Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hello my peoples!!
Well, over the weekend, I made plans with Amy and Isaac to go to Bingen, because, well for two reasons. First, it completely falls within that realm of free-ness that comes with our Studitickets, and two, it was supposed to be a really nice town, not too touristy, but nice. I guess the closest word that I can come up with is quaint, but anyways, describing Bingen isn't the point of this blog.....or is it?
Anyways, Isaac, Amy, Liz and I met up at the Mainz Hauptbahnhof around 11 because the next train left for Bingen at 11:30. So we met, and got on the train....we saw Julia too, but she wasn't going with us because she had to go home for a party (must be nice to be able to go home whenever you need to) but such is life. Ok, so we go to Bingen, and just lemme say, the weather was s***. It was raining and crap, but Amy was like, "Well, in England, it's like this all the time and you just get used to doing things in the rain." So we went anyways. Upon our arrival in Bingen, the rain let up significantly, and by the time we found the walk-way to see the Mäustürm, it was pretty much done raining. The Mausturm (i'm going to exclude the umlauts because I don't feel like typing them all the time) was really cool...it's a shame that you can't go out to the island to view it anymore though, but I will make due with my photo. After seeing the lovely sight that is the Mausturm, we headed to the tourist office to see what was going on in Bingen or to at the very least get a map to get around. Oh, but wait, the tourist office of Bingen is CLOSED on Saturdays, so we got jack.
After finding that the tourist office would offer no help, we just began to wander around a bit. We finally found the Basilica of St. Martin, and it had some sourt of craft fair thing going on where people were selling little trinkets and stuff......interesting, but I just wanted to see the church. Next, we went to the Castle of Bingen, Burg Klopp as it were, and lo and behold this castle too was at the pinnacle of a friggin hill! So we climbed. However, before I get to the castle itself, lemme tell ya'll about this cool like waterfall thing that was going on. I came down under the stairs of the castle, and then it went under the street and ended again in this square around by the Basilika. It was awesome, it's the tan looking stone structure in the far off shots of Burg Klopp if you feel so inclined as to look at my photos later. So, movig on. The climb to Burg Klopp was NOT as bad as the one to Heidelberg. This was more like a hill compared to the MOUNTAIN that Heidelberg sat on. Don't get me wrong, it was still a climb, and not an easy one for this fat kid here, but I did it! And it was all worth it. From the castle you can see pretty much all of Bingen. It was amazing. Then there's this old part of a tower that you can stand in and take photos, also quite amazing. Then, resting along the walls of the castle are old stone sarcophagi, on which I made Amy sit and take a picture...it was quite amusing.
After leaving Burg Klopp, we decided to make a pilgrimage to the pligrimage church of St. Hildegard of Bingen. The Church itself is on the top of a hill, but this hill is about 3 miles north of Burg Klopp, but we didn't know this at the time. When we looked at the map at Burg Klopp, it looked like this church was just right around the corner......um....NO IT FRIGGIN WAS NOT!!! It took about, I'm gonna say 45 minutes of fast paced walking to get to this church, and I about died. I, as an American, am not used to walking A: long distances and B: at a really fast pace (or at least what I considered fast). So it was a little rough for me. Though, the saving grace was that just as my legs began to give out, the hill leveled off into a plateau and it was smoothe sailing from there. The Church itself was nice, though you couldn't look around, you could just go into the foyer part and then look though the iron gates at the church interior. I'm not really sure what was important about this church, I mean St. Hildegard founded it sometime in the early 12th century, but her body isn't here today, rather it's in Rüdesheim along with some of the other saints of Bingen. This rather confused me, but I didn't find an answer. In any event, the church was cool, and I think it would be cool to be a nun and live there, mostly because they produce their own wine at this church. :-D
After leaving the church, we all went to get some food, and lo and behold most of the restaurants were closed too!!! We finally found one, an Italian/Indian place, and ate there. It was pretty reasonably priced, and the food was really good. After eating, Amy, Liz, and Isaac decided to go to Bacharach, but I couldn't because I was going to go to the Staatstheater that night to see the Symphony....so they went to Bacharach and I went to Mainz. All in all, Bingen was a pretty cool town, and I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to see a real German town, but without the high tourism rate.
The symphony was AMAZING! I really loved it. It made me feel really cultured to know that I was seeing the symphony, because I don't think many Americans go to the symphony....do we even have them? I really couldn't say.... But it was cool, and I hope to see many more before I go back home....but that's like 8 months from now, so I think I'll be fine. The only weird thing that I found about the symphony is the fact that once it is over, the conductor goes off stage, then comes back on, then goes off, then comes back on. he does this about four or five times, and I'm really not quite sure why. Ann said that it's just tradition, but to me, why wold you go all the way around the orchestra to get off stage, just to turn around and come all the way back on. This could just be my lazy American attitude coming out, but hey, it's a logical question, right? Maybe one day before I leave, I'll just ask a conductor what the dealeo is, and maybe he'll tell me.........hmm...........
- comments