I spent 3 months living in Provence in Spring of 2006 and 2007, working on my French; which went quite well, so I thought of trying three months somewhere else. Since my only other foreign language is German and because of the success of the trip to Dresden in October ‘07, I thought of doing two or three months in Germany; not in Dresden, which would be too emotional; but probably in Heidelberg.
I wrote to Lothar, my buddy in Heidelberg, who I met last year through my long-time friend Henry Baer and Lothar arranged for me to rent an apartment at the EMBL Guesthouse in Boxberg about half-an-hour outside Heidelberg.
PLEASE NOTE
The two previous sections (On the Way to Heidelberg: Eisenach, Halle, Bayreuth and Würzburg and On the Way to Heidelberg, Continued: Würzburg to Heidelberg) and the conclusions were written months after my return from Dresden; I found the Conclusions very difficult to write and only completed them with my daughter Suzanne’s help and encouragement!
Heidelberg, the First Week
My return to Germany in 2008 starts on April 13, when Eliane and I arrive at Frankfurt Airport and take a shuttle to the Steigenberger Airport Hotel and after a rest go downstairs to the Unterschweinstiege restaurant for a delicious traditional German dinner. The restaurant is an old building next to the hotel and was probably moved and restored; it is the main reason that I love this hotel. Eliane chooses the buffet and I order Hasen (Hare) goulash with a pastry top served with Spaetzel (small free-form dumplings).
Next day I take Eliane to the airport and see her off on her flight to Tel Aviv then pick up my rental car at Sixt. I have trouble finding the rental car and finally get someone to walk me there, it’s about a one-mile hike in the basement of the huge airport parking garage. Finally we get to my grey VW Golf and he helps me load. After a minor getting lost I find Autobahn 5 to Darmstadt and Heidelberg. I have no trouble finding Boxberg and the Hotel ISG (International Seminars Guesthouse) where I follow the room clerk to the EMBL Guesthouse. I meet Herr Kuehne, the manager, who shows me to # 67 on the third (and top) floor; luckily there is an elevator! It is a modern concrete building and the apartment has a living room with small Pullman kitchen, bathroom and an upstairs sleeping loft plus two balconies. In the afternoon I take a drive in the surrounding countryside then come back to Binding Fass, (Binding is a brand of beer and Fass is a barrel) a real old-time German beer bar and restaurant; all old wood and booths made out of huge old barrels. The front room is full of people and thick with cigarette smoke. I sit in the next room, which is non-smoking and have a draft beer and large plate of Sauerbraten (German pot roast) with noodles and a green salad.
Next day, Saturday, I drive over to ISG for their buffet breakfast. Although the apartment has a small kitchen with a few utensils and no coffee maker; I decide not to bother with groceries, etc., at this time. The bus stop is across the street from the Guesthouse and I catch the #29 bus into Heidelberg, €2.10 each way, and it takes about 35 minutes to Bismarck Platz, the main bus and tram terminal. I walk along Hauptstrasse, the pedestrian-only main street through the old town as far as the Cathedral to pick up maps and a calendar of events at the Tourist Office. After lunch at Café Schafheutle of Maultaschle (a form of small ravioli) soup I pick up some goodies at the bakery counter and take the bus back to Boxberg.
Today’s local newspaper (Rhein – Neckar Zeitung) has a front-page story and picture of the dedication, yesterday, of the cornerstone for a new building for the Hochschule fur Judische Studien (High-school for Jewish Studies) “the only such institution in all of Europe” after almost 30 years in temporary quarters.
Boxberg is a modern suburb of about 5000 inhabitants located on a steep, wooded hillside overlooking the industrial area south of Heidelberg. It was developed about 30 years ago and by its appearance I thought it was built under the DDR (German Democratic Republic) but of course this whole area was part of the West and never part of the DDR. It consists of entire neighborhoods of high-rise apartment buildings, many in the familiar Soviet concrete block style and others quite luxurious, there is also senior housing and some single family homes; all linked with walkways through the woods, the streets are narrow, hardly wide enough for two cars. I was told that this entire area was an experiment in Sozialer Wohnungsbau (socialist living- building) built by the City of Heidelberg and local building societies (similar to our Building and Loan Associations) There are also a large Hotelfach Schule (hotel school) and many new laboratories and research buildings including the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL pronounce ‘embel’); in whose guesthouse I’m staying and five Max Plank Institutes. Max Plank (1858 – 1947) was a German physicist considered to be the founder of the quantum theory; and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. Plank was one of the few who immediately recognized the significance of Albert Einstein special theory of relativity.
