Heidelberg - irish pubs, puppies and exploding cars

The small wine barrel 

Last week Justin and I joined up with our favorite married couple and hit the road again! Off to Heidelberg castle, home of the world's largest wine barrel. Sounds promising, right?! We opted to do the self led tour and after a hearty breakfast of bockwurst and gluhwein we started our wandering. The castle is semi destroyed and at the time of our visit the castle was under reconstruction. We took a tour of the apothecary museum, snacked at the castle restaurant and tasted wine in the famous wine cellar right next to a giant wine barrel!

Afterwards we headed down the hill into the heart of the city. The city had multiple churches and one of them was even open for viewing. It was quite unique with a giant gold draped creation hanging from the ceiling and paintings covering the walls. The streets were lined with stores, carts selling roasted chestnuts and even a german mall! We walked up and down the town snacking on the local cuisine and window shopping. On the way back to the car we ducked into a Irish pub for a delicious dinner and of course happy hour!

Inside of one of the churches 

Our irish pub 

My first roasted chestnut. I am not a fan.

Thoroughly stuffed from schnitzel and beer we packed into the little BWM and headed over to Mannheim to look at a litter of vizsla puppies Justin had picked out. They were absolutely adorable 8 tiny month old puppies all frolicking around, we narrowed it down to two little girls and finally decided on the dark one. Her name is Layla and we will be picking her up in just three more weeks!

All hopped up on puppy love we began the two hour journey back home or so we thought... Two minutes later we were pulled over on the side of the road with a severely overheated car. The boys popped the hood and started messing with things when all of a sudden we see an explosion of liquid, the coolant cap go flying and my husband stripping off his shirt on the other side of the road. Apparently there was still quite a bit of pressure in the coolant thingy and it exploded boiling hot liquid all over Justin's hand. We rinsed the burn off and waited what felt like forever for the car to cool down, filled it with water and tried again. We at least made it 20 minutes to a gas station this time... Another hour of waiting for the car to cool down and then off again. Fifteen minutes later we are pulled over on the side of the highway in an extremely sketchy rest stop. I am pretty sure we were almost killed or at least caught up in a shady german drug ring... So to avoid possible death we didn't hang around long before calling a buddy to come pick all of us up and we managed to get the car into a McDonalds parking lot without anymore explosions. Five hours later it is 2 am and we are finally pulling into the army post. Justin's hand had blistered up really bad and despite my advice to go the ER he claimed he was fine, he is such a macho soldier sometimes!

Needless to say Justin showed up at work the next morning only to be sent to the ER. I was there to greet him with the ever useful "I told you so" phrase. Everything ended up ok, Justin got his hand all doctored up and with his extra day off we were able to pick up the car and make it safely back to Baumholder, drop the car off at the shop and pick it up the next day all fixed! I would love to tell y'all what was wrong with it but they used a lot of car jargon and I basically stopped listening...

Luckily we are both alive and doing well!