Wednesday June 2nd, 2004

Once again woke to sunshine and birds singing at 4:30am. Once again, happy to roll over and go back to sleep! One more wonderful breakfast and then we packed our bags to leave. When we met Gary in the lobby he informed us the car did belong to the cadets ... and it was dead. Luckily, he carries jumper cables, but I am sure he made them suffer some before he told them that! Gary had to lead the cadets to the place where they would be staying for 3 weeks. He took Tom and I to the train station in Erding and Tom and I took the train to Munich and then from there caught a train to Heidelberg. The train systems in Germany are rather confusing to me and really need to be updated with electronic boards stating when trains arrive or depart from unexpected tracks ... especailly for stupid foreigners.

Once in Heidelberg, we stowed our luggage in a locker and took a bus to the castle. It started absolutely pouring ... and thundering and lightening. We drank more beer and tried to wait it out, but finally decided to try to see the castle. Tom thought there was a tram up to the castle from the square ... and there were signs that said there was one ... and we followed the signs and never found the tram. So we tried tramping up the hill to the castle ... a long, steep, cobblestone road ... rain pouring down. I wasn't really a happy camper at that point. I stopped at the first level of the castle and let Tom venture up countless stairs from there. When he got to the top they were actually charging money to get into the castle ... so he came back down. You'd think they would let you know that before you start out. Meanwhile, the rain stopped and I enjoyed the view of Hiedelberg from my post. Lovely. And wet.

The downward trip was uneventful and we caught the bus to the train and the train to Koblenz. Gary, meanwhile, had been caught in a traffic jam for most of that time but was able to meet us at the train station. He wasn't in a pleasant mood!

I can't remember what we did for dinner that night ... but I do know that I was early to bed!