Day Five: Gutenberg Castle / Heidelberg

The morning of day five (8:30 am) came very early for Elliott and Cory. They stayed up till 3 in the morning writing the blog post for last night! Forgive me for any mistakes as im writing this post on my phone without the aid of spellcheck. We started out the day with another lovely breakfast at the Sauberts and then headed out to Gutenberg castle. It was hard to tell which castle was the Gutenberg castle in the valley below since literally every hill had a castle on it! Once we arrived, we got tickets to a birds of prey show. The falconers demonstated the hunting abilities of large birds such as owls, African Eagles and Black Vultures by feeding them fuzzy lifeless baby chick corpses. 

They also showed us how African Swallows can carry a large coconut many times its own weight for long distances which was very interesting. Birds of prey like the ones we saw cannot be completely trained; they can fly away any time they like. However, most of them don't fly away or long (the longest a bird has been away for is 1.5 years) since they rely on the trainers for easy food. The guide explained to us that while they can hunt on their own, they prefer to get the easy meal from the trainers. For us, Its the equivalent of going to McDonalds instead of going out in the backyard and trying to shoot a deer. The birds get food and medical care from the local university and because they don't need to waste energy hunting, they live many times longer at the castle than in the wild. One bird was 25 years old which is 130 years old in bird years. My favorite bird was the vulture.

When it walked, it sort of skip/ hopped with its wings out but curled in and his head tucked down a bit as if he was saying "come at me bro" in some kind of bird language. Overall it was very entertaining.

After the show we ate lunch up at the castle and then went with Uta and the Sauberts to Heidelburg. Once we got to Heidelburg, we walked around for a bit, saw the church, and got some ice cream and water before heading out on our segway tour of the city! The segways were suprisingly easy to master for everyone except elliott. When our segway guide saw elliott practicing before we left on the tour, she said " i better get the first aid kit." She would need that very same first aid kit not 15 minutes later when elliott decided to go off-road and crashed his segway at nearly the top speed into a pole. Elliott suffered only minor injuries to his little toe, but the injuries sustained by his ego were very severe. Next, we rode our segways up a mile- long hill called "philosophers way". People hiking and riding their bikes up the hill watched in ire as we were ushered effortlessly up the hill to a point that offered sweeping views of the city. 

We finished the rest of the tour without incedent and when it was over i really didnt want to get off the segway. Alas, i dismounted my segway and hung up my helmet for the last time. 

After the segway tour, we had a great dinner with Uta, her boyfriend and the Sauberts in a biergarten not far away. It was some of the best food I've had while in Germany. After dinner, we rode back to the Sauberts, packed our things, and moved to nina's house. 

We mostly chatted and played uno for around half an hour until it was bedtime for Ninas son Daniel, the uno master. More to come tomorrow!

-grant