The day began, as always, with breakfast before we got all our things collected and headed to the train station in Heidelberg. Breakfast was a little more chaotic than usual, however, because we had a very persistent little bee that would not leave us alone! And we were inside! We had three of the hotel staff trying desperately to coax the little guy outside, which included taking my plate of food because the bee had landed on it several times, so we figured he had a thing for bread with cold cuts lol. We moved tables, I got new food, and we ate quickly in case another bee came around.
At the station, we first caught a Flixtrain, a first for us on this trip. Brandon had to print out luggage tags for us and reserve seats, and there seemed to be a bunch of regulations about bag sizes and quantities limits, so I was nervous we’d have too much stuff (or, I would). I, naturally, worried for nothing because the train wasn’t all that full and no one even checked out our stuff. From the Flixtrain, we caught a regional rail to our “final” destination of Cölbe, which is a small town outside our planned exploration destination of Marburg. We checked into our hotel, walked back to the train station and headed to Marburg. Marburg is known as a Blindenstadt, which is a city specially designed to be as accessible as possible for individuals with visual impairments. Some of the things that make this a qualification include the presence of audible pedestrian signals, tactile markers on the sidewalks, tactile models of buildings, and other things. Being a teacher of the visually impaired, I was excited to check it out! The first thing we found out about Marburg, once we started heading to the Altstadt, is that it is HILLY. Brandon had done some additional research for me and found that part of Marburg’s original design was to do this so that blind folks, at least nowadays, know they are headed to the old city. The grade of the hills was killer! We found a tourist information center that had a pamphlet containing a map of some specific spots to check out to really showcase the Blindenstadt, so we went to a few. Mostly, we went and located the tactile models of some of the areas of the city. This included the Altstadt marketplace, Elizabethskirche, a synagogue, and (the one we didn’t get to) the castle. We also wandered into the university library, which was not on the list of “attractions,” but had SO MANY tactile markers on the floor for cane users that I nerded out pretty hard :) Fun fact: A third of the visually impaired university students in Germany attend the university in Marburg! I would have loved to check out the rest of the university, but we were getting tired and it was a Saturday, so we weren’t sure how much would be open. So, we headed back to the train station to make our way back to Cölbe. We grabbed some food at the station and ate it back in our hotel room. It’s back to Hattingen from Cölbe, where we enjoyed a delicious breakfast this morning (it’ll be another double post day)! Tomorrow is a relaxation day and then it’s a couple day beach vacation with Alina and Alicia coming up after that! Enjoy the pictures!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2022
Categories |