On Saturday February 7th Melissa and I woke up bright and early to catch a train at 6:45AM. We made a transfer in Basel, Switzerland, then another in Karlsruhe, Germany, and then finally arrived in Heidelberg Germany at 11:45AM. The purpose of our voyage was to meet up with Alex Marvin, a friend from Melissa’s grad school time at the University of Minnesota, and his Friend from high school, Zach, who currently lives in London.
Alex works for BASF and was in Germany for training at their corporate headquarters in nearby Mannheim. He contacted Melissa last Saturday to say he’d be on the same continent, and we decided to meet up in Heidelberg because the castle looked interesting. Zach went to high school with Alex, then after grad school in Switzerland decided to stay on the continent as a banker in London. He had flown into Frankfurt where Alex had picked him up.
All of our trains ran on time this trip, so when we arrived in Heidelberg we found Alex and Zach already waiting, but they said they had only just arrived. We headed out of the train station to all cramp inside of Alex’s rental car. My first car trip in Europe! Alex typed the Castle’s address into the GPS, and after a few wrong turns we found ourselves on a narrow cobble stone street filled with pedestrians. It didn’t seem like a street made for cars, but there were cars parked all along the side so Alex drove along it slowly, sometimes only at the speed of the people walking in front of us. We traversed all over the old city looking for a place to park.
Eventually a very tight parallel parking spot was found. However we weren’t sure if the zone required a parking permit or not. It took so long to find that one spot though we decided to risk it. Alex inched forward and inched back. His back wheel went over the sidewalk curb, he had to pull out and start from scratch, all us passengers got out to guide him, and after a few minutes the car somehow miraculously squeezed in. After that short trip from the train station to the castle I’m quite happy not to have a car in Europe.
The castle was a short walk up a hill from the parking spot. Just outside its gates we found a restaurant and had a nice German meal of weinerschnitzel, and hefeweizen. When it came time to pay we learned a little too late that they only take cash. Only Melissa and I had Euro’s, but we came up 20 short for the group. Luckily Zach talked to the waiter and he agreed to take US dollars to cover the difference, but oddly he wouldn’t take the Swiss francs Melissa and I had.
After lunch we went to check out the castle. It has most of the things you’d expect in a castle, big gates, tall towers and walls, a moat, but I was a little disappointed we couldn’t find the throne room, or dungeons. There were some buildings with locked doors and when we asked about them we were told you need a private tour to enter. Alongside the traditional castle things, the castle had spectacular views of the city and river valley, outside walls covered in life size statues, the largest beer barrel I’ve ever seen, and the only pharmacy museum I’ve ever seen.
When we had enough of the castle we walked back to the car, and were happy to see it was still there and not ticketed. We then headed off to Mannheim to see the BASF headquarters. Alex had just spent a week drinking the company kool-aid, and was eager to fill us in on all the BASF facts. Like that about 30,000 people work for them in Mannheim, the facility is its own little gated and guarded community of so and so square miles, they have multiple bus routes for people to get around inside, and the facility itself goes through a lot of water.
We stopped at the visitor center and walked in to see a man sitting at the front desk. The man at the desk told us the building was closed, which seemed odd, like why doesn’t he just lock the door and go home if its closed, but we left and then Alex drove us around the perimeter of the complex to show us just how big it is. We stopped at a little park where a big rusty pipe was standing up on display. Alex told us this was the first ammonia reactor, a process developed by BASF in the 30’s that won someone a Nobel prize.
Our last stop of the trip was at a brewery for dinner. We made sure to ask before ordering if they took credit cards. Then Alex dropped us off at the Mannheim train station at 6:30 and we walked back through our apartment door around Midnight. It was wonderful to spend a day with a couple of Americans!