In the evening I watched German TV and a rebroadcast of Der Rosenkavalier with the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic lead by Herbert von Karajan from the 1984 Salzburg Festival; all without commercials!
On Sunday afternoon I take a drive to Wiesloch, (pro Wees-lock) a very picturesque small town where a market is in full swing. The market stalls fill the entire town center and the place is mobbed with families. My only purchase is a small paper bag of Gebrannte Mandeln (fresh roasted sugar almonds) It is very cold and after a while it starts raining so I head back home. For dinner I go back to the Binding Fass, which is almost empty and have Bratwurst mit Pommes Frites (sausage and chips) and a beer.
Bright and early on Monday morning I catch the bus to Heidelberg and look for language lessons. First stop is the Volkshochschule (Peoples High School) on Bergheimer Strasse, a long walk from Bismarck Platz. Classes are five days a week from 9 to 11:30 certainly more than I had planned for; plus a required written test, which I could no more pass than fly. I have better luck at the F & U Academy of Languages located on the 3rd floor of a large modern commercial building right on the corner of Hauptstrasse and Bismarck Platz and make an appointment for two trial private lessons starting tomorrow at 12:30 I celebrate with kaffee und kuchen at Schafheutle, my favorite café. I learn afterwards that F & U Academy is a well- respected organization with language schools in many towns in Germany and worldwide, teaching foreign languages as well as German to foreigners.
Later I drive to the Soviet style shopping center, all concrete construction, eight stories of offices and apartments on top and NO PARKING! I had planned on eating dinner at Raffaello, the Italian Restaurant and on finding it closed Mondays did some minor shopping at the little supermarket and for about €15 bought enough for dinner and a couple of day’s breakfasts. I make soup from a mix and a couple of sandwiches and it feels good to eat in my own house. In the evening I watch a TV program about Germans returning to live in parts of Poland, which were formally Prussia and a part of Germany before World War II.
On Tuesday I fix breakfast in my own kitchen, another first. Then take the bus to Heidelberg and get ready for my first class. I pay for the first two trial lessons and the school is mobbed with mostly young people speaking all sorts of languages; I hear a lot of French, some Russian and some English. My class starts at 12:30 and the teacher is Manuela, late thirties, married with three kids under 8. She is originally from around Heidelberg and studied in France, England and Russia, her English is good and her German seems very correct. We spend 45 minutes talking and I feel that this is the way to go. I find the 45 minutes intense and very draining. We talk about many things; about Boxberg and it not being Soviet built in spite of its appearance; since Heidelberg and Frankfurt were always part of West Germany and never in the DDR (German Democratic Republic). We also have a discussion about the US Army presence in Heidelberg. There used to be far more Americans stationed here; however after 9/11 the numbers have declined. Every year there is an announcement or rumor that the US will leave. Evidently the local economy gets very little from the US base and the City would love to get its hands on the barracks and the thousands of dwellings. The soldiers are rarely seen in the town since the base is completely self-sufficient. In the old days the base used to host a German/American Day at Patrick Henry Village (the main base) where there were speeches, music and a BBQ with American ice-cream, very popular with the locals.
Today was the first sunny day; it was quite Spring like and the temperature even climbed to 11 and tonight it will be 3! That is, of course, Centigrade and corresponds to about 50 and 37F. I go to ‘Raffaello’ for dinner. I guess the owner really is Italian and when I ask, “Was gibts gute fur abendessen? (What’s good for dinner)” He says, “fresh fish” and promptly brings out the whole raw fish and tells me it will be “a filet cooked in a white wine sauce.” The fish is delicious and is accompanied with boiled potatoes and a plate of steamed vegetables; carrots, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts finished with olive oil. Dinner is very tasty and I start a conversation with the young man at the next table. Denis as a molecular biologist, just finishing his studies at the EMBL and lives in the same guesthouse. Denis is Russian and studied at the Louis Pasteur Institute in Paris and in London. He is looking forward to working in Paris and living with his Mexican girlfriend, who is from Zacatacas and studying “international communications marketing.” Oh, one of the best parts of dinner was at the end, when the waiter/owner placed a bottle and small shot glass on the table saying “Grappa!”
