Yesterday, a few of us who remained in Marburg this weekend bought a Hessen Ticket (31€ for a group ticket for up to 5 people around the state of Hessen) and took a regional train up to Kassel.
To be honest, I had no idea what was even in Kassel until I did a quick Wikipedia search the night before. I had suggested Kassel to Brian, Dawn, and Laura though because I had sought out travel advice from one of my German teachers and a friend from Marburg. For a relatively short day trip, everyone recommended Kassel.
Thankfully, the weather yesterday was pleasant with only a few instances of a drizzle. The train to Kassel only took an hour and ten minutes, so we got there by 11:30 AM. We walked around and headed toward the Tourist Information Center, which after much difficulty, we found next to the Rathaus (which itself was quite a nice building).
Serendipitously, yesterday was the Kasseler Museumsnacht or Kassel’s Museum Night. It was pretty much like Frankfurt’s Museumsuferfest where you buy one collective ticket and get into any participating museums for no extra charge. The added bonus of Kassel’s Museumsnacht ticket was that it included a day pass for public buses, trams, and regional trams—all for just 6€.
However, I did not realize, until the moment after I had paid for my ticket, that the museum ticket only worked between 5 PM and 1 AM. So we decided to shoot for the 8:23 PM train (instead of the 6:23 PM train) and just visit one or two museums after 5 PM. Besides, the transportation benefits of the ticket began at 1 PM.
Since we hadn’t eaten lunch, we headed around the city center looking for a cheap place to eat lunch. We didn’t have much luck finding a really cheap place, so we settled on Alex, a trendy-looking café. We walked in, sat down, and the next song playing overhead was by Owl City. Oh, American music. Haha.
After we had eaten lunch, we walked around until it was after 1 PM, so we could hop on the tram and take it all the way across the city to Schloss Wilhelmshoehe, one of the castles in Kassel. That was where the Herkules statue I had read about was located as well. Before we got on the tram though, we found an awesome pedestal for pictures. J
All four of us got pictures here, but poor Brian…since Dawn had successfully jumped off the pedestal before him, I told him (somewhat jokingly) to jump off the pedestal.
Well, he did, and although we got some good mid-air pictures of him, he also landed awkwardly on his ankle on top of the wet grass. I felt awful...we hadn’t even walked up to the castle on the hill yet, and now Brian had hurt his ankle. But he insisted that we stick with the plan.
So onto the tram we went and all the way to Wilhelmshoehe. Here’s the simplest description of our next three hours:
We started walking the 1.5 km (probably a bit further than that actually) to the top of the hill from the closest tram station, pretty much at a 30 degree incline the whole way.
We saw Schloss Wilhelmshoehe, which was pretty cool. There was a bride and groom taking wedding pictures nearby.
Beyond the castle was this pond, which shows you just how far we were still from the top of the hill.
We found some old ruins along the way. I have never read, watched, or listened to the Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, but for some reason this reminded me of it. Am I way off?
From there, we walked a long way along the path through the wooded areas. I was really tempted to make a bow and arrow from the branches lying around.
Every few hundred yards, we’d take pictures of the view behind us to see how far we’d walked. Here’s one of our first checkpoints…
…clearly, not even close yet.
We did find a bridge called die Teufelsbrücke or the Devil’s Bridge. I climbed some rocks to get a better picture.
Walking through the woods was like something out of Robin Hood. I really wanted a horse, a sword, and a bow and arrow. Haha.
Finally, we made it to the base of Herkule’s hill…
…and then had to climb what seemed like 200 steps.
The view was really quite nice though.
From the top, you could spy another castle in Kassel—Schloss Loewenburg.
The statue of Herkule’s wasn’t as cool as I had thought it was though. Plus, you had to pay to get into the building at the top. At that point, we didn’t care about going in, so we skipped that.
Behind Herkule’s though, we discovered a bus stop. Sad…we could’ve simply bused to the top. We decided not to walk down, so instead we hopped on a bus and headed to Schloss Loewenburg, which basically means something like Lion’s Fortress.
Sure enough, there were lion statues inside.
It was actually a bit smaller than we had all imagined it. We left after about 20 minutes.
