Today we drove to Heidelberg in the rain. Lots of construction on the autobahn. We took a shortcut to lunch and ended up in a forest with single track roads with ditches on both sides and scrapping the bottom of the car. But tom-tom led us out again, however the restaurant it found turned out to be an elementary school so we started "find restaurant" all over again and this time found an unusual place. Walt had a turkish hamburger with yogurt.
Then we went to Castle Heidelburg. This tower was the powder magazine until it exploded.
Each mason was paid by the stone, so every stone had the mason's mark on it.
One form of one-up-manship was to build a larger & larger wine barrel. If we understood our guuide correctly, 10% of the wine was taken for tax and stored in the barrel. A larger barrel meant that this prince (a Palitinate Wittelsbach) was richer than his neighbors. Jacob is 6 feet tall; there is a larger barrel nearby, which holds 60,000 gallons, but too many Japanese tourists in the way for a good photo. Most of the castle is in ruins because 1) nobody cared for too long, and 2) restoration efforts are limited to essential maintwnance to preserve history (30 Years War, Napoleonic War, etc). A lot of rain outside, so we bought a few postcards instead of our own photos. When we get home & scan them, we'll post them.
Walt has a bad cold and losing his voice.
Tomorrow we take Cathy and Jake to the Frankfurt airport on our way to Glesse to visit family. The other four will go on to do laundry, visit Stuttgart, Cologne, and Berlin. We don't know what we'll be doing or when we'll have internet again. We'll write when we can.
W+M
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