Heidelberg

This week I have been off sick again!  I blame having to cover in nursery!  I did make it in to work on Monday, and was on the year 6 trip to Osterbeek in the Netherlands.  I will add my photos tomorrow because they were on the school camera and I didn't get a chance to email them to myself yet.  I was feeling really unwell, which was such a shame because the trip was really fun for the kids and I would have loved it if i'd been feeling well.  Year 6 are studying WW1 and WW2 this term, so the trip was to the Airbourne Museum and WW2 cemetery.  It was an hour and a half drive from school and I slept all the way there and back, at one point waking up to find a child sitting next to me, smiling at me! Creepy.

We went to the cemetery first, which was really interesting.  We had a tour around, taking us to 10 different grave stones and were told the stories behind them, which were all tragic.  The graves were all of very young men, English, Dutch, Jewish, one German Jew who changed sides, Polish and one American.  It's interesting to see the affect it had on some of the children, who were upset and wanted to talk about how awful war is.  It was good to see the cogs working in their heads and resolving to do all they can to make sure war doesn't happen in their lives.  I love how idealistic and ambitious our kids are!

The museum was great.  We went in and sat down at tables which had suitcases on them.  In pairs, the kids opened a suitcase and inside were photos and medals and models all relating to a person who died in the war, who is featured in the museum.  They had to follow questions around the museum that would help them work out who their person was - English, German, Dutch, civilian, military etc.

The final part of the museum was an immersive experience in a very high ceiling basement, which was just fantastic.  You entered through the belly of an aeroplane into a war scene in a town, with actual houses to wander around, and huge screens with authentic videos of fighting on the walls, and sound effects all around.  You walked through trenches and past a hotel that was playing a radio announcement about an attack.  It was really effective, and so well done.  Even I managed to enjoy myself despite being ill!

The rest of the week I was off sick and pretty much watched TV and crocheted for the next 4 days.  Matt was busy, with playing football on Monday and Wednesday.

On Friday I was feeling much better (and Matt was unfortunately starting to feel unwell).  We headed off for the train station in the evening, towards Heidelberg in the south of Germany, to meet Matt's parents and brother for the weekend.  We have been to Heidelberg before and really enjoyed it.  The Christmas markets just made it all the more enjoyable.

Please take note of the fabulous 'Homo Heidelbergensis' who appears on the roof of this bar.  He is a famous skeleton found in the area.  All of the figures were based on well known people from Heidelberg.  I love the detail!  I'm going to have to have a look at the Duisburg one and see if it's similar.

Fried potato...

Drinking gluvine.

Going up the funicular railway to the castle and to the viewpoint at the top of the mountain.

This was at the top of the mountain...

... a gigantic wine barrel in the castle.

My challenge to myself this weekend was to take all of my photos on the 'Manual' setting on my camera, which means that I was controlling everything.  It was so much fun!  And really fantastic when I realised just what I could do with the camera not on 'Auto' settings.

A real stroke of luck was that it was 'black friday weekend' an American thing where there are huge sales on in the shops for one day (extended to a week really).  We popped into Saturn (like PC world or Currys) to look at the flash I was about to buy for my camera.  The deal I managed to get was the better flash (the one up from what I wanted) for the price of the worse one that I was going to buy!  I ended up saving 70 euros on a considerably better flash.  Fantastic!  Now I just need to learn how to use it. If it's as much fun as discovering 'manual' mode i'm in for a treat.