Heidelberg and Karlsruhe

This weekend I went to Heidelberg with my roommate Garrit. He lives in a small town called HaBloch (the B is actually a beta symbol and is pronounced like a double s) which is near Mannheim, which is also near Heidelberg. We went to his parents house on Saturday for lunch (actually more like a feast than a lunch) which was very nice. His parents don't speak english very well, but I think they were happy that I was there. They asked me to say my best german sentance and then laughed when I said "Austig Im Factrichtung Links" which means "Exit the train on the left side in the direction of travel." Yeah, I guess I've taken a lot of trains.

In the Afternoon we took the S-Bahn (Communter train) to Heidelberg and toured the Schloss (castle) and the old town. My co-workers told me that Heidelberg is always full of American tourists, and its totally true. I'm really not sure why but Americans tend to shy away from the cities in the east, like Liepzig and Dresden. There is a big american army base in Heidelberg, so maybe they feel safe with all their WMDs close by. Heidelberg is actually the base that the B2 and B52s take off from when the US is bombing its favourite locations in Afganistan and Iraq. We had a great night out in Heidelberg and took the last train back to HaBloch and went to a disco where a bunch of Garrit's friends were. He knows a bunch of people that are preformers in the waterski show at the amusment park nearby. They were all Canadians and Americans. One of the guys was from peterborough. I think we got in at 5am but I don't completely remember.
On Sunday we stopped at "Das Fest" in Karlsruhe on the way home. It was basically a big outdoor music festival. We heard that it might be fun because there were 20 000 people expected. We got their mid afternoon and saw a crazy band from Spain who reminded me of Sublime. They had a trombone player who was thoroghly entertaining and acted like a backup dancer when he wasn't playing. He would go nuts and play air guitar on the trombone during the heavy parts of the song and then disassemble his trombone and wave it around while he danced.

It started to get really packed by the time the headlining band started. It was such a nice day and I think they underestimated the draw of the band. The park that "Das Fest" was in probably could have comfortably fit about 30 000 people, but I think 40+ showed up to see "Die Fantastischen Vier (The Fantastic Four.) The Fanta Four were one of the original hip-hop groups in Germany back in 1986. I believe they are from Stuttgart and they sound a lot like the Beastie Boys, except better.

People went nuts when they came on. Garrit knew all the words and so did most of the people around us. They had some sweet songs: One mentioned Stuttgart several times, there was also one about a picnic which was quite funny. The video "Troy" above was one of the big crowd pleasers and shows their sweet background beats.