  Once again a beautiful day, without the rains. The temperatures seem to be falling down every morning. Though the sun is out, the temperature seems to stay around 15 celsius. Last evening went around Manneim market. The market of Mannheim can be expressed as a small district in itself. shops range from electronics to eateries to bakeries to clothing, not leaving even the skin trade entertainment shops. The market area is called as the ParadePlatz, it is in the center of Mannheim(by the way if I have not written in my earlier chronicles, we stay at Mannheim). The center of the market place stands a water tank, which resembles no traditional water tank. It looks more like a mini bell tower. A magnificient sculpture stands at the very top of the tank.The tank is surrounded by a small square, where lots of varities of flowers, like poppies, honeysuckles and some heather also is grown.
The beauty of this whole place is one can sit there for hours doing nothing, yet feel that a lot is accomplished by just staring into the common. Back to reality, caught an early tram to the train station. The tram here is beautiful, it runs on electricity and has feeling of the old world along with the new. The tram's route from our hotel to the train station is as follows which I will explain in detail. I get in at the Paradeplatz, which I've already explained earlier, the next stop is Schloss, after which comes Universitat, this is the university of Mannheim and is modelled on the Palace of Versilles, the grandiose of the original palace is captured pretty well.
All this while we have been travelling north, now the tram turn slowly to the west over a steep grade and viola, we are at the main station of Mannheim(in german railway stations are called as Hauptbanhof pronounced as hopt-ban -hauf). I reach Waldorf, which is a small town an industrial town more appropriately, take a bus to office. In my earlier log, I promised that I would not talk about the office, but I have to make one exception, In the Waldorf office building, we see a great big ball made of granite, about 5 ft in diameter, resting on a thin film of water spary and rotating and rotating about in the clockwise direction. After office, my colleauge Shrikant and I decide to goto Heidelberg which is a university town to check out cameras in the electronic shops there. Though we do not see many electronic shops, we decide to go around the town. We catch a bus from Heidelberg main station to Bismark Platz(Bismark Plaza).
This area is town square, and is dedicated to the great leader Bismark, a lovely little park is there with a neo-20th century fountain design, beside which a statue of Bismark exists. I wonder who calls Bangalore and Mysore a garden city, because after looking at Heidelberg all my notions of garden cities in India are abolished. Heidelberg is a university town, it has the old cobbled streets, and the architecture is wonderful.
An old castle is there, but we left it for another day. By now it was 8 in the evening and the sun was still brightly shining as it shines at 3 in afternoon in India. We took the train back to Mannheim, and then the tram. We thought we would explore a few more places in the Mannheim market area by continuing in the tram. And that led us to the most interesting part of our Journey. From Mannheim, the tram continued to various places, the views were either the traditional houses with sloping rooves or of corn fields(did I mention that they grow a lot of corn here). We finally reached after an hours Journey to a place called Eindgen, a sleepy little hamlet. I had carried some peaches with me which we bought at the supermarket in Heidelberg(good ones at a low price). We were the only two souls in the station,a beautiful place it was, behind the station towards the west, the sun was still setting and I could see nearly for a mile strtch a field of coronation roses, various colurs, white, pink,red.
I could hardly fill my eyes enough with the sight. Next to this field was a huge field of sunflowers, just perfect sight at 9:30 in the night and the sun was yet o set, the whole sky had turned into various shades of orange and pink. the temperature was dropping too, the station indicator read 14 degrees, I wish I could savour the moment for some more time. But shrikant had to break it, a tram cam e by and we misread the board of the tram as a tram to Mannheim and got into it.
The tram instead of travelling to Mannheim travelled to Heidelberg.What are we doing here ? I thought we just visited this place,'alright alright we can take the train back" I said to myself, but no shrikant wanted to see where this tram takes us. One wonderful thing about the transport system here is that we have a pass which lasts for one month for the Heidelberg region. So travelling will never be a problem for us. So we went on and we reached the Heidelberg market place once again, but this time it was no more a street but the cafe's and restaurants that were there at the side walk poured into the street directly.
We hardly had any space to walk. I wish we could sit in one of these places, but the clock showed 10 already. Lots of musicians flock this place for their daily earning. Accordion playes, street performers, String Quartets, piano blues I could hear the whole music shop in here as I passed each cafe. Realising that we have to get back, we caught the tram back which dropped us off at Mannheim at 11:15, tired of the whole travel, I hit the sack early and I here now in the 8 o' clock train I sit to write my journals. Till tommorow then as in german Grusse. 
