Eurail

Today we went to heidelberg with the intention of solidying our trip to paris, and the experience all but dissolved it.
We were able to buy eurail passes, which by the way though not cheap, is probably the most thrilling thing I have done recently. They give you a map and a timetable for all the major trains in europe and you feel like the world is sitting at your fingertips. Picking only three countries felt a little limiting, but really with germany, switzerland, and france, there is still plenty to explore. Also as long as I get out of europe every six months (they check your visa stamp on the passport), I can indefinitely get eurail passes. So in the event I make no friends and live a terribly lonely life, I will be able to travel voraciously through more than 20 countries.
The service agent thought killed our plans to paris because although we could get reservations on the way there, we cannot get them at any time on sunday and taking a day off work is not feasible. So I guess we will have to venture somewhere new, but thats the point isnt it, (gell?)
After that Stephanie and I decided to do a run through heidelberg, as it is so much prettier than ludwigshafen), it was quite beautiful although since we only had 20 minutes before our train left our run wasnt exactly epic. I will have to go back at some point to continue and run some hills so Hood 2 Coast doesnt eat me for breakfast.
We gave alex our keys and because of communication issues we ended up being locked out of our appartments imaging what possible things alex might be doing in there as to cause him to not answer the door. In fact he had just taken the wrong train back. Which is comforting and scary at the same time as it means even germans get confused by train overload.
When that was sorted out we headed to stammtisch which was at an irish pub (Ive been to more irish pubs in germany than boston), it was nice and they had cheap pitchers, so no complaints. I also met a german who spent a year at stanford. And his response to where I was going for grad school (I guess I am kind of bragging but most people are like where? oh zurich is an expensive city) was wow, that is probably the best overall technical university in europe. Super.
This morning I was able to watch Charlotte use the Scanning Electron Microscope. The device was amazing. Everything for it was so much more elegant than any instrument I have ever used. Plus some of the pictures it produced were incredible. If only samples didnt need preparation it would be the perfect instrument.