Speyer Germany

Today I went on possibly the worst walking tour ever. Our tour guide who is one of the private tutors at the language school was completely unprepared for this journey. It began with a 1 hour train ride to the town of Speyer, which we could have reached in 30 minutes by public bus. Upon arriving he announced we would meet back at the train station at 5:55pm to take the bus back, even though our information regarding the trip stated we would arrive home at 6pm. This upset several of the students on the trip who were staying with host families and were intending to be home for dinner at 6:30 with their r host families. Then he states for the beginning class he has the information we were promised in English, which he printed directly from Wikipedia (which everyone knows only correct a small percentage of the time).

So finally we begin to walk towards the town, since the train station is on the edge of town. On the way we stop and see a beautiful old church, as pictured to the above right. After several minutes we proceed to the end of the old town section to the Kaiserdom zu Speyer (the Imperial Cathedral of Speyer). This beautiful domed Cathedral has been masterfully cared for and preserved. Under the main altar for an entrance fee of 2€ you can view the crypts of German Emperors and King spanning almost 300 years beginning in 11th century B.C., and in 1981 was added to the UNESCO world heritage list. (photos to the left)

After spending nearly an hour at the Cathedral the tour guide informed us we would be walking to an old watch tower in the center of town where we could go to the top and take photographs of town, and then we would proceed to a local museum before heading back to the train station. Unfortunately this is where the trip went wrong. After walking though the altstadt (old town) to the tower we were informed it was closed. We then proceeded to walk in a giant 2+ mile circle around the town looking for the museum the tour guide wished to show us, only to find that it was just across the road from the cathedral where we had spent more then an hour. By the time we finally reach the museum is it 5:20 pm, and the museum closed to new visitors at 5:00pm, and we needed to begin the 30 minute walk back to the train station. While we all waited outside for the tour guide to emerge from the museum where he was asking if they would be kind enough to let us in for only a few minutes, we had a few moments to rest on the stairs of the museum and watch the bus pick up passengers directly in front of the museum on it’s way Heidelberg where it would arrive approximately 30 minutes later. It was quite temping to hop on the bus, which would have been free with my monthly regional pass I already possess. Instead I stayed with the group and hiked back to the train station to wait 20 minutes for a train which would go north to Mannheim, only to go south again to Heidelberg, and arriving home approximately 2 hours after I saw the bus heading to the same destination. (to the right Radhika & Paola laugh at Eugen being silly outside the museum)