Trip to Landstuhl

This weekend I wasn't feeling too well at first, so I initially decided to stay here in Metz. I stayed up till 3am at GTL on Thursday night, when the weather was composed of relatively severe thunderstorms. Todd Whitehurst (the Ga Tech ECE sysadmin) was in town setting up a new NT server for GTL, so while he was in the middle of shoving images onto each of the new PCs in the computer lab at around midnight a lightning strike knocked out power to the area for about 10 minutes. After things came back on we had to find the breakers and reset the blown one with some of the computers in the lab turned off, as it would blow if everything was plugged in for the initial surge.

In any case, I slept in, but woke up with the distinct feeling that I really didn't want to spend the weekend playing around on computers, since I didn't have any homework of any significance. Thus, I got packed up and caught the 1750 train to Saarbrücken.

On the train I observed that the French countryside is littered with all sorts of interesting radio towers and the like. If I were able to make any improvements to train travel over here it would be to implement a pause feature, whereby you could get off of the train wherever you wanted and explore for 30 minutes with a bike, resuming the trip where you left off. It was interesting that this train was diesel powered. Most trains here on the major routes are electric with overhead power. The conductor wasn't sure why we were running diesel; he suggested that perhaps maintenance was being done, or maybe all of the electric locomotives were in for service.

My choice of destinations for this weekend was pretty much completely arbitrary. I decided to go somewhere in Germany, and not too far away. Past that I knew that Alex (a friend of mine from Tech) had been born in Landstuhl, so I decided to head over there. I got in around 2000, which is still plenty of time to find a place to eat and sleep.

The weather wasn't bad, but it drizzled every now and then. After getting directions from Taxi drivers and an older man I found the Geissberg, a place Alex had mentioned to me.

Here's the building.
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And a shot of the street (Schulstrasse).
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And another picture of the street.
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And their parking sign.
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It turns out that the Geissberg was run by a couple for many years, and that the couple has passed the operation (and maybe even ownership) over to a younger couple as the man was having health problems. The new people were very nice; they had completed a renovation of the guest rooms and were in the process of modernizing the kitchen and dining room. The man is/was a German instructor for the Goethe Institut, and spoke English quite well. The restaraunt is supposed to open back up in a few months, and the man hopes to run an intensive German language study program out of the place. Perhaps if I get some time and money later I'll return to study here.

This is the room I stayed in. If you're ever in Landstuhl and looking for a place to stay, I highly recommend it. The address is Schulstrasse 14, Landstuhl. The telephone number is something like 0 63 71  24 70 1 42 19.
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This is a church.
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That evening I wandered around around some and on the off chance ran into a place with Internet access. After some creative work, I was able to get access to a Swiss telephone directory and look up Gerlinde and Edgar's number in Bern. I had managed to lose the number the previous week and the Internet site I had found it on before was down. With this newfound info, I managed to get Gerlinde on the phone, and we decided that the best time for me to come down to visit was probably this weekend.

Random car in Landstuhl.
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After consulting the train schedules, it looked that the best thing was to wait until the next day to leave, so for that evening I got dinner and wandered around town some. I ran into two German girls who were trying to get back to their car from the ice cream shop, albeit without an umbrella. After seeing my pitiful Cora-brand tiny umbrella the proprietor of the Geissberg had lent me one of those huge 1.3 meter umbrellas that people in front of you at sporting events always have. Thus, I walked them to their car, but turned down an invitation to see the latest Scream (in English!), as I needed a little sleep before catching the train the next day.

The next day I got up at around 7:30 and had a great breakfast with the man running the place. (I think he was a little impressed with my eating habits; I had a light dinner the night before, so I put away three or four Brötchen and the assorted coverings, as well as a few cups of coffee.

Trains out of Landstuhl aren't too common (I think it's a two platform station), so I had a little time to explore again before leaving. On his recommendation I hiked up to the overlook behind the Geissberg.

A sign.
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Another sign.
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The view.
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More view.
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And another shot, this time from the road on the way down.
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Continue onto the trip to Bern. As usual, you can get to the whole picture page.