Long Weekend

Long weekends are bad for my health.

Wednesday night I went to Heidelberg with some friends to celebrate Walpurgisnacht, which is always the night of April 30 into the next morning, welcoming the month of May. Many countries have some form of Walpurgisnacht, also known as Hexennacht, or Witches' Night, in Germany. Heidelberg is known for its student celebrations, which are on top of a little mountain there, with people filling the rows of an amphitheater and playing with fire, basically -- a huge bonfire, fire breathers, jugglers, dancers, etc.

Hiking up this little mountain is one thing, but we had started our festivities already, and it had rained already, and it was dark already...let's just say it was tricky getting up there, and we're lucky our only real problem was extremely muddy shoes instead of bodies tumbling back down. But after that harrowing experience it was a lot of fun. We stayed all night and left by train at around 7 AM, so when I got back to my apartment at 9 I slept until 5. Gotta put a full work day in, you know.

Then Ben came on Friday evening and we had a late night out at some bars and then a party at the Fachhochschule, sort of a community college. Naturally we slept in on Saturday, almost missing a gorgeous day. But we eventually dragged ourselves out of bed and hopped on a train to Bacharach, where we wandered, played some frisbee, ate, and basically enjoyed the sunshine. After that we continued to St. Goar, where we climbed up to the castle and explored for a while.

Heading home, we met up with Flo at a bar, had a few drinks, stayed up too late again, and soon enough made a momentous, and some would say stupid, decision. I'll get to that next time.