Heidelberg

[dppintr2]

In November we made a little weekend trip to Heidelberg. We had never been there before. Some tourist publications consider Heidelberg one of the top five cities in Germany to visit. Thus a cool place to fly to.

Heidelberg

A trip report with pictures can be found here

-o-o-

 

[AKBill]

Nice pictures. Was the language (German) hard to over come or do you speak it?

 

[mscard88]

Stationed at Zweibrucken Air Base early 70s. Enjoyed touring the castle, cool city.

 

[Graueradler]

Lived very near there on the economy about 5 yrs. Your pictures brought some good and some not so good memories to mind. Like a cloud of black smoke from near the Mannheim airport where a Chinook rotor came from together and it came down with a load of German sky divers on board.

 

[weilke]

Nice pictures. Was the language (German) hard to over come or do you speak it?

You don't need to speak a word of german to get around Heidelberg.

 

[mscard88]

You don't need to speak a word of german to get around Heidelberg.

Even when I was there in the 70s it was the same, actually most of Germany as you could always find someone who spoke English.

 

[flight2000]

You don't need to speak a word of german to get around Heidelberg.

Or any city in Europe for that matter except in the most remote of places. Stationed there for 6 years (1994/95 and again from 2011-'15) and visited all of the Scandinavian countries, Russia (St. Petersburg), Albania, Montenegro, Estonia, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, etc...and never had a problem. My wife and I would speak in Spanish or Italian in their respective countries and they'd almost always answer in English. Got to be a game there for awhile...

Well, the French (or Parisians to be more specific) are maybe the ones that are the most stubborn even though a fair amount are English proficient...

Cheers,
Brian

 

[Velocity173]

My first flight in GE was a Heidelberg mission. Neat city to fly into. Crazy helo corridors. Look out for gliders!

 

[Jay Honeck]

All, thanks for the responses. I understand and do speak some basic German, but indeed it is not difficult to get around with English in Germany or most other places in Europe.

The US Army Europe Headquarters were in Heidelberg until a few years ago. I did not mention that in the trip report.

Heidelberg is beautiful, and one of our favorite cities in Germany. If you can, go during the fall festival, when the streets are closed and full of vendors, oompah bands, and (of course) beer stands. We plan to go back next fall.

We happened to be there last year as the first wave of Merkl refugees was arriving. They were reopening our old Army base in order to house them all, and the locals were not happy about it.