Day 10 – Phonological ambiguity

A crisp, grey, steam-blowing morning propelled us down the road to the first available bakery for breakfast. Baking since 1735 apparently, but the turn over’s good so I’m pretty sure our croissants were freshies. The coffee was great.

We decided to ignore Accuweather’s, appallingly inaccurate weather service, today for rain. That was a mistake – apparently today’s the one time they got it right. Large cold drops began to slap down on our heads five minutes out of the cafe – but we pushed on, knowing we could always stop somewhere for a sustaining gluhwein.

It’s true you know, it’s everywhere. It’s hard to go more than 10 metres without coming across a small timber gluhwein hut wafting the spicy warm vapours or a chalk board informing cold (wet) and lost shoppers, that the deeply restorative beverage is available within. You get a sense that, summiting mount Blanc, you’d find a gluhwein merchant laddeling steaming gluhwein into the ceramic mugs of meandering mountaineers.

We pressed on and easily found the telekafunken. Di tells me it’s funicular but after fahrtgasse and fuhrberger earlier this morning, I’m sticking with telekafunken. Fahrtgasse is a street by the way, not the effects of the considerable quantities of sauerkraut we’ve been consuming – although it’s a good proxy description – at least for me.

We opted for the ride to the top of the hill and were rewarded pretty much with the top of the hill – only wet. A lovely gent in a small wooden box, not unexpectedly, laddeled us some gluhwein as we huddled under his small canvas awning out of the rain. He was thin and wiry with coke bottle bottom glasses through which distant eyes beamed a warm intensity, wore a brown baseball cap and wanted to know the aboriginal name for Ayers Rock, giggling as we told him Uluru. We soon discovered the giggling was the simple joy of having another human being to talk to – not to many visitors on a cold, wet Friday morning – and he was soon asking us about the first world war, the Anzacs and Gallipoli as he’d back-packed through turkey once. The telekafunken arrived, we got the hot tips on a few restaurants from our friend, and headed down – to the schloss.

The schloss / castle is quite remarkable really, having, like many such buildings having gone through multiple extensions and renovations. Today they had an apothecary exhibition on the history of pharmacy and I’m now on the hunt for a vial of narwhal tusk powder having read what that can do.

The Schloss has a wine cellar and the Germany’s biggest wine cask at 60,000 gallons!

Snapped some Heidelberg view pickies and watched a young couple braving the elements for their wedding photos before heading down the hill to La Bohem, an old bar apparently frequented by the uni-students that seem to spend half their time in bars and the other half cycling around the town at full tilt with both hands deep in their coat pockets. We suspect this could explain the diminishing student numbers.

The bar had three huge timber beams over the fogged front window and a large steel semi-circle ring protruding inwards from it. A heavy purple curtain hung from the ring creating an entry alcove and a barrier from the cold.

The walls were a faded mustard colour, from the high ceilings down to about a metre from the ground where a band of fleur-de-lis marked a change to bottle green. On a black and white tiled floor sat maybe ten tables with simple wooden chairs at each. A large wooden bench provided the seating along one side wall and we plonked ourselves here amidst our piles of jackets, jumpers and scarves.

A table by the window had a group of young girls – we think students – who also worked there, and helped themselves (liberally) to a bottle of red behind the counter. An older lady sat by herself in a back corner her hair ‘un-bunned’ and exploded with damp air frizzyness. She seemed to know everyone that came in and engaged them all in small talk.

We lunched here enjoying the richness of the place before setting off back home along the river. Dinner at the hotel tonight as we watched some of the winter world cup.