On Wednesday it is back to Winter, after yesterday’s Spring; by the weekend it is expected to warm up. In the evening I go to a concert that is part of the ‘Heidelberger Fruhling’ (Heidelberg’s Spring) an international music festival of classical and jazz concerts including the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Murray Perahia and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and two concerts by Thomas Hampson including a master class. The concert is a delight; a violin recital by Arabella Steinbacher playing four sonatas, by mostly French composers. Arabella is 27, her mother is Japanese and father German; she started playing at age 3 and studied with Anne-Sophie Mutter and has appeared with the London Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic and the City of Birmingham Symphony. She played beautifully and with great intensity. The concert was held in the EMBL lecture hall at the laboratory, located in the middle of nowhere about a mile-and-a-half from my guesthouse. I arrive early and was surprised that in spite of the location and that it had been raining all day the concert was about 90% full. By the way, Arabella played the first half on an Antonio Stradivari, Cremona of 1716 provided by the Nippon Music Foundation and the second half on her own Guarneri!
Thursday I again caught the bus to Heidelberg and had a very good lesson; Manuela told me that she had already had her first child and was very pregnant with the second when they got married; it was a combined wedding and christening! I told her that would probably not be done in the US and we agreed that the US is much more conservative. Her husband, who is also local, does elder care and works nights, one week on and one week off and generally looks after the three kids. He comes from a family of six, 5 boys and one girl and likes to cook and she has only one sister. We also agree to continue to meet twice a week on Tuesday and Thursdays at 12:30
Friday and it looks as if it will be another rainy, foggy day; no wonder Germans love to retire to Spain and the South of France. At Manuelas’s suggestion I spend the morning exploring Ladenburg, just off Autobahn 5. I park in the lot next to the old Roman wall and followed the signs. The town center is delightful with many old half-timbered houses from the mid-1600s and a lovely market square. It has stopped raining so I walk around looking in the shops and taking pictures. I drive down to the river and find an old ferry that takes traffic across to the road to Mannheim. The old town has many interesting old restaurants, hotels and cafés. I drive back to Boxberg and stop at the Aral gas station to fill up; are you ready for this? It takes €62 or $93 to fill the tank of my little VW Golf with diesel!
Photos:
Boxberg 2A#034
EMBL Guesthaus 1#026
My apartment 1#001
The shopping center 1#024
I wrote to Lothar, my buddy in Heidelberg, who I met last year through my long-time friend Henry Baer and Lothar arranged for me to rent an apartment at the EMBL Guesthouse in Boxberg about half-an-hour outside Heidelberg.
PLEASE NOTE
The two previous sections (On the Way to Heidelberg: Eisenach, Halle, Bayreuth and Würzburg and On the Way to Heidelberg, Continued: Würzburg to Heidelberg) and the conclusions were written months after my return from Dresden; I found the Conclusions very difficult to write and only completed them with my daughter Suzanne’s help and encouragement!
Heidelberg, the First Week
My return to Germany in 2008 starts on April 13, when Eliane and I arrive at Frankfurt Airport and take a shuttle to the Steigenberger Airport Hotel and after a rest go downstairs to the Unterschweinstiege restaurant for a delicious traditional German dinner. The restaurant is an old building next to the hotel and was probably moved and restored; it is the main reason that I love this hotel. Eliane chooses the buffet and I order Hasen (Hare) goulash with a pastry top served with Spaetzel (small free-form dumplings).
Next day I take Eliane to the airport and see her off on her flight to Tel Aviv then pick up my rental car at Sixt. I have trouble finding the rental car and finally get someone to walk me there, it’s about a one-mile hike in the basement of the huge airport parking garage. Finally we get to my grey VW Golf and he helps me load. After a minor getting lost I find Autobahn 5 to Darmstadt and Heidelberg. I have no trouble finding Boxberg and the Hotel ISG (International Seminars Guesthouse) where I follow the room clerk to the EMBL Guesthouse. I meet Herr Kuehne, the manager, who shows me to # 67 on the third (and top) floor; luckily there is an elevator! It is a modern concrete building and the apartment has a living room with small Pullman kitchen, bathroom and an upstairs sleeping loft plus two balconies. In the afternoon I take a drive in the surrounding countryside then come back to Binding Fass, (Binding is a brand of beer and Fass is a barrel) a real old-time German beer bar and restaurant; all old wood and booths made out of huge old barrels. The front room is full of people and thick with cigarette smoke. I sit in the next room, which is non-smoking and have a draft beer and large plate of Sauerbraten (German pot roast) with noodles and a green salad.
