Today, instead of going to the Literature Fachkurs with my friends, I departed on the excursion that I have been waiting for since before I came to Bayreuth - underground caves and a hike! I was a bit worried that I only had my tennis shoes with me (since my hiking boots did NOT make the weight cut to come with me to Europe), but as my friends reassured me, my expectations of what a hike is supposed to be are slightly different from that of normal people.
The bus ride there only took 35 minutes, which was wonderfully short, and we got out of the bus and began our hike. True to my friends' opinions, it was maybe a 20 minute walk (albeit up and down a slippery hill, but there was a path/railing the whole way) to the underground caves. At that point, I decided it should not be called a hike. A walk. A nature stroll. Anything less than an hour does not get to even go NEAR the word "hike." And actually, anything less than a DAY isn't a hike, but that's being picky.
Anyway, despite the misnomered nature stroll, the caves were quite cool. There were stalactites everywhere and the inside was quite damp (dripping-water-on-the-head kind of damp). We walked around, took pictures, and heard a tour in dialected German that I only understand about half of (well, and halfway through I stopped paying attention. Details!).
After the caves, we went back to tour a nearby castle, taking a shorter and less steep way back, proving Claire's point, that the walk was "nur für Spass" (just for fun). Claire is a French student who filmed my video project for me in August and I spent the entire day with her and her group of friends (a guy from Belgium, a girl from the UK, and a guy from South Korea). We spoke only German (since that was our most common language), so that was nice.
The castle proved to be a bit of a misnomer as well, though. It has been turned into a hotel, built on the grounds where the old castle used to stand (though it was actually destroyed several hundred years ago). The most amusing part, though, was our tour guide. He looked exactly the way you might expect a German Santa Claus to look and I decided that Santa must be a tour guide in the summer. Economic crisis, you know, you have to be versatile to pay the bills.
All in all, it was quite a successful excursion! One of the best yet! And without question better than classes. :)
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