I’ve been on a few noteworthy adventures in weeks since my last post, including a day wandering around Felsenmeer, a weekend in Mallorca, a night at Frankenstein Castle, and a trip to a German waterpark.

#1. Felsenmeer


I’ll start from the beginning: Felsenmeer. It literally translates to “rock sea”, which is very logically named (as most German things are). Before going there, I had no idea such a cool place existed within a half hour drive of Darmstadt. Felsenmeer is located in the Odenwald, which is the forest surrounding Darmstadt, It originated as one sheet of rock that, through many freeze-thaw cycles, cracked and broke apart into the giant field of boulders that it is today.

The autumn in Darmstadt has been beautiful so far (1398493824 times nicer than the daily downpours of the summer), and I went on a perfect fall day with two friends, Minas and Marius. We wandered around and climbed on the rocks, picking our way through the boulder field surrounded by the oranges, yellows, reds, and greens of the changing leaves in the forest. The lighting in the forest made photography a bit tricky, but here’s the best shot I could get:

 

Felsenmeer, near Lautertal, Germany

#2. Palma de Mallorca


Mallorca is an island in the Mediterranean, just off the south coast of Spain. Technically it’s part of Spain, but based on the demographic of its overwhelming amount of visitors, it might as well be a part of Germany. It seems that many Germans visit Mallorca for the sole purpose of partying (similar to Cabo or Cancun for Americans), but the island also has ridiculously beautiful beaches, world-renowned climbing, excellent crystal-clear scuba diving, and a plethora of other adventure possibilities. I met Evelyn there for a long weekend, and though we didn’t have time to participate in all of these activities, we did do some amazing hiking in the Serra de Tramuntana mountains and climbed around the rocky beaches surrounding the village of Banyalbufar, on the north coast of the island.

Mountains disappear into the sunset

 

White rock contrasts the turquoise water

 

And red rock too

 

The cathedral in the main city on the island, Palma

#3 Burg Frankenstein


Burg Frankenstein (Frankenstein Castle) is located on a hill in the Odenwald, just a 20 minute tram ride from Darmstadt’s city center. Rumored to have “the best Halloween party in all of Germany”, a group of Merck interns decided to check it out. 27 euros later, we found ourselves surrounded by monsters (and about a thousand other people) in the ruins of a medieval castle. Though it definitely wasn’t worth the steep entry price, it was a lot fun nonetheless. There was a walk around the inner perimeter of the castle, where monsters would sneak up on people and scare them, or just lumber around in their intricate costumes. In the courtyard, there was a stage with some monsters showing off their costumes, and a bar. There was also a “torture chamber” inside the castle, which consisted of 3 monsters grabbing a random guy from the crowd, tying him up, pulling his stomach hairs and rubbing ice on his nipples and putting it down his pants. Not what I expected to see in the torture chamber, but pretty funny.

I noticed a couple of stark differences between this party and haunted houses in America, the biggest being that in Germany the monsters are allowed to touch you. Whereas in America they might chase you with a chainsaw but not actually grab you, in Germany they have no problem picking you up, throwing you in a coffin, and slamming it shut. This sounds like it should be terrifying, but the problem with this event was that it was so incredibly crowded that you could always see what’s happening to the person in front of you, and know exactly what to expect. The monsters also seemed to really like stuffing hay down peoples’ shirts, so I woke up with a bed full of hay the next morning.

selfie with a monster in my Rudolph-what-have-you-gotten-your-nose-into costume

 

Alexi gets locked up

 

The monsters like to choke people

 

The torture chamber

#4 Miramar water park, Weinheim


Sunday was my flatmate Carsten’s birthday, and his girlfriend decided to give him the awesome present of inviting some of his friends to an indoor water park for the day. Little did I know that German water parks are wild and unrestrained havens of awesomeness. Thanks to Germany’s exceptional health care system (I actually have no idea if this is the reason), there are no angry lifeguards yelling at every person that walks by, and there is much more of a “do whatever you want, just don’t be an idiot” attitude. What this means is that it is perfectly acceptable for 6 people to all tackle each other into a water slide and try to race down it. If you’ve ever been to a water park in America and tried to do anything other than sit in a chair all day, then you’ve undoubtedly been yelled at by the angry lifeguard at the top of every water slide who thinks they will someday rule the world. At Miramar, lifeguards at the top of water slides don’t even exist. There’s not even a sign with the rules, there’s just a sign that says “if you fall off your tube, don’t panic.”

So, naturally, we spent a good portion of the day racing down the various water slides, trying to flip each other off of our tubes in the dark tunnels in order to take the first place. There was one slide that was like a giant toilet bowl, where you drop into a funnel and swirl around it until you fall through the hold in the middle. We figured out that if 4 people go into the funnel at once, you can run into each other, causing one person to go flying. Though the toilet slide was awesome, the best slide of them all was the Hurricane. I’ve never seen a slide quite like it before. The hurricane begins at the top of an extremely long staircase, and there is no water slide in sight, only a giant, person-sized tube sticking up out of the floor. When you climb inside the tube and the slide operator shuts the door, ominous music starts playing. With no water and no slide in sight, you have no idea what is going to happen next, until all of the sudden the floor drops out from under you and the next thing you know, you’re going around not one, but two semi-vertical loops! It was awesome.

 

The entrance to the Hurricane

 

One of the hurricane loops, from outside