Back to Marburg

 So when I was planning for our Europe-in-two-weeks whirlwind tour, I had to decide what stops we'd be making. Our guests had no preference, so I got to basically plan the trip with whatever we wanted to do, check in to see if anyone objected, and then book hotels and transportation. It wasn't a bad way to go (but if the places I chose were a bust, it was all my fault, so there's that). Danita and Fern flew into Frankfurt at around 9am on Saturday the 21st and so I decided that a great first leg of the tour would be... Marburg! As you know, we lived there for seven weeks in the summer, and it was a pretty great time, so we thought it would be fun to go back. We know it would be a more low-key stop with not a ton to do, which seemed perfect for people adjusting to a nine hour time difference (FUN!).

It turned out that Carson and I could NOT fall asleep the night before no matter what we did, so since we had to leave at 4:30am to catch our train anyway, at 2am we just decided we were going for an all-nighter and watched stand-up comedy on YouTube. We thought that maybe we'd be able to empathize a little more with our guests this way too.

So we got to the airport and took the S-Bahn to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof where we booked four tickets to Marburg. We checked into our hotel as soon as we got there (they let us check in two hours early AND upgraded us which was so nice!) and then wandered around. We stayed at the Marburger Hof Hotel, which was a perfect choice because it was within walking distance from the train station, had free breakfast, is close to the Altstadt, and because Carson and I knew exactly where it was.

It's also right across from the Elisabethkirche, which is a beautiful old church I probably took no less than one hundred pictures of when we lived here. Oddly though, I didn't take my big camera most places we went, so this is the first time I got good pictures. We marveled over the stained glass, and wondered why they still had their Christmas trees up (I've noticed it's common here but I don't know why - or how they're still alive!).

Following our exploration of the church, we began our ascent into the Altstadt. 

We walked up the steep hill to the Schloss, a pathway that seemed to have gotten easier on my legs than it first felt nearly six months ago, but was a little trickier since it was coated with snow and ice. No one fell, and we made it up successfully. A stranger took a picture of us at the top.

The last time we were here was at the end of the summer, so things looked much greener and they felt warmer. It was fun seeing this place at a different time of the year and I'm glad we went, but it was quite chilly (low 20s/high teens) when we were here.

I know I've said something about the Brother's Grimm but in case you've forgotten, they attended school at the university in Marburg, and in dedication to them, there are statues of their fairy tales all over the city. I love it. I'd never noticed this one before but it's for Little Red Riding Hood.

We stopped for coffee and kuchen at Cafe Vetter, where we got to rest our legs and discuss the rest of our trip.

After a few hours of exploring, we went back to the hotel to rest until dinner. Four hours later, we all woke up from our naps. We had dinner at a little Italian restaurant once we'd roused ourselves from our slumber, but I was so sleepy that I don't even remember the walk up the hill. We watched part of a Brian Regan stand up video on YouTube before everyone got sleepy again and we called it a night.

The next day, we got up and went to church at the Elisabethkirche (a fun cultural experience because it was of course completely in German), then I went back to the hotel and rested while everyone else walked around in the cold (17 degrees), then we grabbed lunch at the train station before we left at 12:45 before heading to Rothenburg.