An Afternoon In Heidelberg

On April 28, 2014May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany20 Comments

This weekend, a one-day meetup of bloggers descended on Heidelberg for some tourism and a light lunch. The bloggers who came along for the fun are (in no particular order,) Nina of Indie Rock Kid, Charlotte of Sherbert and Sparkles, Frau Dietz of Eating Wiesbaden, Kathleen of Lehrer Werkstatt, Jordan of Beer Time with Wagner, and Bev of Confuzzledom. I had lots of fun with this group. This is really a great bunch of people, and I highly recommend their blogs for your perusal.

Charlotte, Kathleen, and I started in Frankfurt, and we picked up Nina in Mannheim. From there, we took the S-Bahn into Heidelberg where we were met by Bev and Frau Dietz (with an attached Mini-Dietz accessory.) Heidelberg local Jordan also met us there. She’s a student in Heidelberg, so she served as our tour guide. Once everyone was present, we set out for the castle.

Heidelberg’s castle is on a hillside overlooking the Neckar river. There’s a funicular to get up to the top, but the climb is doable on foot. Steep, but doable. The view from the top is fairly spectacular.

Visible from the top is the Karl-Theodore-Brücke over the Neckar river.

Inside the castle, one of the first things we saw was a giant wine barrel.

This was nothing compared to the other wine barrel around a corner. Behold the Heidelberg Tun (Großes Fass), the world’s largest wine barrel. My good and dear friend Wikipedia says that this was built in 1751 from one hundred and thirty oak trees. Wikipedia goes on to say that at the time of its construction, it “had a capacity of 221,726 litres (58,573.8125 U.S. gallons). Due to the drying of the wood its current capacity is 219,000 litres (57,853.6795 U.S. gallons).” Here’s the Heidelberg Tun:

After leaving the giant wine barrel, we saw some of the exterior of the castle, even passing by a wedding that was going on there.

Through the Elisabethentor, there were more nice views to be had.

From here, we picked out our path to the city center, to have lunch. First, we had to get down there. Luckily, there were stairs nearby.

Walking into the Marktplatz…

We ate lunch at Café Knösel, because it was close, the menu looked pretty decent, and Tripadvisor rated it well. I didn’t know at the time that it’s the oldest cafe in Heidelberg, open since 1863. I had a pricey but delicious plate of salmon, spinach, and potatoes.

After lunch, we hopped over to the Karl-Theodore-Brücke. There’s a rather nifty statue of a monkey at the end of the bridge which has space enough to put your head inside, cheerfully demonstrated here by Bev.

On the low wall next to the monkey sculupture are these little metal mice. I quite liked these little guys.

This is the view of the castle, Schloss Heidelberg, looking back from the Karl-Theodore-Brücke.

…and back at the archway leading onto the bridge.

After we visited the bridge, we wandered toward the Studentenkarzer. On the way there, we found another tourist…

Heidelberg is a University town. Founded in 1386, the Heidelberg University is the oldest university in Germany and the third to be established in the Holy Roman Empire. The Studentenkarzer, or student jail, was in service from 1823 to 1914. Students would be sent there for drunken misconduct, messing about with the police, throwing rocks at churches, or dueling. The perpetrators would be sent to the jail for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the offense.

Students were still allowed to attend classes, and over the years a tradition formed of marking the walls with graffiti to note the person, their offense, and logos from their fraternity houses. The Heidelberg Studentenkarzer has been preserved in its original state, with the original furniture left in place, as well as the marks of the incarcerated from years gone by. 120 year old graffiti is rather interesting.

The next eight photographs are all from inside the Studentenkarzer.

Next to the Studentenkarzer is a small University Museum documenting the history of Heidelberg University. There was a great deal of fascinating old technology, but it’s really best summed up by this Pneumothorax treatment device from 1950. Heidelberg is a research university, and it’s really fantastic to think about the innovations made here over the years.

Upstairs from the museum is the Great Hall, which is, well, a great hall.

After the great hall, the group stopped for frozen yogurt, before heading down the main shopping street to pick up the bus back to the Bahnhof.

Have you ever been to Heidelberg?

On April 27, 2014May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Dining Out, Life At Home

Salmon over spinach with potato at Café Knösel in Heidelberg, Germany.

On April 27, 2014May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Dining Out, Life At Home

A roasted vegetable salad with delicious bread at Dean & David in Mannheim, Germany.

