Sabrina, Jason and I began our Sunday morning with a delicious breakfast Mone prepared for us. Unlike in the U.S., the grocery stores here are all closed on Sundays, so preparation is necessary.
After Frühstück (oder, ‘breakfast’), we took a tram to the Schloss to meet up with other classmates and see the museum, it was closing for the remainder of our time in Mannheim. The museum was pretty much just a sectioned off portion of the palace in which they kept the remaining ornate furniture, rather than desks and chalkboards (yes, our instructors write on actual chalkboards!)



After the ooo’s and the ahh’s at the fanciness dripping from the history of our present University, Ryan, Bryan, Kenny and I caught yet another train to Heidelberg. We were determined to hike to the top of Philosopher’s Walk this time.

“Ein kugel, ein Euro.”
One scoop, one Euro. This familiar phrase sent butterflies of warmth to my ears. I understood without doubt what these four words meant, thanks to my stay last summer in Berlin, when eating ice-cream was at least a once-daily routine.  The delectable Hazelnut and Pistachio flavors are just not as prolific back home. We all got ice cream. Natürlich.

We arrived at the train station and crossed the river to the base of the Philosopher’s Walk. The hike started steep, but we mustered through it at a fair pace, climbing higher and higher over Heidelberg.

And then we saw it.

The most epic spinning playground toy ever.

It plays the up-down weight game like a seesaw, but it also spins 360 degrees around.

Time vanished for a bit there.

We were the happiest kids on the mountain.

After exhausting all the aerial tricks we could think of, we caught our breath in our trek on up.

We came to two stumps. They showed how high we were already, and when I climbed on top of them and glanced at the tumble to my left, we seemed even higher.

One last stretch up, and…

We made it.

We saw the orange glow through the trees, the sun set across the river.

We had to beat the dark down the mountain. We took a last breath of accomplishment and ran.

The dark fell below the trees before it reached the streets. As if we hadn’t grasped enough adventure in one Sunday, we came upon the most awesome slide ever. It was seriously what a slide should be, the turns in exactly the right places, exciting enough to slide down two or three times, and we did.

But we had class in the morning, and we still had to catch a train back. We let the night fall around us and moseyed on home.

For more adventures of UF students studying abroad, please check out the UFIC Blog from Abroad!

I flew out of Jacksonville, touching down in Newark, Boston, and Frankfurt before finally catching the train to my destination. Mid-afternoon, just about 24 hours after leaving, I walked along the streets of Mannheim, regretting the amount of luggage I brought from Florida. Luckily, the walk to the University of Mannheim wasn’t too far from from the Hauptbahnhoff (“train station” auf Deutsch).
I hadn’t realized I’d be attending classes in a palace(!!!)…As soon as I saw it I was reminded of Versailles in France, and our tour guide on Saturday said that’s exactly what it was based off of.

There’s 18 of us, split into two dorms in the center of the city and two German languages classes in the Schloss (“palace”). We received regional transportation tickets for the trains and buses, and a few of us decided to go on a little adventure our first Saturday here.

The next train out of the Mannheim Hauptbahnhoff was headed for Lampertheim. We hopped on. None of us knew anything about Lampertheim, but it sounded swell.

We got off the train and started walking.The streets were empty, bare of people and litter. It looked spacious even with the (huge) houses along the sides. Perhaps it was the width of the road itself, or just the cleanliness, but something about walking through the streets of this town was so surreal.

Lampertheim is a little town just north of Mannheim. It was a Saturday evening and nearly everything was closed, the only hoppin’ place was the ice cream cafe. We said nichts to that, we might as well continue on to Heidelberg, as there’s a bit more going on there…

Heidelberg ist sehr schön (is very pretty). A beautiful river runs along it with the town on one side and mountains on the other, the trees seem greener there somehow. Mannheim has a much more urban-vibe and much more grey than green.

For dinner, I ordered: “Ein paar Bratwurst mit sauerkraut, tagessuppe und kartoffelpuree” (a pair of Bratwursts, sauerkraut, soup, and mashed potatoes) — so good. German food is delicious.

We got the train back to Mannheim, as we’d be returning for a tour of Heidelberg the next morning, anyway.

A few of us went out to check out the scene that night. Not too far from our Studentenwohnheim (student dormitory) we walked right into one of the coolest bar/pubs I’ve been in, called the Blau. They played old school Sixties music (the Yardbirds, Rolling Stones, etc.). I’d known the Beatles had played one of their earlier shows in Frankfurt (and gotten kicked out because George was too young to be allowed in the bar…), so of course Germany can rock’n’roll, but it was really neat to see that young people in this culture can still dig and dance to an era of great tunes like I can.