Just when you thought you were safe from rambling tales
about me bumbling around Europe – I’m back! This time, I’ve been to Heidelberg,
in the South of Germany, via (shudder) Frankfurt Hahn airport. If you take nothing
else from this blog take this – do not ever
fly to Frankfurt Hahn airport. I cannot stress this strongly enough.
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| This is a happy picture. Anything to get rid of the image of that bloody airport. |
People that know me might say “But Mungo! Why would you go
to Germany? You've never showed the slightest interest in visiting it before!” Now, therein hangs a tale. It just so happened that one of my mates
from university has moved back to Heidelberg (a city in the South of Germany),
where he spent his Erasmus year. He was also appearing in a play, and since
he’s a rather good actor, I thought it would be a crime to miss it. I like good
acting. I just it’s quite a shame that I can’t watch myself act. I can’t get as much enjoyment from my stellar
performances as my loving fans do. It’s one of the great sadnesses in my life.
Anyway, he said he’d put me up, show me around the city AND make sure that I
had a ticket for his magnum opus, so I couldn’t really refuse. I booked my
flights up, and dropped the ball, big time.
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| This will be relevant to the rest of the story, I promise |
I made a terrible mistake. I flew with Ryanair. Now, Ryanair
have a great habit of flying to crazy airports in the middle of nowhere, at
knock-down prices. So rather than paying four times the price to fly with BA to
Frankfurt Main (“direct bus route to Heidelberg, no sweat”), I flew to
Frankfurt Hahn. “Frankfurt Hahn is absolutely miles away!” I was told. But my
Scottish meanness came out, and I bought my Ryanair flight, and the transport
headaches could be a problem for Future Mungo to deal with!
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| Mmm, homely! |
Frankfurt Hahn needs to be reported to Trading Standards for
false advertising. It’s geographically closer to Luxembourg City than it is
Frankfurt. I’m not entirely sure that it’s even in the same state as Frankfurt.
It’s arranged in a very strange way, like a giant sausage, with a McDonalds at
one end, and an information desk at the other, a good tenth of a mile away. In
between, there are a selection of low-end fashion emporiums, some sausage
vendors and a tiny café that doesn’t accept cards. Basically everything was
shut. The roof is made from what my old man would call “wibbly-wobbly tin”: the
kind of roof that amplifies any kind of precipitation. It was still raining
cats and dogs, and I could feel myself becoming anxious to leave. I decided to
ask at the information point about a bus to Heidelberg. The man told me that
there was one, it costs €20, and it left at 00.30. It was, at that point, 21.30.
It also takes a good few hours to get to Heidelberg. I had a look at the
timetables, and it was substantially quicker and cheaper to get to Luxembourg. So,
I went outside to find the bus stop, and instead found a car-park barrier, a
hotel, and a broad expanse of featureless fields, over which the icy wind blew
and the freezing rain fell. “Blow that!” said that little self-preserving voice
in my head. I went back in for more investigation, and found out that the bus stop was 200m further down the road. I went,
and was confronted with what appeared to be a deserted petrol station, with
utterly no protection from the elements. One would have to know that it was the bus stop, as otherwise one could have walked straight past, so unwelcoming did it look.
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| The university. Heidelberg taught me to always fly to a proper airport |
So I walked laps of the airport. After a while, I met the
English man from the passport queue - the one that realised he’d flown to purgatory,
rather than Germany. He said he had to be in Frankfurt for a conference
tomorrow, but the bus service was a nightmare. He’d tried to get a taxi, but
that hadn’t gone well. His boss had very generously given him a credit card,
limited to €250. A taxi to Frankfurt would have cost something like €480.
That’ll tell you just how far we were from civilisation. Heaven knows what
happened to him. He’s probably still there, trying to find the bus stop.
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| Much nicer than an image of that wretched bus terminal |
But life moves on. I eventually made it to the bus stop for
00.20, ten minutes early, and just in time for the blizzard! It was snowing a blizzard, and I found myself freezing with a Moroccan family. Now, I don’t
speak a word of German, which came in very useful when a man in a kind of
comedy Sheikh outfit, complete with Yasser Arafat-esque headdress, came along
and began shouting in German. He started counting people, and pointed
dramatically at me for number sechs. I said something that probably equates to “None German
speaking. I ne speak pas German!” He pointed again, and
shouted “Sechs?”, to which I replied
“Heidelberg!”. He shouted some more German at me, so I said it again.