Victorious and Jubilant

On April 24, 2014January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe4 Comments

Over the long Easter weekend, I visited Belgium and Luxembourg. (Those posts are coming soon.) The night before I returned to Regensburg, I heard a bunch of people shouting across the street, in front of the main Luxembourg City train station.

At first, it was just a small group of people, jumping up and down and cheering. Soon, the group got larger though. Much larger. There were drums, and foghorns, and people honking their horns as they drove buy.

After a while, the crowd became so large that they started to spill into the street. Traffic was blocked. The celebrants were using flares and vuvuzelas. The police saw the size of the celebratory crowd and started to detour traffic around the area.

The volume of the cheering and the horns and the vuvuzelas and the drums was so loud that I could hear it from the interior hallway inside the hotel. By this point, my curiosity was impossible to ignore, so I went downstairs to take a closer look.

I stayed across the street, ready to duck back into the hotel if necessary- even though this was a happy, celebrating crowd, it was still a fairly giant mob. I found out once I was downstairs what the celebration was about- Sport Lisboa e Benfica, a Portuguese sports group, had just won a major championship game.

As it happens, there’s a pretty substantial Portuguese community in Luxembourg City. They stayed on the street cheering and honking and generally being a giant crowd for about three hours. By quarter to midnight, the last vuvuzela finally wandered off and by midnight it was quiet enough to get some sleep.

Here’s a few pictures from the celebration. I’ve shown these to a couple of people and the overall impression I’ve heard is that this actually looks like a riot. It wasn’t, though- it was a celebration. These people were happy.

Have you ever seen a celebration like this firsthand?

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

On April 21, 2014May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life In Germany12 Comments

Early in the morning on Saturday the 12th of April, I took a day trip to scenic Rothenburg ob der Tauber with Cliff and Sarah of Regensblog. Cliff already posted his write-up of the trip, and he included a ton of great pictures.

Rothenburg is incredibly popular with tourists, and it’s often featured in package tours. The town is compact, but we walked past an astonishing number of hotels on the outer edges of town. We had good weather and a very light level of tourist crowding, but I shudder to think what this town would be like in June or July.

One of my favorite things about Rothenburg is the wall. Many towns in Germany still have intact sections of their original outer walls, but this is the first time I’ve seen one with the entire wall up. It’s been rebuilt over the years, so it’s not all original, but it’s still quite amazing.

I mentioned it was scenic, right? It gets used in film quite often. In fact, sections of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows were filmed here. Not on this specific street, but here in town.

There were a couple of great fountains around town, but none of them were actually moving water around. There was a lot of construction, so perhaps they were turned down during the other work.

This is the town hall. The tallest point is the Rathausturm, a tower that you can climb for the low, low cost of €2.

This elderly tourist couple was just really adorable.

Naturally, we climbed the tower. You can actually see the outer walls, and the towers at intervals along the wall.

The wall is especially clear in this picture.

While we were walking around, we were all kind of amazed at this tree- it had clearly been encouraged to grow almost as part of the building. It was fascinating.

While walking around, we found a small cloister garden containing a very pretty green space.

I’ve lost track of which tower was which. This one was on the western side of the city.

…but this one is the actual western town gate.

This face is set into the tower on the western gate. It’s kind of interesting.

Did I mention how picturesque the city is?

This street is the Plönlein. The tower to the left is the Siebersturm, built in 1385. This is one of those views that people take pictures of quite a lot. Seriously, just put “plonlein” into a Google image search and you’ll immediately see what I’m talking about.

It was just before Easter, so these wreathy crown things are starting to show up all over Bavaria. I’m not sure what they’re called, but they’re always draped with colored eggs.

The design on the eggs is quite intricate.

This kind of archway appears all over town.

It is possible to walk along the wall. There are stairs at regular intervals to go up to the walkway.

Wooden railings keep you from walking off the edge.

This house caught our eye because the seal over the door looks a great deal like Trogdor.

Seriously, it’s an ancestor of Trodgor. Ready to burninate the countryside.

I think the wall may have been my favorite part of the city. Right behind Trogdor, that is.

We had fairly spectacular weather for the day, also. Blue skies, whispy clouds. I secretly believe that the town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber employs weather wizards to keep it pretty like this.

To break up these pictures of scenic Rothenburg, here’s a teddy bear blowing bubbles. This is at a shop in town- it took me a minute to figure out where the bubbles were coming from because it’s in an upstairs window and it’s not constant.