Summer Trip to Germany

The view of Heidelberg from atop the Heidelberg Castle.

My family began our trip at the Frankfurt International Airport, a wonderfully awe-inspiring airport that puts the George Intercontinental almost to shame with its hyper-contemporary architecture: Limitless expanses of glass and sculpted limbs of poreless steel that swoops across the viewer’s eyes and guides it through a wonderful expanse of something that looks like the Titanic if it were built the same way as the One World Trade Center.

But that initial awe and amazement was halted pretty quickly, when I noticed that Germany deems that free internet for its flyers isn’t an option. But after driving out of the airport with our rental car (International Driver’s License required), the inner “zoom zoom” motto so frequently displayed in our Mazda back home came to life in our Ford rental, because as soon as we were off airport property, the Autobahn was waiting for us with open arms. 

The speed limit in America is generally acknowledged to be 70 mph. On the Autobahn, we went as fast as our diesel-powered car could go without causing an accident: 200 kmph, which roughly translates to 125 mph. For the Germans that enjoy the Autobahn on a regular basis, they have all told me that it wasn’t anything special, and that it helps to reduce commuting times when going in between cities. This means that while every German next to our speeding car was simply doing another daily routine, our car was buzzing around like we had just landed on the moon.

I was muttering “Faster, Dad, faster!”

Mother scolded Father to slow down, and Father just stepped down on the pedal.

Seokhyun Baek at the monument to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 

All that happened in the course of 10 minutes, because the Autobahn does have speed limits in most places, usually set between 100-130 kmph, which goes anywhere from 60-80 mph, and my brief dream of shooting through Germany at 200 kmph was chipped away slowly by the ever decreasing speed limits that appeared as we got closer and closer to a populated city. 

Our first stop was at Heidelberg, a peaceful city built on the exterior to look like a scene from the picturesque German town you’d see in a fairy tale set in the Medieval Age, and with an interior that seems to consist entirely of Villeroy & Boch that’s been made to look like a Restoration Hardware dreamscape. Indeed, I’ve never looked at Holiday Inn as “sophisticated” until I went to Europe.

But rather than enjoying the barely climate-controlled interiors of German interiors (compared to the lovely constant 70 degrees we keep in Houston) that make you sweat indoors (but one usually forgets about that when confronted all the modernistic eye candy cheerfully displayed in every building), I trekked up to the Heidelberg Castle, a rather historically important structure built in the 13th century.

Essentially, it was where several Germanic kings resided in and was the location where Martin Luther (the religious one) came to defend one his theses (Love vs. Divine Love). But that aside, this was the momentous location where I lowered my self-esteem to try out the new “Self-Portrait Monopod Extendable Cable Controlled Handheld Stick” which is the advertising jargon on Amazon for a selfie stick.

This pretty much describes my Germany trip rather concisely. For the better part of two weeks, I rushed about Germany, eventually heading to Berlin and eventually back to Frankfurt, where I was able to enjoy everything I missed on my initial day in Germany, all from the perfect vantage point of the Hilton hotel located smack in the middle of Downtown. Is Germany a place I would visit again? Certainly, but next time I’ll rent a faster car.