Heidelberg

Heidelberg probably has the most picturesque old town in the entire Germany. Out of all the views I’ve seen in Germany, this is one of the best.

The view is from the ruins of a castle that was destroyed during the Thirty Years War (17th century). I believe the old town is mostly in the Baroque style.

For breakfast, we had a very traditional German pastry, known as a Berliner. It’s similar to a doughnut, but without the hole, and it has a jam filling on the inside and powdered sugar on top. They’re super delicious and not insanely sweet like a lot of American doughnuts.

For lunch, we had more traditional German street foods. The top of the bottom image is currywurst, cut up sausage with curry ketchup on top. The flavour is a very savoury sausage with a slight sweet and spicy zing of curry. The bottom of the image is a bratwurst in a breadroll with mustard. Everything about this is better than the American hot dog. Better sausage to bun ratio, better bread, better sausage, and better mustard. And of course, fries are seasoned with mayonnaise instead of ketchup.

After lunch, we drove up the hill across the river from the old town and visited an old ampitheatre. Why is this amptitheatre interesting, you might ask? It’s actually a relic of the Nazi period for holding propaganda performances.

The main allure of Heidelberg itself is its picturesque views both in the old town and up on Heidelberg castle. Visitors can easily enjoy this by strolling through the old town and making their way up to the castle (there is also a tram), which are main attractions of the city.

Zweibrücken

From Heidelberg, we drove to Zweibrücken. It was a slight detour from Luxembourg, where we were actually trying to go, but we had read about a cool observatory decorated like R2D2, so we thought we’d check it out! It would have been cool to look through the telescope – after all the sky was completely clear of any clouds.

Driving to the place was super scenic! Nice rolling countryside hills with towering wind turbines.

From there we continued our drive to Luxembourg.

Luxembourg

We crossed the border into Luxembourg at dusk and stopped by the town of Schengen. This is the place where the Schengen Agreement was signed – the agreement that removed the hard borders between its European member states.

Normally, it’s possible to walk across to the island to see the small exhibit that discusses the Schengen Agreement, but we were super surprised to see the river at such a high tide (it did rain a lot the past couple of days). On the right of the picture, there’s a little shrub, street signs and flagpoles poking out of the water.

By the time we reach Luxembourg City, it was nighttime. To our surprise, the city looked deserted even though it was only 19:00. People walking on the street appeared drunk. There was even a guy taking a leak in the street without even trying to do it in an alley!

We walked around a bit to check out the town, but otherwise, there wasn’t much to do at that hour on a weekday.

We didn’t stay too long in Luxembourg, and we continued our drive to Bastogne, where we’d stay the night.

Photos:

• Heidelberg
• Zweibrücken
• Luxembourg

While walking around Stuttgart last Thursday, my friends and I went to the Hamburg Fish Market.  Normally, a street market in Stuttgart isn’t that interesting, but this one was different.  A fish market from Hamburg meant quality fish.  Geographically, the city of Stuttgart is landlocked, and the most commonly bought seafood is frozen.  I don’t know what other people think, but I would definitely eat fresh fish over frozen fish.

Even though by name, the market sold fish, some retailers sold chocolate desserts like chocolate/caramel bananas and strawberries.  They even had a giant beer garden set up for people to eat and drink.  While people ate, a band would play music.  Out of the entire event, what stood out most to me was the man selling German sausages.

This man had gathered a large crowd when he started yelling loudly about what a great deal he had.  This man would fill up giant bags of sausages and sell them for only 20 euros.  Each bag looked like they were about 3-4 kilos.  What an amazing deal in terms of euros/weight.  The guy would yell something in German and then if nobody bought it, he’d add more sausages into the bag until someone bought it.  To further entice people to buy, he’d take sausages and throw them into the crowd.  It was such a weird sight.  A fat guy just throwing sausages into the crowd.

His giant belly must have been all the beer he drank and the sausages he ate.  It’s so stereotypically German.  While holding the sausages in his hand, he’d go on about what kind of sausages he was selling (apparently he had elk meat sausages too), and he sold so many bags of them.  I think the guy selling cheese nearby adopted this wurst man’s strategy of stuffing cheese in bags (except he didn’t throw them, so that’s not as cool).

Eventually, he took notice of our group and call out to me, “you with the hat!”  I guess I stood out of the crowd because of my fedora (or maybe because I’m Chinese).  I walked up to him and he handed me this stick of pepperoni (I think that’s what it was) and started saying something to me that I didn’t understand.  This man yelled so loud that it seemed like he was screaming at me the whole time.  I looked over to my friends and they yelled back with a translation saying, “give him your hat!”, but I heard “in your hat”.  I was really confused at this point.  Why would I put the sausage in my hat?  Soon after, I realized what he wanted and he ended up wearing the hat for a brief moment before handing it back (it didn’t suit him at all).  I’m pretty sure he dirtied the hat with his greasy fingers too, which I wasn’t too happy about, but I guess it’s all in good fun.  It was a really strange experience though, but at least I got free food out of it.