“Heibelberg!”. This continued for a while, and then he carried on counting
people, but left me out, with a kind of sneer. I looked at one of the people he
was talking to, who’d been watching the exchange with amusement, and raised an
eyebrow. She could tell I was English, so said “family car”. To this day I will
never know what that was all about. Wilkommen
in Deutschland!
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| This was the Deutschland I wanted. |
Anyway, the bus turned up ten minutes late, and with another
“Heidelberg!” exchange with the driver (“Heidelberg, bitte!” “Heidelberg, ja?” Ja,
Heibelberg!”), I got on. I was one of four people on the swish, state-of
the-art coach. The driver double-checked where we were all going - “Heidelberg!”
x3 –and we were off! I don’t know where the bus company found this driver, but
he was priceless. He spent most of the journey playing Gypsy jazz music, made
sharp turns wherever he could, kept his lights on main beam, but only once
sounded his horn. I presumed it was at another road user, but it was just as
likely to have been a prostitute. He was that kind of guy. His other favourite
trick was coughing so hard that I thought he couldn’t possibly still be
concentrating on driving. Thank goodness that Hitler built the autobahns
straight, that’s all I can say.
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| Like I say: quaint, wooded, rolling hills |
But I made it to Heidelberg! I was actually quite keen on
seeing the place. My friend had spent a year there, and loved it so much he’d
moved back. Now, considering that he likes my company, he’s an excellent judge
of quality. He’d also written some rather charming poetry about the place, so I
was happy to suspend my dislike of Germany for a day or so to give the place a
fair trial. And it turns out that most of the things I dislike about Germany
are Northern things, not Southern things! The only thing I knew about the South
of Germany is that “zere zey speak like animals”, according to a German guy in
my sixth form. But do you know, I rather liked the place! My friend lived in a
little village-type place outside of the centre, with views of the big,
rolling, wooded hills, all the local amenities and a tram service. The centre
didn’t disappoint either.
It was all very German – cobbled street, bars every
two minutes, kebab places – but rather lovely, in a kind of timeless way. A lot
of the buildings were quite old, especially the churches, and the place had
history. Martin Luther had made a speech in the one of the squares, for one
thing, and the world-famous University has a Middle Age watchtower in it. I was
hoping my friend would say that it was the Faculty of the Occult, but no such
luck. The University was, incidentally, one of the hotbeds of Fascism in the
1930s, and had a big stone ring in the square outside showing the size of the
bonfire for the books they’d burnt in 1935 or so. But despite that, the
University is internationally regarded, and can boast Hegel, Dr. Bunsen (of
Burner fame), Josef Goebbels and W. Somerset Maughn as alumni. I would,
however, like to point out that Heidelberg has produced as many Nobel Prize
winners as Wroclaw, where I used to live, in Poland.
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| Die Bibliothek |
A lot of people have spent time there: J.B Priestly, Mark
Twain and the mysteriously-assassinated King of Thailand, Ananda Mahidol, to
name three. The Romanticists loved the place. Jackson Browne and Michael
Fassbender were born there as well - Browne presumably thanks to the U.S Army base. In fact, possibly due to the Army base, pretty much everyone there speaks English, and the
place feels slightly more international than other German cities that I’ve
visited. There were curry houses, Asian restaurants, and one “tapa” place. As a
Spanish speaker, I have never once seen “tapas” in its singular form, but there
we go. We had a look at the library, which I quite liked. It was rather grand,
with towers: it’s only a 1920’s vintage, but you wouldn’t realise. It was
slightly reminiscent of the Institut
Teologii in Wroclaw, but less impressive. The bridge over the Neckar was
also quite cool. There’s a statue of a brass monkey there, allegedly because
some Duke or another disliked his neighbour to the North, so put the statue
there, facing away from the neighbour’s house, as a passive way to perpetually
moon him. I want this to be true more than basically anything else.
