I woke up Thursday morning after packing my bags the night before; had my usual breakfast in the hotel, then did my morning ablutions and headed for the train station. That meant dragging my bags across the street (maybe 30 yards), then stepping onto a #2 train (which turned the corner just before I crossed the street), then getting off at the second stop about 10 minutes after I left the hotel.
Went into the station, purchased a ticket for Heidelberg, then found my rail track and positioned myself to board the train when it arrived. It arrived shortly, I got on board, and had some help hoisting my heavy bag on t0 the overhead storage area. Settled in on window seat for four stops ending in Mannheim where we had docked earlier. The stop before I was scheduled to depart, I noticed a couple of Morman missionaries on the train with me. As they queued to exit, I stood up and asked, “Elder Barker, would you help me get my bag down?” And of course he did; we chatted, he and his partner were from Sacramento, California.
At the next stop, I got my bags off, moved things to the next platform, but unfortunately I managed to arrive at the train (I only had about 6 minutes to make the transfer — old and slow doesn’t cut it!) just as it departed. So I returned to the main station and looked for a train going to Heidelberg; there was one at 12:59 on Track 3, so I when there and waited. No train showed up on time, but I waited and took the first train on that track. That was a mistake. It didn’t go to Heidelberg, but instead to a suburb of Mannheim where we all had to leave the train. The ticket office was closed; no one spoke English, so I ended up loading my bags into a taxi whose driver agreed to take me to the Hotel in Heidelberg. It was a fairly expensive trip, but well worth it rather than drag my baggage up and down ramps at train stations.
So I arrived at the hotel in Heidelberg and asked the lady at the desk if she would call the Makedonia Restaurant for which I had a phone number to make reservations for dinner. Why there? Because the Genealogical Association of English Speaking Researchers in Europe (GAESRE) use to schedule a dinner there on the last Thursday of the month at 6:00 pm, which this day happened to be. So even if I didn’t really think they were still active, I figured I would go there and talk to whomever and see what I could find out something about that organization. But no luck: the place was closed, so I had a very nice meal in the hotel.
The next morning I got up and walked to the train station where I bought a ticket for Amsterdam the next day and a day pass on the local line to visit Sinsheim, a half-hour train ride south and east of Heidelberg. There are two reasons to go there: there is a tech museum that has a whole lot of Formula 1 stuff in it, which I figure Greg would appreciate; and by family legend, this is the town from which Christian, Johannes and Maria left to go to Philadelphia in 1750. They had to leave early because it was a long way to Rotterdam and they had to travel by boat possibly on first the Neckar, then on the Rhine past Amsterdam to Rotterdam. Quite a trip back in those days (as long a three months just from Mannheim to Rotterdam) even though I was able to do it in about 5 days. Cars, Motorcycles, planes, and all kind of military equipment; the museum did not disappoint.
When I got back to the hotel, I realized that there was not way I could drag my bags the distance I walked, so I arranged for transport in the morning to the train station. So by tomorrow evening, I will be in Amsterdam. Hope to visit the Van Gogh museum on Sunday. Stay tuned.