Laundry Day

So before I get to the wash room, here's the kitchen. It's actually quite spacious, but no oven, so I am definitely missing that!

There should be 6 chairs...wonder who stole one

Luckily I don't have to go to a different house to do laundry--I'm on the 1st floor, or ground floor as they say here--1st floor is actually one flight up. But you enter by the door with the black and yellow caution tape...getting any fuzzy feelings? lol

The first thing you see when you open the door is another door with bars on it...it really freaked me out the first time, but I guess you get used to it after a while...

Scary hallway

This is the entrance to the Washroom...why you need caution tape, I dunno. I didn't take any pictures inside, but for some reason in the middle of the floor there was about 4 inches of water...eww. So I luckily got the washing machine to the far right were I could stand on dry ground. But washing is done, and I shouldn't have to do it again for another couple of weeks!

Heidelberg

So I went to Heidelberg and it's a pretty cool (but simple) city. It's pretty small, and there is one main drag that has a bunch of restaurants and shops.

Bismarkplatz...the Swing Dance venue is close to here...maybe I'll go!

The buildings are pretty much all this style...and there are H&M's everywhere!

The old main square

The old church...haven't been inside yet, but I will!

So we went on our way up to the castle, which unfortunately is mostly in ruins thanks to those pesky French. One of the multiple castles was restored after the 30 years war, so we got to go in that one at least!

Although there are paths you can walk up, we took the train to the castle. It doesn't take long, but it is extremely steep!

Up, up and away!

The train had a lot of little boxes, like steps

The view when you get off the train

Some info about hours...and a lot of street signs look like this (i.e. speed limit signs--they don't say "speed limit," just the number

So we walked up a little bit to the castle, and waited outside some for our tour to start. 

They have some scaffolding around to try to keep bricks from falling down...it's hard to preserve a ruin!

Me! Although all the pictures I've taken are outside so although it looks like I'm always wearing the same thing...I'm not.

View--I believe what we were standing on was the wall, which was something ridiculously wide, like 18m.

City view

360* view...fun what my camera can do!

The main entrance...protected by those "scary" statues

The first courtyard

Again, looks a bit like St. Therese--but you can see the blue and white checks on the ceiling, which is the flag of Bavaria--hence BMWs logo.

Model of what the castle area used to look like

 During the summer there is a tunnel tour that you can take. This is one of the tunnels, which is quite tall and comfortable. However, some of the tunnels are only about a yard or so tall so you have to crawl through them...along with whatever water or rodents. Eww.

They replaced the banquet hall, so now they frequently have banquets or music performances here...it doesn't look like the best venue, but it has a nice parquet floor that you could dance on! :)

View of another castle courtyard...each of the prince regents that lived in Heidelberg Castle added on, so there was 7 different castles. However the Stuarts, who built the "English Castle" built it on the walls and turned the guard tower into a theater to mimic the Globe theater...at least the one who built his castle on top of the church didn't destroy the defensive system!

Coat of arms

Statues of religious figures and of the princes...these are not the originals (which are inside) but look really cool!

Apparently the prince who is pictured in the round circle was so fat he had to be carried around...like his drink a bit too much!

Circular stairs! Apparently you can tell the age of the building by whether it has circular stairs, or regular stairs. Circular stairs were earlier because they didn't know how to handle the weight and pressure of regular stairs.

View of a different courtyard

These are the original statues from outside (some of them at least!)

All that fighting, and he's only missing part of his middle finger!

 The insides were completely destroyed, but although this furniture was not originally in Heidelberg Castle, it is original furniture--not reproductions.

Ceramic water heater

Portraits--the top left was William Hudson!

Now this is a cool door jam

 This is the Castle Church. It is actually underneath one of the castles, and I believe it escaped the devastation of the rest of the castle. Either way, it is quite beautiful. Again, there are two boxes on the balcony level for the royalty.

 Now, these people liked to drink--again, a reason why that prince was so fat. But think this is a big wine barrel?

 Look at this one! This is the largest wine barrel that was actually filled. It holds over 22,000L. Apparently it also tasted quite gross--they just dumped all sorts of alcohol into it: red wine, white wine, beer, ale, etc. But I did get to go on the platform on top of that! (and it still smells like slightly off alcohol, blah)

All in all Heidelberg seems like a nice place to be. I like the fact that there is pretty much one main drag and there is a bunch of people, so it's not creepy at all. :)

Mannheimer Morgen

We started at the Hauptbahnof...thought I should probably post a pic of it since I'm there a lot! (and it's a lot cooler than Heidelberg's Hpf. Just saying. :)

So we went to Mannheimer Morgen on Tuesday, and after a long and convoluted walk there, discovered it's only about 5 minutes or so from Ulmenweg...but at least I got some exercise in!

Mannheimer Morgen is the regional newspaper, and this facility produces not only this paper, but 3 others as well. It was a pretty interesting tour (although pretty much everything was in German--but we had some English translation afterwards)--it reminded me of the TV show "How It's Made."

Printing Press...1500s style

 One interesting thing is that to supplement their revenue, Mannheimer Morgen runs a regional post. It is cheaper than DeutchPost, and they have drop boxes all over the city. Now I know what those blue boxes (compared to yellow for DeutschPost) are!

The mailroom

We were shown a video, about 20 minutes, (in German of course, so forgive me if my information is incorrect), that described how Mannheimer Morgen came about. The present-day incarnation started about 60 years ago, and the printing process has gone through a lot of changes since then. They were not able to mass print in color until about 1980, but now they have the 3 colors and black. Later on we were shown how the rolls changed--they once had raised letters and were mirror images, but they now are just printed on aluminum. For each page there are four aluminum plates created--one for each color. They cannot be reused for printing, so they are recycled and are used in cars.


This is the storage room for the paper--it is 80% recycled (not 100% because then it would fall apart in the process). This is only enough paper for a week--that's a lot of paper!

 After this we got to see to see the machinery in work. It was quite loud, but those newspapers were moving!

1st Stop--printing and folding

More printing--slightly different process           

The final process--putting up to 4 inserts in the paper and then 

bagging them

So that was the end of our tour--and then they gave us a newspaper, a pretzel (of course!), a drink, and a mug. And all for 2e. :)