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| The castle, obviously |
The thing that everyone talks about is the castle. It’s on a
big hill overlooking the town, and is really quite impressive. It’s ruined, but
still rather grand. The reason it’s ruined, incidentally, is because it’s been
blown up and repaired multiple times. Traditionally, the Heidelbergers let off
fireworks to celebrate the three times that it got destroyed. That strikes me
as a rather weird thing to celebrate. If I were them, I would let off fireworks
to celebrate it being repaired, but there we go. The castle grounds are free to
enter, and well worth it, but the castle itself (or remains thereof) are
accessible only if you pay. We didn’t do that, partly because of our general
meanness, but also because the climb up to the castle had made me feel ill
enough, and I didn’t think I could manage to part with money. You would not
believe how steep the slope up to that old ruin is. Made of slippery cobbles, it’s
not only daunting, but also full of promise for being absolutely treacherous in
the winter months. But the views are well worth it – all very quaint and Germanic.
Also, legend has it that Shakespeare and his theatre troupe once performed The Tempest there. It’s probably not
true, but a lovely idea nonetheless. I would whole-heartedly encourage anyone
with a strong constitution to visit the place, especially if they like good
views and Baroque architecture.
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| On the murderous slope up. The seat is level. |
The food I had was excellent. It surprised me. I thought of
German cuisine as mostly meat, potatoes and sauerkraut. Which is true, it must
be said. Mind you, I relaxed my vegetarianism for long enough to try a local
dish (black pudding, spuds, beer) – and it was excellent. Heavy, yes, but brilliantly
executed, and well worth the two hours of meat sweats that it gave me. To be
fair to the Germans (well, Turkish Germans), the vegetarian Donner kebab I had
for dinner was also very good. I think they view vegetarians as the British
view Goths: they exist, but quite why,
we don’t know, and whilst we won’t discourage them, we won’t exactly encourage
them either, unless we could make a bit of money out of them. Maybe I’m doing the
Germans a disservice. Their nation has a far lower obesity rate than England,
meat and potatoes keep the cold out like nobody’s business, and they certainly
know how to do sausages very well.
Anyway, I saw the play – which was just as excellently acted
and directed as I’d been expecting – and had a great time. But the next morning,
to my sorrow, I had to be up at sparrow’s fart to leave, via the dear old
three-times daily bus service to Frankfurt bloody Hahn airport. I bought some pretzels
for breakfast, and got on the coach. The midnight one had been brand new, full
of all the mod-cons, and with exactly four people on it. The daytime one was
ancient, packed full, and with a boring driver who focused on the road and was
never in danger of passing out from coughing. I was most disappointed, but not
as disappointed as I was to be when I got back at Frankfurt Hahn, with five
hours to kill. As if by clockwork, as soon as I stepped off the bus, it started
snowing again.
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| A ruined tower. Like my image of Frankfurt shall forever be. |
I’ve neglected to mention German beer so far. That’s because
I always found it a bit average. Not as nice as English ale, or even some Czech
beers. My late father briefly lived in Germany in the 1990s, and in a letter he
wrote back, complained that it takes the Germans 45 minutes to pour a glass of
beer. I found that to be true, when I went into a bar for a sharpener. You’d
order, and the barman would pour it, let it settle, repeat six times, let it
overflow, and give you something that was more head than beer. You’d drink it, feel
slightly short-changed, order another, and so it went on. But sat in Frankfurt
Hahn, with nothing to do, I suddenly got it! I ordered a bottle of Bitburger (because that’s what the runaway Nazis drink in X-Men: First Class),
and thoroughly enjoyed it. I liked it so much, I kept drinking it. I gradually
became very good at ordering a bottle of Bitburger
in German. After about seven of the things, I even started to feel a bit warmer
about the airport. It was quite remarkable. So, if you get stuck in a
miserable, remote airport, and feel the compulsion to drink all day, you can do
far worse than German beer, especially if you’re the kind of person to take
your beer recommendations from escaped war criminals in superhero films.
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| Germany on a plate. I asked for a veggie sausage, and didn't get one. I can't really complain, it was quite good |
So, Heidelberg: a really lovely little city, full of
history, very picturesque, and with toilet-humour monkey statues. It would have
been nice to stay a bit longer, admittedly, but I can’t imagine that it’ll be
the last time I’ll find myself there. And what did I learn? Always fly with BA,
and under no circumstances should you ever fly to Frankfurt Hahn. There is literally
no reason to ever go there. Also, according to my partner, half a pretzel, no
matter how authentically German, is not, I repeat not, a “proper present”.
NB: Massive thanks to Julia, Max, Laurence, and the whole cast of Julius Caesar for being generally lovely and welcoming.
