Written by Spring 2013 student, Christine
A. Sandoval
On Wednesday, April 17,
2013, the European Study Center took an excursion to Schwetzingen led by
Lena. This was an interesting trip to
say the least. Schwetzingen is located
southwest of Heidelberg and southeast of Mannheim.
First of all we were late
leaving the European Study Center so by the time we got to the Heidelberg train
station we only had like 5 minutes to get something. I just said I’d wait for the bus and pass on
getting something for fear I would running late and miss the bus, not that
anyone has ever missed the bus. Well,
some of the other still decided they wanted to grab something before getting on
the bus and then they told Isabella they would meet her at the door. Well we were waiting for Isabella on the bus
and then she never came and the bus left without her. She was waiting at the wrong door, poor
thing, I felt so bad for her. So someone
finally calls her and tells her that the bus left without her, and then she
gets mad at Shane when she talked to him on the phone. Personally, this was not my best excursion
because earlier in the day I had gone to the dentist to get some dental work
done and the doctor said I needed to be on painkillers every 8 hours. Well, the whole time I felt like a drunk
person, which is odd because I don’t drink and I’ve never been drunk
before. What’s worse is that after the
tour we had free time so I decided that I would get the bus a little earlier to
be able to go back to the ESC and take a nap to sleep off the medicine. Well, when I got on the bus it was the one
going in a different direction, I was heading towards Speyer not
Heidelberg. As I finally get on the
right bus we get to the stop that left us at Schwetzingen and I just see the
whole gang getting back on the bus.
Now the tour of the palace
was really interesting. Our tour guide
spoke great English and I could understand everything he said and what made it
better is that he was really engaging and knowledgeable and I think that’s how
I survived the tour. In the palace we
saw all the rooms that were used as bedrooms, meeting rooms, lounging rooms,
rooms for visitors, and we even got to see one of the bathrooms. The design of the palace was really beautiful;
every room had different furniture and different curtains that were of very
high quality. The palace belonged to
Karl III Philip who was forced into marrying his cousin due to the fact that
they wanted him to have a male heir with a certain bloodline. It was apparently a very unhappy marriage, it
took them 17 years to have a child and when they did it was a tragic
story. The baby, who was a boy, was sick
and died and the mother would never be able to have children. But Philip did have children although they
would never see royalty; his wife was now expected to be fine with accepting 7
children that he had with other women. I
honestly didn’t expect to learn this very historical story of a royal family,
but the way the story was told, you couldn’t forget these details.
After the tour ended we
were able to go out and see the gardens which resembled a smaller version of
the gardens at Versailles. The gardens
were beautiful although only after taking a few pictures that’s when I decided
to leave back to the ESC.
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