Heidelberg

Heidelberg was lovely. Wonderful old houses and streets echoing with voices; huge churches in the middle of the residential area; bars and restaurants galore; wonderful wide river that turns out to be the Neckar and not the Rhein, as I’d thought! We must have given the Rhein the slip at some point in our trip south.
We were in the Aldstadt, or Old Town, and it’s obviously the tourist area. We walked right to the end of the Haupstrasse last night, and came to Bismarckplatz, a platz we’d remembered from our rather hectic bus ride a couple of days or so ago. It leads into the new town, but it was all rather dark, so we didn’t venture much further.
Tried out the strange taste of a Heidelberg schneeball (snowball) yesterday; it’s hard to describe exactly what it is: something between a sweet biscuit and a pastry coated with different flavours. A bit too sweet for our taste, but memorable (even more as we asked to sit down in the place where they were selling them - and have been making them for generations - and it cost us extra to do so!)
We didn’t stay up for last evening’s World Cup game. Couldn’t take any more disappointments on that front.
Missed out on our breakfast of one hot drink and one croissant this morning, because the place that provided it doesn’t open till eight, and we had to be away before that to catch the train. We tried to get the proprietor to give us the drink and croissant last night by way of recompense, but he wasn’t having it on. Not the most PR minded, this particular lot!
Anyway, today we’ve travelled from Heidelberg to Stuttgart in one 45 minute stretch, hung around at Stuttgart station for just under an hour and got on a train to Zurich, (another three hours) and then less than ten minutes after we got to Zurich we headed for Spiez, (another hour and a half) which is just near where we’re staying with one of the people (Darren Hight) who used to be at DCBC, our home church. He married a Swiss girl about 18 months ago, and now they’ve just had a baby daughter - she’s two weeks old. They’re living in a community that offers hospitality to different groups, Christian and non-Christian, and also has a small farm. We’re in the first floor of a chalet (some three hundred years old, but renovated) and have a view overlooking the Lake of Thun - with the Alps in the background. Celia said, If she’d known she was coming to Queenstown she wouldn’t have bothered, but she was kidding! The place is absolutely beautiful. Certainly it’s reminiscent of Queenstown, though the Alps are probably bigger still than the mountains there, but it’s also reminiscent of Dunedin and its harbour.
Since we’re catering for ourselves here, we walked down to the dairy/grocers - the only one in Einigen, the local village - and back again. Going down was fine, but the walk back was a bit of a mission: all uphill.
The photo is of the oldest church in Einigen; in fact, one of the oldest in Switzerland.