Altenberg and the Train

They took us in three giant double decker busses to the monastery in Altenberg for the orientation. The streets here are ridiculously narrow and, to me, look like they are only just wide enough for one small car. Instead, these tiny streets are actually two way streets that somehow accommodate traffic in both directions. Now, riding in giant bus on this street with traffic on the other side and bikers on the other, I was sure tragedy would strike. And yet life just went on as if there were nothing strange about this. We got to the monastery and were paired up with a roommate based on the state we would be teaching in. I think they kept the original doors and keys to our rooms:

It was very nice there. There is a large church and the entire place is surrounded by a low stone wall you can look over and see cows and sheep just on the other side:

It really was beautiful and I wish they had given us time to walk around and enjoy it. Here are some pictures I grabbed during one of the breaks:

At the beginning, they made sure to tell us that no alcohol was allowed in any of the rooms. I sat there thinking “well, obviously”, but then he continued to tell us that we would just have to keep it in the bar area and drink it there. Surprise surprise, you can buy beer and wine at the monastery. Europe is fun. Actually I didn’t get any since I was still jetlagged and fell asleep before the bar would open.

At any rate, on Thursday I found myself back at the Köln train station and jumped on my train to Geisenheim. I was very nervous about missing my stop the whole way because the announcements were drowned out by the noise of the engine the whole time and I didn’t see any of the station names until we were pulling away from it. Hardly useful. At any rate, I did enjoy the scenery along the way. It’s true, there really are castles everywhere here. I saw atleast 10 just on the 2 ½ hr trip. Here are a few castles and other beautiful things I spotted:

Note how colorful everything is. The houses are all painted in pastels. Houses in white are often off-set by bunches of bright flowers in the window sills. Or another trend I noticed was for most of the façade of the house to be covered in ivy.