taiwanese tourists in Mandarin. That totally surprised me. He knew enough Chinese to have an actual conversation with the tourists.

The church that the man stood near selling souvenirs is called the Church of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeistkirche), one of the three major churches in the city. The other two is The Church of the Jesuits (Jesuitenkirche) and St. Peter’s Church. The atmosphere in the Jesuitenkirche was so silent that when I put my backpack down and placed it on the pew a little too hard, a loud echo could be heard. It seemed almost disrespectful to make such a noise. I sat there for at least fifteen minutes just looking around before getting up. The paintings themselves seem to be the originals since upon close inspection, the cracks in the paint could be seen.

Each of these churches are located near the main street (Hauptstrasse), where a large number of tourists frequent. Along the street are mainly souvenir stores, cafes, restaurants, and ice cream places. The picture I took of the main street doesn’t look like there was a lot of people there, but later on the street became packed with people. I also saw a some modern franchises such as H&M. Every time I saw a store like that, it felt like these large businesses were slowly taking over the town.

However, the main attraction here has to be the Heidelberger Schloss. Anybody that doesn’t visit this castle when visiting the town is definitely missing out. Situated on the hillside, the castle could be seen from the ground. It looks quite high up, but the walk up there isn’t daunting at all. It’s probably the fact that there was so much to see along the way up so people don’t remember that they’re getting tired. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good enough angle to take a huge picture of the entire front side of the castle.

Through many of the wars in the middle ages that this castle has been through, lots of damage could be seen on the castle walls. The main one is the destroyed turret. Due to an explosion, a section of the wall fell down in one gigantic chunk.

At the top of the castle, one can almost see the entire city of Heidelberg. The old bridge, the churches and the market square can be seen from above. I managed to capture this gorgeous view.

After reaching the top of the castle, we decided to hike up to Konigstuhl, the very top of the hill. We learned that the hike would take an hour and that the destination was 350 m above where the castle was situated. We had already walked around for a great deal of time, but for some reason, I agreed to do the hike. Much of the hike was on muddy or icy paths that went uphill. One wrong step would mean falling at least ten meters down the slope. I dubbed it the “Stairway to Heaven”. If I fell, I’d die and end up in Heaven. It was already tough enough going up the slope, but I saw a mountain biker who dared to bike down the mountain despite a sign clearly stating not to bike down the hill. We were literally on a slippery slope. Somehow, we managed to get lost along the way, but one of the park rangers (I’m not sure if they’re even called that here) gave us a map and showed us the direction to go. As I walked up, I could feel my leg muscles burning with every step. But our timing couldn’t have been better. We made it up as the sun was setting and I managed to get a picture of the sun’s rays shining through the layer of clouds.

After spending some time walking around the peak, we took a bus back down. It was a nice break. It had been a long day of hiking around, but it was very rewarding, to be able to finish the hike up to Konigstuhl. In the evening, we took the train back home. By the end of the day, I had taken 112 pictures of the historic place.

More photos here

On the day that my friend and I arrived at the airport, my supervisor told us about a castle we could visit.  It was the Castle Solitude, up on the hills between Gerlingen and Stuttgart.  When I first heard about it, it immediately reminded me of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, although they’re completely unrelated.  Looking on Google Maps, this place was even further than walking to Bosch, so we expected to walk for a bit uphill again like the day before, except this time the walk took us into the woods.

Not out of the woods yet! (bad pun)

Forty five minutes of walking later, we arrived.  After seeing the Neue Schloss back in Stuttgart, and seeing this castle, I realize that when people talk about castles here, they don’t always mean the ones with the high walls, battlements, and moats that always appear in movies.  The definition castle simply refers to any fortified structure that serves as a residence for a lord or noble.  Although despite its name, Wikipedia says that this place does not qualify as a true castle, but rather a rococo (late Baroque 18th century style) palace.

Solitude Schloss (East Side)

On the eastern side, one could look down the mountain and see the towns beneath.

The View down the Mountain

The Doorway

Apparently the writing on the doorway “loca haec tranquillitati sacra voluit carolus” means “tranquility of the sacred places these things he wanted Charles” according to Google Translate, which by the way, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Inside (I had to peek through the shutters to get this one hence the reflection)

On the Balcony

Despite the fact that a rope blocked the way up to the balcony, it didn’t stop people from coming up.  One person probably decided to do it, and then people followed thinking, “That person did it!” Using that same logic, I went up there as well.

The most interesting part of the castle was not its exterior, but rather it’s interior.  I was totally surprised at what I saw when I looked inside.  I knew it was going to be fancy, but I never knew what to expect.  I really liked the way that there was a large painting on the ceiling combined with the sculptures on the side.