Next day, Saturday, I drive over to ISG for their buffet breakfast. Although the apartment has a small kitchen with a few utensils and no coffee maker; I decide not to bother with groceries, etc., at this time. The bus stop is across the street from the Guesthouse and I catch the #29 bus into Heidelberg, €2.10 each way, and it takes about 35 minutes to Bismarck Platz, the main bus and tram terminal. I walk along Hauptstrasse, the pedestrian-only main street through the old town as far as the Cathedral to pick up maps and a calendar of events at the Tourist Office. After lunch at Café Schafheutle of Maultaschle (a form of small ravioli) soup I pick up some goodies at the bakery counter and take the bus back to Boxberg.
Today’s local newspaper (Rhein – Neckar Zeitung) has a front-page story and picture of the dedication, yesterday, of the cornerstone for a new building for the Hochschule fur Judische Studien (High-school for Jewish Studies) “the only such institution in all of Europe” after almost 30 years in temporary quarters.
Boxberg is a modern suburb of about 5000 inhabitants located on a steep, wooded hillside overlooking the industrial area south of Heidelberg. It was developed about 30 years ago and by its appearance I thought it was built under the DDR (German Democratic Republic) but of course this whole area was part of the West and never part of the DDR. It consists of entire neighborhoods of high-rise apartment buildings, many in the familiar Soviet concrete block style and others quite luxurious, there is also senior housing and some single family homes; all linked with walkways through the woods, the streets are narrow, hardly wide enough for two cars. I was told that this entire area was an experiment in Sozialer Wohnungsbau (socialist living- building) built by the City of Heidelberg and local building societies (similar to our Building and Loan Associations) There are also a large Hotelfach Schule (hotel school) and many new laboratories and research buildings including the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL pronounce ‘embel’); in whose guesthouse I’m staying and five Max Plank Institutes. Max Plank (1858 – 1947) was a German physicist considered to be the founder of the quantum theory; and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. Plank was one of the few who immediately recognized the significance of Albert Einstein special theory of relativity.
In the evening I watched German TV and a rebroadcast of Der Rosenkavalier with the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic lead by Herbert von Karajan from the 1984 Salzburg Festival; all without commercials!
On Sunday afternoon I take a drive to Wiesloch, (pro Wees-lock) a very picturesque small town where a market is in full swing. The market stalls fill the entire town center and the place is mobbed with families. My only purchase is a small paper bag of Gebrannte Mandeln (fresh roasted sugar almonds) It is very cold and after a while it starts raining so I head back home. For dinner I go back to the Binding Fass, which is almost empty and have Bratwurst mit Pommes Frites (sausage and chips) and a beer.
Bright and early on Monday morning I catch the bus to Heidelberg and look for language lessons. First stop is the Volkshochschule (Peoples High School) on Bergheimer Strasse, a long walk from Bismarck Platz. Classes are five days a week from 9 to 11:30 certainly more than I had planned for; plus a required written test, which I could no more pass than fly. I have better luck at the F & U Academy of Languages located on the 3rd floor of a large modern commercial building right on the corner of Hauptstrasse and Bismarck Platz and make an appointment for two trial private lessons starting tomorrow at 12:30 I celebrate with kaffee und kuchen at Schafheutle, my favorite café. I learn afterwards that F & U Academy is a well- respected organization with language schools in many towns in Germany and worldwide, teaching foreign languages as well as German to foreigners.
Later I drive to the Soviet style shopping center, all concrete construction, eight stories of offices and apartments on top and NO PARKING! I had planned on eating dinner at Raffaello, the Italian Restaurant and on finding it closed Mondays did some minor shopping at the little supermarket and for about €15 bought enough for dinner and a couple of day’s breakfasts. I make soup from a mix and a couple of sandwiches and it feels good to eat in my own house. In the evening I watch a TV program about Germans returning to live in parts of Poland, which were formally Prussia and a part of Germany before World War II.
