Steve's Visit

Pam’s father, Steve came for a visit in May and arrived on Friday May 9. This coincided with a party for Christine Waesle who had returned to Heidelberg from Singapore to defend her Doctoral thesis. That evening we invited a bunch of Christine’s friends and SAP Colleagues over for a little party. We had about 15 people over for the party.
Having just arrived that morning, Sep was obviously not staying up very late and he went to bed at about 10 that evening. I felt a little bad about that as we started up with the Wii about that time and it went from being just a nice quiet chatty party, to being a little louder with a good deal of laughter (see pix).
Saturday we drove along the Neckar to Dilsberg where there are several castles. The Castles were built at different times and are on different hill tops and there is a trail that you can walk to each of them. We walked to three of the castles but not the forth which is the furthest away. One castle is in good condition and is used for catering for weddings and other events. After the castle walk, we went down along the River in Neckarsteinach. We sat along the Neckar and had a drink and snack.
Sunday morning we did our usual shopping routine at the Saturday Market at the Tiefburg. After shopping we drove over to Bad Durkheim where there was supposed to be a wine festival. The festival turned out to be a one winery festival. We stayed and had a glass of wine and left. Being Sunday, there was not much open but we knew about another festival in a town nearby , Moßbach, so we drove over there. This was more of a food festival than a wine festival. It was warm and sunny and we walked around and checked out the many booths, got something to eat. It was very pleasant and excellent people watching.
Monday was a holiday in Baden-Württemberg and Pam had the day off. It also means that nothing is going to be open, but there was a medieval festival in Weinheim, a town about 10 miles north of Heidelberg and we decided to check it out. We parked the car and walked to the Hauptstrasse in Weinheim and had lunch first. We sat outside and ate in the sun and people watched while eating.
The Fesitval was located on the grounds of the castle. There was a troupe of period dancers there, and we watched the end of their performance. There were also demonstrations of period craftsmanship, blacksmithing, carpentry, bread baking and the like. It was not quite what we expected, but it was interesting. This kind of festival seems to bring out a lot of interesting people. Many were people like us, tourists checking it out, some were young families with children and then there were the people who dressed up for a very special occasion. Some of the people were dressed in period costumes (there were booths where you could purchase everything you need from hats to shoes). The second type of people were Goths, lots of dark hair, black eyeliner, black lipstick and piercings.
We stayed at the festival for little more than an hour and then went back to the car. We decided to drive up to a castle we had seen on the hill above Weinheim, Wachenburg. We did not know how to get there and we did not know what the place was called, so we drove in the general direction and completely missed it. On the second try, we made it up there, parked the car and then walked the rest of the way up the hill. Wachenburg was built as a convent and a school and now has a restaurant and an excellent view of the Rhein Valley.

On Monday morning arrived and time for Steve to head home. We loaded up the car and I drove him Frankfurt.