The Germans are friendly and helpful people. Yes, I have just written that sentence,
and no, it is not loaded with heavy sarcasm.

I´m in Heidelberg right now, south of Frankfurt. I´ve been here for a day now, spending
the night in a campsite that cost just 4 pounds each. Heidelberg´s pretty cool. It´s
about 135,000 people and half of it is just a mass of roads and traffic and half
of it, despite being touristy, is really really pretty. All red buildings and cobbled
streets, eventually culminating with this giant castle on a hill.

Weather´s still warm, unsurprisingly, but not the extremes of that first very sweaty
day in Frankfurt. Guess how many times I´ve changed my clothes now? Yup, that´s right
- nil. I am one big sweatbox. Actually, I´m suffering very little from the heat.
As long as I get a drink now and again, I´m fine.

What have we been up to then? Lots of wandering, because it´s free, and a fair bit
of just lying in the sun if we find a nice location. In Frankfurt we found a park,
so I just lounged next to the pond for a while, under this big tree with big hanging
branches. And here in Heidelberg, we just sat by the river for a while yesterday.


Oh man. They had public toilets there. Lordy, these were scary. I honestly expected
some German dude to burst out one of the cubicles and bumrape me. It was this really
dark and dingy toilet, all metallic and covered in graffiti, with three urinals,
all in a state of overflow. I survived, but the nightmares were bad that night.

Yup, there´s been quite a contrast in our sleeping arrangements. The first night
was spent in Simon´s flatmate´s luxury appartment, with balcony and heaps of stuff
I could have made a fortune with if I´d stolen them. A great thunderstorm that night
too. Then last night was in a tent, on hard ground, next to a river and a busy road.
I slept ok though. I woke heaps of times, but felt rested. And tonight, it´s the
train to Prague. I´m feeling distinctly edgy about this. The rough guide warned of
people gassing your train compartment and nicking your stuff.

Yeah. We also had somewhat of a coincidence today, when Simon happened to bump into
a couple of friends of his, who happened to be at the train station. This ended up
costing us money, as we ate at a restaurant and didn´t just buy cheap crap from a
filthy supermarket. Swines.

Yup, although Germany is clean and with excellent public transport, its supermarkets
are dingy and unappealing, plus they don´t store their drinks in fridges.

And remarkably Simon hasn´t been too annoying yet. Oh, it will happen, I´m sure of
that, but so far he´s just made one really rubbish joke. That´s way less than his
average Aberdeen quote. Plus, today he knocked his small rucksack in the river, which
was rather amusing.

Ok, I think it´s time I finished now.

(this entry was written on Friday, but because of this computer pissing around, I
wasn´t able to post it till todaz, so just emailed it to myself)