Day 8 - The Doodle Has Landed

Jane left for work, and left me a delicious breakfast of veggie burger and grapes. I got up and made it down the hill (jogged about ½ way) and onto the bus and off at the Alte Bruecke (Old Bridge). I was going to be looking for Mike to get to his hotel, the Dubliner. I got to the Dubliner and it was locked up tight. Finally someone came to the door and I said that my brother was going to be checking in, maybe he had checked in already? And the guy (turns out to be Fergus) said, “Paulkovich? No, he’s not here yet.” Not even there yet and they already know his name.

Took a little stroll around and popped into a church just a short distance from Mike’s hotel. It was very beautiful inside, and someone was playing a magnificent pipe organ. (It was the Providenze Evangelishe Church.) Left there, cruised around a little more and found this weird, weird, weird candy store – from the windows you’d NEVER know it was a candy store – one window was completely indecipherable with stuff, the other one had a dummy in a dentist chair. On the floor around him were hundreds of dental casts. Then there were two of those things from old-time typewriters – the fanned-out things that hold each letter. Instead of letters, they had teeth on them. The candy store itself was a dim, narrow place just packed with people, and every kind of candy you can possibly imagine, all in jars. It was Wonkaland. I also saw Welch’s Grape Soda and Dr. Pepper. It is called the "Heidelberger Zucherladen."

Found a craft store where they were selling beads, and also a jewelry store with some lampworked beads. I should say, overpriced lampworked beads.

Strolled back to the Dubliner and was lurking outside when Fergus came out and said, your brother’s here – do you want me to show you where his room is? So I went up to his room (2 flights of stairs) and surprised him. He got the “big room,” hardly larger than his bed, but clean and comfortable-looking, with TV but no phone. The 2 flights of stairs is a wicked climb, believe it or not, but around one turn there is a stained-glass window with hand-written stuff on it - one side appears to be written in Gaelic, the other is in English, starting with "Soldiers are we..." (turns out to be the Irish National Anthem.) It made me think of the Woody Allen movie where Diane Keaton becomes a revolutionary and writes bad poetry.

I took Mike back to the church where I’d heard the organ, and the organist was still practicing. Surprisingly, we heard “Camptown Ladies,” some other American songs, and one that I can only think of as, “The Ants Go Marching Two by Two.”

We walked down to the Bismarkplatz and through Woolworths in search of an extension cord. No luck. So we decided to get some real lunch. There is a restaurant called “Gecko,” which has a logo which looks too much like a GE logo. Jane and I had joked that it was too creepy to eat there, so Mike and I decided to do it. I had a fantastic Thun Salat (tuna salad, nothing like US) and Mike had a good noodle dish. We had big beers with it.

Went into Kaufhof dept. store – I wanted Mike to take a ride on the glass elevator so he could see the castle. We took the escalator to the top (there are about 6 stories) and on one turn we saw these bras that were grey and white striped. We called them “prison bras.” On the next escalator, we heard the guys behind us talking about “manzierres” and “bros” (from Seinfeld.) We of course began talking to them. They were from Texas and Washington State. We had a nice Seinfeld conversation.

Got to the top and the glass escalator is now closed until 9/14. Bummer. Took the escalator back down.

We resumed strolling around the Hauptstrasse (I got to introduce Mike to my Save the Children Von Trapp.) We stopped in front of the University Library and admired the facade with its very cool "man faces." I also photographed a beautiful door with a woman's head carved at the top, very Art Nouveau. We saw a guy I had seen before - an Australian with a bicycle loaded high with junk. He was selling the junk to pay for his trip. It was quite a sight.

Later we met Jane for dinner. We decided on a Thai place and chose 3 different dishes to share (a shrimp pad thai, green curry and chicken, and a beef dish new to me.) We had them with Thai iced tea. The food was great, the iced tea was buh-sgusting.

Went back to the Dubliner with Mike; all of us got in Mike’s bed and watched TV. Actually, we just ran the remote around the channels. Then we went to the upper bar of the Dubliner for “Quiz Night.” Fergus runs “Quiz Night.” Apparently he's on Dublin time, because it started about an hour late. We were doing pretty well (especially on American culture questions like, "what two actors are in these 3 movies: Raging Bull, Casino and Goodfellas.”) We made it though one round and Jane & I just had to go home. Mike said we did pretty ok on the first round and probably would have won the quiz if we’d stayed. Next week we will try again. By the way, I didn’t know Pavarotti had died until it turned out to be a question on the quiz. We have been totally out of the loop as far as news is concerned - no tv, no radio and no English newspapers. Next week I will try to read some news on the internet before the quiz.

Jane and I went back to Harlem, packed everything so we could leave from downtown Heidelberg the next day and turned in. Unfortunately, the neighbors were having a party so it was a rough night.