A great benefit (and one of many) of the AJY in Heidelberg program is that it provides its students with a Deutschland-Ticket: a public transportation pass that provides unlimited access to regional public buses and trains in the whole of Germany (IC and ICE long-distance express trains are excluded). This means that localized travel is incredibly easy and comes at no additional cost. Other students in the program and I have been making good use of this Ticket and the opportunities it opens to us to explore the broader region.

Whenever we go on day trips, we tend to choose a destination accessible within a couple of hours at most (the closest city we have visited as a day trip was a 15 minute train ride and the farthest about 3 hours). Our program staff has provided us with a list of recommendations including some notes on what to do and see in each place. Otherwise, we ask our housemates for recommendations or look up nearby cities online. Then, we check train schedules; pick a route, day, and time; and off we go! Within the past month, I have gone on the following three trips.

Baden-Baden:

Baden-Baden is well known for being a spa town as well as an excellent location for scenic hikes. This was the first trip we made after the new students for the spring semester arrived in Heidelberg (there are 4 of us in the program who are staying a full year and therefore were in Germany throughout the winter holidays and semester break), and we traveled together now as a group of 12. We wandered through the Altstadt (old town) and then hiked along a river to a waterfall. The hike was stunning, enabled us to get to know each other a bit better, and was my first time seeing a waterfall in person. However, at the end of the hike, the bus back to the town center only came once an hour, so we had to wait for 45 minutes until the next one came. Generally, it was the largest group we had ever done a day trip with, and there were a few difficulties in navigating with such a large group (for instance, we split up and went to a couple of different restaurants for lunch), but it was an overall very fun day. 

Worms:

Worms’ claim to fame is being the setting of the most famous and important german hero epic (sometimes even referred to as the German Iliad): Das Nibelungenlied. Wells, fountains, statues, and even entire gates throughout the city featured references or testimonies to the epic. Having read a much abbreviated version of the epic in a past German course, I found these hints to the story very interesting and fun. It also has a UNESCO World Heritage site, commemorating the Jewish community that once had rights to live and work peacefully within the city before being exiled and subjected to pogroms (which happened in the Middle Ages as well as during the Third Reich). A formerly destroyed synagogue has been rebuilt, and, though it is not actively used for prayer, it can be visited alongside the Jewish Museum. Furthermore, the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe is located in Worms. Unfortunately, the cemetery along with several other places were closed the day we visited. We were still able to see the synagogue and museum, though. 

Mainz: 

We saw many churches in Mainz. In the heart of the city is a massive 1000-year-old Roman Catholic cathedral, which is the site of the episcopal see of the Bishop of Mainz. We were able to enter and walk through the church, including in the two small crypts. Across the street from the main cathedral is the even older Old Church, which is now an archaeological dig site that one can walk above on metal walkways while plaques and videos explain what one is seeing. We also saw the remains of a church destroyed in an aerial attack during World War II that has now been turned into a memorial, which I found to be very interesting and well done. Aside from churches (we visited at least two others), there are several Roman ruins that remain and can be seen in Mainz today. We visited the site and walked through the exhibit around a former temple to the goddesses Isis and Magna Mater, and saw the remains of what was once an amphitheater. All in all, we did quite a bit of walking that day, to say the least.

Other day trip destinations in the past have included Speyer, Mannheim, Schwetzingen, Ladenburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Wissembourg, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, and Neckarsteinach. Making these small trips has been one of my personal favorite things to do while living abroad.