I arrived in the Frankfurt airport Monday morning, and had time to find an ATM and buy a croissant before meeting with the group at the meeting point. We took a two hour bus ride to the Akademie, and I slept the entire way and missed the scenery.
When we got to the Akademie, we got settled in our rooms and ate a quick lunch before heading out on a hike to the Celtic Hill Fort nearby. It took a while and was much more strenuous than I thought it'd be. It was still really interesting to learn about the history of the area.
When we got to the Akademie, we got settled in our rooms and ate a quick lunch before heading out on a hike to the Celtic Hill Fort nearby. It took a while and was much more strenuous than I thought it'd be. It was still really interesting to learn about the history of the area.
We were able to climb precarious stone stairs to the top of the old wall. Apparently the Celts had used wood to structure the wall and keep the stones in place. Since then the wood has rotted away, and the wall is now more of a giant, linear pile of rocks. It was not easy to walk along the wall since most of the stones were loose and wobbled when I stepped on them, but I went as far down one side as I could get and actually reached the end. The wall stretched a long ways in the other direction.
We ran into a nice view point a little bit past the wall, with piles of small rocks stacked up on each other in a decorative fashion. It made for a pretty nice picture.
We ran into a nice view point a little bit past the wall, with piles of small rocks stacked up on each other in a decorative fashion. It made for a pretty nice picture.
After the hike. we had a barbecue dinner. The meat was mostly pork and sausages, and there were a few potato dishes as well. Typical German meal.
We had some free time after dinner, so I went to the recreation room with others and played some of the games. I ended up staying up late to finish a game of Monopoly. It was pretty engaging, especially since the board and cards were all in German. I learned the words Strasse for street and Bahnof for train station. We also had to interpret the Chance and Community Chest cards based on the character as well as what we could understand from the text. If the man had a frown or was holding his hand out, we garnered that he wanted us to pay the written amount. If he was smiling or giving a thumbs up, we won that amount. It was fun to try and figure out what the cards were telling us to do, and we pretty much always came up with the right answer.