Entry

It is a hill station. That’s where I am. The rain, the sub 10 degrees chill and the surrounding forest enhances that feeling. The institute is in fact on a hill. The last bus up leaves Bismarckplatz(the city centre) at 7 pm.

This journey to the MPIK required a lot of changing. After reaching Frankfurt airport, an airbus on rails took me to Terminal 1. I took an ICE train at the adjoining Flughafen station to Mannheim. It is one of the fastest in Europe, though so smooth and silent, you never feel anything when it is going at a constant speed. They apologized for being 5 minutes late. I reached Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof (main station) by a local train from Mannheim. Tram 5 to Bismarckplatz. Bus 39 to Kernphysikalisches Institut.

Doing everything alone requires preparation which I had taken, but still I required substantial support from fellow travelers, be it the lady who accompanied me to Flughafen station, or the Liverpool girl on the train to Heidelberg, or the passerby who gave me change for 20 Euros and helped me get a ticket from the ticket vending machine. At Bismarckplatz, with 3 pieces of luggage, I looked extremely inelegant as I struggled badly to find out the bus stop for my bus. At the end of the day, Siva helped me into my guest house room, which was well pretty good, but there was an ignorable ‘but’. Actually, once you taste something better, you know what you can complain about.

MPIK Entrance to the right