We rode the tram back into the city and decided to head to one of the museums, since it was now after 5 PM. All of us wanted to check out the Brothers Grimm Museum, since they wrote many of their fairy tales in Kassel. Turns out, it was closed and only had an outdoor picnic hosted by the Lions Club of Kassel.
We decided to head to the Museum für Sepulkralkultur, which roughly means museum for grave/burial culture or something along those lines. Basically, there was a lot of stuff that had to do with death. Yeah...it struck me as a bit of a random and weird museum. I did take a picture of these statuettes of skeletons dancing with people though.
After the museum, we were quite hungry, so we headed toward the city center to look for bratwursts and beer. We found our place near the train station. I had a ½ meter long quality bratwurst, as they called it. That’s at least a foot and a half long. Of course, gotta have mustard.
With only an hour before our train was scheduled to leave, we decided to buy some groceries since stores are all closed on Sundays. I bought my lentil soup, bread, and eggs that I just ate for lunch. Outside the main train station, we saw an exhibition for Museumsnacht. It was a figure of a guy walking up a pole. Check it out.
All in all, it was an eventful and busy day. Kassel was definitely a good choice for our day trip, and we had quite an adventure. I hope Brian is resting his ankle today, because we walked a lot yesterday, and his limp got progressively worse throughout the day.
On a somewhat unrelated note, yesterday was also the first time I felt kind of ready to go home (for lack of a better term to describe what I felt; I didn’t exactly feel like it was homesickness). Funny that I haven’t even started my Fulbright work yet…but last night, I was mainly just getting tired of some people (in most cases, either drunk or just immature) seeing me and yelling whatever stereotypes come to mind. The most random one I got last night was “Yu-Gi-Oh!”
This sort of behavior is not entirely new to me (it happened in Greece too, and Italy as well, I guess), and while it does also happen sometimes in the US, it feels a bit different in a foreign country when you don’t have all the vocabulary you want to be able to express yourself. A few weeks ago, a little kid (probably 7 or 8) was kicking his brother on the seat across from him. Unfortunately, I was sitting next to his brother, so I got a few of his kicks.
He kept looking at me to see how I’d react. Then he kicked at his brother again even though his brother’s leg was right next to mine. He got me right on the shin. So I pointed at him and gave him a stern, “Stop!” (in German, of course). His mom, who was sitting on the other side of the bus, didn’t even bother scolding him. Interesting group of kids: Four of them between ages of about 6 and 9 and already with diamond earrings (and punk haircuts, I might add). I was a bit frustrated that I couldn’t say what I wanted to though besides one or two words. The rest was a bit more complicated.
I was thinking last night that, aside from this language program, my Fulbright experience will likely be very different from any study abroad programs I’ve done before. Instead of being around maybe a dozen or so other students from your university, you’re pretty much all on your own in terms of connecting with folks in your host country. Then again, I guess that’s the point of the Fulbright Scholarship.
Normally, I do enjoy spending time alone. However, it can also be draining when you’re in a country where the main language is not your first language. My German is good enough for me to get by and find answers to what I need, but it’s also pretty limited to small talk and only occasional in-depth conversations about subjects I know. It certainly also makes you think about what it’s like to move to the US and not speak English well.
I realize that I have now written a ton. My apologies for such a long blog update. I should also say that I’ve had many more positive interactions than the few negative ones I described above. Just yesterday, in Kassel, an elderly lady asked me in German if I knew where a particular bus stop was. Since I remembered it from the map, I explained it to her in German, but she kind of doubted my advice (probably a good idea, considering I’d only been in Kassel for all of 6 hours), so I offered her my map. She thanked me and said she’d be okay, then she walked off in the other direction. She had an accent I wasn’t familiar with, but I’m glad I understood her pretty well.
Anyway, I’m off to do more transcribing and then make pasta for dinner. Toodles.
Sam
P.S. I don't think I ever wrote the answer to my question about the pictures from the Goethe Haus. If you were still wondering, they're from Rome. I visited Rome in 2008 and got pictures of the two sites: Piazza del Popolo (first picture) and Piazza Navona (second picture). I think I may be visiting Rome again this winter...
1 comment:
I'm fine and dandy now! Rested all of Sunday and early Monday, and now I can walk again like a champ.
-Brian
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