+49° 28' 31.45", +8° 30' 56.10"

If I remember correctly—and I gotta rely on my memory right now because the plane just took off from Hamburg, so I'm offline—we'll be coming into Terminal One of the Mannheim City Airport, and to get to the rental car place you go down the hall to the east, which will be on my right. I think.

Anyway, I've got an Opel Zafira reserved for me, a minivan. I've never seen one in the U.S.—I don't think they sell them back home—but I've checked it out on YouTube. Pretty nice. I'll make sure to add the links to this post when I can find some connectivity.

I won't visit Mannheim at all, because I'll be heading straight to the nearby medieval town of Speyer. Actually Speyer is older than medieval, it goes way back—it's an old border town between the Romans and the barbarians. The main attraction now, just as it was in December 1076, is the Romanesque cathedral, Dom zu Speyer. The cathedral is old now, almost a thousand years old, but back in the winter of 1076-77 it was less than 50, still unfinished, a baby as cathedrals go, a sprawling, soaring raw new symbol of the holiness, the Romanness, and the imperium of the Holy Roman Emperor.

There, in the town of Speyer, my passengers will be waiting.