On Tuesday I fix breakfast in my own kitchen, another first. Then take the bus to Heidelberg and get ready for my first class. I pay for the first two trial lessons and the school is mobbed with mostly young people speaking all sorts of languages; I hear a lot of French, some Russian and some English. My class starts at 12:30 and the teacher is Manuela, late thirties, married with three kids under 8. She is originally from around Heidelberg and studied in France, England and Russia, her English is good and her German seems very correct. We spend 45 minutes talking and I feel that this is the way to go. I find the 45 minutes intense and very draining. We talk about many things; about Boxberg and it not being Soviet built in spite of its appearance; since Heidelberg and Frankfurt were always part of West Germany and never in the DDR (German Democratic Republic). We also have a discussion about the US Army presence in Heidelberg. There used to be far more Americans stationed here; however after 9/11 the numbers have declined. Every year there is an announcement or rumor that the US will leave. Evidently the local economy gets very little from the US base and the City would love to get its hands on the barracks and the thousands of dwellings. The soldiers are rarely seen in the town since the base is completely self-sufficient. In the old days the base used to host a German/American Day at Patrick Henry Village (the main base) where there were speeches, music and a BBQ with American ice-cream, very popular with the locals.
Today was the first sunny day; it was quite Spring like and the temperature even climbed to 11 and tonight it will be 3! That is, of course, Centigrade and corresponds to about 50 and 37F. I go to ‘Raffaello’ for dinner. I guess the owner really is Italian and when I ask, “Was gibts gute fur abendessen? (What’s good for dinner)” He says, “fresh fish” and promptly brings out the whole raw fish and tells me it will be “a filet cooked in a white wine sauce.” The fish is delicious and is accompanied with boiled potatoes and a plate of steamed vegetables; carrots, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts finished with olive oil. Dinner is very tasty and I start a conversation with the young man at the next table. Denis as a molecular biologist, just finishing his studies at the EMBL and lives in the same guesthouse. Denis is Russian and studied at the Louis Pasteur Institute in Paris and in London. He is looking forward to working in Paris and living with his Mexican girlfriend, who is from Zacatacas and studying “international communications marketing.” Oh, one of the best parts of dinner was at the end, when the waiter/owner placed a bottle and small shot glass on the table saying “Grappa!”
On Wednesday it is back to Winter, after yesterday’s Spring; by the weekend it is expected to warm up. In the evening I go to a concert that is part of the ‘Heidelberger Fruhling’ (Heidelberg’s Spring) an international music festival of classical and jazz concerts including the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Murray Perahia and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and two concerts by Thomas Hampson including a master class. The concert is a delight; a violin recital by Arabella Steinbacher playing four sonatas, by mostly French composers. Arabella is 27, her mother is Japanese and father German; she started playing at age 3 and studied with Anne-Sophie Mutter and has appeared with the London Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic and the City of Birmingham Symphony. She played beautifully and with great intensity. The concert was held in the EMBL lecture hall at the laboratory, located in the middle of nowhere about a mile-and-a-half from my guesthouse. I arrive early and was surprised that in spite of the location and that it had been raining all day the concert was about 90% full. By the way, Arabella played the first half on an Antonio Stradivari, Cremona of 1716 provided by the Nippon Music Foundation and the second half on her own Guarneri!
Thursday I again caught the bus to Heidelberg and had a very good lesson; Manuela told me that she had already had her first child and was very pregnant with the second when they got married; it was a combined wedding and christening! I told her that would probably not be done in the US and we agreed that the US is much more conservative. Her husband, who is also local, does elder care and works nights, one week on and one week off and generally looks after the three kids. He comes from a family of six, 5 boys and one girl and likes to cook and she has only one sister. We also agree to continue to meet twice a week on Tuesday and Thursdays at 12:30
Friday and it looks as if it will be another rainy, foggy day; no wonder Germans love to retire to Spain and the South of France. At Manuelas’s suggestion I spend the morning exploring Ladenburg, just off Autobahn 5. I park in the lot next to the old Roman wall and followed the signs. The town center is delightful with many old half-timbered houses from the mid-1600s and a lovely market square. It has stopped raining so I walk around looking in the shops and taking pictures. I drive down to the river and find an old ferry that takes traffic across to the road to Mannheim. The old town has many interesting old restaurants, hotels and cafés. I drive back to Boxberg and stop at the Aral gas station to fill up; are you ready for this? It takes €62 or $93 to fill the tank of my little VW Golf with diesel!
Photos:
Boxberg 2A#034
EMBL Guesthaus 1#026
My apartment 1#001
The shopping center 1#024
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