17 Mai - Climb on!

Today we were determined to go climbing.  We still slept in and took our time, but this time made no sight seeing stops along the way... or we didn't mean to anyway.  I had the train ride and the bus connection all figured out... except we were standing in the wrong spot and so we missed the bus.  We must have been emanating the look of confusion because this kindly older man who didn't speak a lick of English helped us find the right place to stand by gesturing and pointing and looking helpful.  He then pointed to the timetable which showed it being a 20 minute wait for the next bus and directed us to the tram instead.  He walked us to the tram stop and told us to get on bus number sechundswanzig (26 - I knew knowing the numbers would come in handy).  So we did and we rode it to Kirchheim like he said... then we rode it back a few stops... then foward a few stops and kept consulting the map that didn't seem to contain any of the streets we went by... so we took it back and forth a few more times with some walking to stops in between.  Finally we found Harbigweg and started down a narrow road lined with fields.

Eureka!  We found the climbing gym!  OK, so it was not as fancy as the one back home, but it was something.  There was no test to see if you were safe to climb, you simply signed a paper saying that you were.  The man at the desk spoke enough English to get the paper signed and pay the entrance fee and we were good to go.  There was even a bucket filled with cement for Skylar to clip himself to in order to belay me.  There were no rubber pieces or mats to fall on.  There were maybe a dozen or so people there, half of which were kids in some kind of group that left shortly after we got there, leaving a max of 6 people.

Some of the other few people turned out to be stationed at the local army base and were from the US.   One of the guys actually seemed to know what he was doing and was trying to get the other two to figure it out so they would belay him. They even did lead climbing with a quick instruction of, "just do the opposite; feed me rope, instead of taking it in."  Skylar grew tired quickly, so I climbed with them for a bit, but only allowed the one who seemed to know what he was doing belay me.   We talked about doing some outdoor climbing and so he gave me his email address to contact him because he's been looking to find an actual climber to climb with.  Yeah, that's me, an actual climber :)

Next onto the bouldering cave which was completely matted with very cushiony, almost gymnastic style mats that I could have practiced flips on.  Instead, I sadly tried to boulder which was so pathetic, it quickly caught the attention of another guy who happens to by doing his Masters at the University of Heidelberg in computer science and knows my adviser, Frau Schmidt.  He gave me some pointers in bouldering and I still couldn't complete what he said was the easiest route.  He and Skylar did some competitions of climbing across the ceiling that was quite impressive.  He asked if I do outdoor climbing and took my email address to contact me the next time they plan something, but he'll be in Spain for the next couple weeks.  Looks like I need some quick draws because most of the outdoor climbing is sport routes or trad.  He knows of a couple places on the castle that we can climb too!  How cool is that?!

It was getting late and we were getting hungry, so we left in search for dinner, which I swear is going to be the last time we eat out.  I have spent waaaaay too much money on food this past week.  The grocery stores are fairly cheap, but eating out is ridiculous.  I spend nearly 30 euro every time, so we're packing pb&j whether Skylar likes it or not.  The place we ate at was interesting though... it was kind of like a bar atmosphere, but had various kinds of tofu dishes on the menu.  We ended up getting what appeared to be spaghetti with tofu in place of meatballs.  

Back on the train from another long day and arriving back in Heilbronn in the middle of the night for a bike home in the dark.  I really like Heidelberg and have a feeling we'll be spending much of our free days there when we are not exploring other parts of Europe.