Woke up this morning and shredded Aigle one last time before driving back to Germany. The youth hostel was happenin last night with all the BMXers in town; aside from the Aussies, Shanaze was there also with new UK coach Grant White. It was so exciting in fact that we posted up in the hallway for a good hour sitting on the hard cement for lack of anything better to do. The New Zealand Posse was too cool to stay at the hostel (not really a hostel by the way just nicknamed that) and opted for a nice hotel that supplied towels up the street.
We felt we had done what we wanted on the track and are looking forward to a few rest days before this weekend so just rode for an hour and a half this morning. Cisar is looking so fast right now I expect he will pull big results in Copenhagen. As we were changing out of our gear we caught some riders on the Velodrome doing some 200m flying starts. I have actually never seen Velodrome live so I was intrigued for a bit. They had a guy on an old school motorcycle running up the fumes towing the cyclists around the velodrome as they prepared for their sprint. Its pretty impressive to see how fast they can get going with just straight leg power, not quite as impressive as BMX charging the start ramp but cool enough.
On the way home we decided to hit up castle. Sutty had been here before and knew of a pretty rad one to take us to that was on the way. I was pretty excited seeing I am 100% tourist and love that kind of stuff. Amanda and Ceez weren’t quite so psyched on the detour but they will probably appreciate it later. So Heidelberg Schloss is set up on a hill overlooking the Neckar river somewhere in south eastern Germany on our way to Frankfurt. Aside from the amazing greenerie and river as a backdrop, the actual town of Heidelberg was a sight to see since it still maintains a renaissance feel with cobblestone roads and many of the gothic cathedrals and buildings still intact.
The castle or Schloss as the Germans call it was huge with many courtyards and gardens and walls everywhere. We saw some stuff carved into the rock that said 1557, but apparently it started being a castle sometime around 1214 A.D. Its obvious that its position cut into the hillside was strategic with tall walls to protect it from the bad guys and some that had obviously not taken well to war. It even had the little iron spikes that come down to block the door and a dungeon for prisoners just like you see in the movies. Ok so I am a dork and I was excited about the castle, America is too young to have that kind of stuff and I get into it.
Anyway it was a cool experience. We made it back to the hotel and there are 500 chinese people here for some reason talking way too loud in the lobby and its giving me a headache so im over it.
