The next morning I got up and at breakfast. At breakfast I made friends with another woman from Australia, this was a woman in her 50s who was traveling for 7 weeks. She was adorable, in a feisty way. She was traveling by herself and clearly just wanted to talk, so I just listened as she told me her life story. I really do love meeting new people and I don’t know why but people love to tell me their life stories, so its win-win!
When I finished talking to the Aussie, I set off to the train station to catch a train leaving Cologne to go to Mannheim to end up in Heidelberg. The girl in my room from the night before had recommended it to me and it sounded cool, so I said, “why not?” and went. I arrived in Mannheim and took the train to Heidelberg the first time, but got off at the stop too early. Thinking that was all Heidelberg had to offer (fields) I went back to Mannheim. I asked the people at the information desk, and told me I had simply gotten off too early, so I got back on the train to Heidelberg and got off at the correct stop. Then I stored my luggage a locker at the train station and went off to explore.
There is a castle in Heidelberg, so I took the public bus to the area closest to the castle, then hiked a mountain to get the castle itself. It is a beautiful place. Today, it is mostly ruins, but you can still see how beautiful it must have been in its former glory. Doing what I always do, I randomly joined a group of Asain tourists who looked like they knew what they were looking at and ended up in the castle gardens; absolutely stunning!
Once I figured I had seen all there was to the castle, I hiked back down the hill, and toured a little bit of the city. I walked around the market, entered City Hall, found a church, walked across the bridge, which is the start of the Philosopher’s trail, and looked at the time to realize if I didn’t leave soon I was going to miss my train to Salzburg, Austria where I had booked my hostel for that night. I took the bus back to the train depot, collected my luggage and hopped on the train back to Mannheim. By the time I got there I had missed my train, but luckily the train pass I have is open ended, so it doesn’t matter what time I take a train. I went to information to ask fastest way to get to Salzburg only to find out I had to go back to Heidelberg and take a direct train from there….WahWah. Oh well. I guess I just really love going to-and-from Heidelberg from Mannheim.
Train ride to Salzburg was uneventful; I rolled into the city around 10:30pm and took a bus to my hostel. It was funny because I was walking around with this slip of paper with directions and an address to my hostel, and went to this large light up building asking them where my hostel was and they were like “Are you Janice?” They had been waiting for me since 6pm when I had originally said I’d be checking in, and this large building was, in fact, my hostel! JUFA hostel in Salzburg is by far, the best hostel I have ever stayed in. I knew I was going to like Salzburg, even before I got there for it’s the setting for the Sound of Music, but I had no idea just how much I was going to like it. The hostel was super nice with its friendly staff, large rooms, free WIFI, free breakfast, overall wonderful. I got checked into another 8 all female room, but again there were only 2 other girls in the room. One was a girl who had spent the year studying abroad in Salzburg and was now back to say her goodbyes before she left to return to the US (Brenna), and the other was a girl who was traveling Europe for 2 months and had already visited Salzburg, but had fallen in love with it (Nauri). Once I got acquainted with them, I went upstairs sent out some emails, and went to sleep.
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