Thank God, the sun does exist!

I was very pleased to find that the sun was shining when I arrived in Heidelberg. It is a rare event in Europe at this time of the year so I decided to make the most of it. The locals were excited thinking that spring had finally started but I feel that they were just being overly optimistic. (as proven by the next two days when it has drizzled constantly and there is a very cold wind)

I caught the bus into the centre of the old town as it is quite a long walk from the main station through to the other end of the altstadt and I wasn’t going to lug my bags all that way. I dropped everything off at the hotel, stripped off some clothing as I think it actually made it above 10 degrees for the day and headed back out into the old town. I decided that I would spend most of the day looking at things from the outside as you can go into museums and castles regardless of the weather. I had a quick walk around Marktplatz which has the town hall and the cathedral in it before heading down to the Old Bridge. This is easy to find as it has a pair of large towers at one end. They used to be one of the gates that entered into the city and were part of the town wall. The current bridge isn’t that old but is the only one to have stood the test of time. There have been multiple other bridges on the same site but they have all washed away in floods over the years. I suspect building the lock further down the river probably has helped save this one.

I wandered over the bridge and headed for the winding path that goes up the hill to the Philosophenweg. Unfortunately it’s closed at the moment for renovations (why you would choose to do them in February when there is still snow on the ground I’m not sure) so I headed along the river front instead. There are lots of very fancy houses along the edge of the Neckar all with impressive views of the old town and the castle. Many seem to have lawyers offices in them so I suspect there is good money in the law in Heidelberg. The views of the city from the river are lovely and in some ways better than the views from higher up (at least less obstructed by trees). I took a short cut up some very steep stairs to get to the Philosophenweg and headed into the walkway. It’s so named because lots of poets and writers used to go and walk amongst the gardens and vineyards on the hill and write about the beauty of Heidelberg. Now it has a series of walkways with veggie gardens and houses dotted around them and some form of nature reserve. It seems to be popular for walking your dog and going jogging and the entire walk smells of dog poo at the moment. I kept thinking that I had trodden in some because the smell seemed to follow me everywhere. The views are great though so it is worth the hike up the hill to get there. I don’t think it would be as good in summer when there are leaves on the trees as they would obstruct the view from much of the path (though a bit of green in the picture would probably help).

I was starting to get hungry so I headed back down the hill and back across the other main bridge in the city to Bismarckplatz. This is a bit of a transport hub with not much to see really. I then started off back down the main street towards the town hall where I had started. I didn’t last long on the main road though because I kept seeing things down the side streets that distracted me. The first thing I spotted was St Anna’s church which is an old catholic church. It’s being renovated at the moment though so it pretty much has no insides at all and you can’t go in. I couldn’t be bothered walking back down to the main street so I headed along Plockstrasse towards St Peters. This street has a really good Birkenstock shop in it if you are interested. It’s about halfway between the church and the university.

Anyway back to the tourist stuff. I got down to the church (St Peters) to find that it is locked at this time of the year but across the road is the vastly more attractive university library which is supposedly world famous (maybe only amongst librarians). It’s a really lovely building that looks more like a theatre than a library really.

I then headed down towards the University. The Heidelberg University was founded in 1386 which makes it impressively old. Most of the buildings aren’t that old but they still are worth a look at (well except for one of the buildings on the square which looks like a giant concrete brick really). The old university building on the corner of Hauptstrasse is probably the most attractive but also the most difficult to photograph as it is hard to get far enough away.

In the next square is the Jesuit church which is a really lovely building. The outside and inside don’t really match but it’s a lovely light filled church with white walls. They seem to be going for the more simple look here in Heidelberg compared with say Bavaria which seems to go for the when too much is never enough kind of look.

From there it’s only a hop skip and a jump back to the main square and the cathedral. It’s a huge gothic number which looks its age I must say. There are little tacky shops around the base of the church which the guide books assure visitors have been there since the middle ages (I suspect not selling tacky souvenirs though!). The inside of the church again doesn’t quite match the outside and one side of the church has very modern windows. They remind me a bit of the ones that you made in primary school using squares of cellophane. The other side has older looking windows that seem much more appropriate. Again it was a very light filled church. They obviously don’t go for the doom and gloom style of church decorating.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon just wandering around the streets looking at the funny little buildings that you find in some of the side streets and taking in the views of the river. Heidelberg is a good place to just wander and see what you find in the little cobbled streets (though I’m sure that the sunshine probably helped with that too).

I had an early dinner (still not quite in the right time zone) at Reichskrone, a small restaurant on the river which had not bad food for reasonable prices. I also got good service as I was the only person in there at the time.

Day two started off with the castle. Now the castle itself opens at 8.00 but the big barrel doesn’t open until 9am and the pharmacy museum until 10am. So on a cold day it’s worth going a little later. I arrived at 9am and was the only visitor in the castle (I even managed to beat the two Japanese tour groups and that is quite an achievement). It’s worth going early so that you can get some photos of the castle without people in them. The tours don’t start until 11am (German) and 11.15 am (English) and run every hour thereafter until 14.15. They are worth going on as you get to go inside the castle and see some of the restored sections as well as the original statues (the ones on the facades are copies). They also give you a good history of the castle. There are audioguides that you can get for the outside section but they weren’t open when I arrived.

It’s quite a hike up to the castle and there are two paths that you can take. One involves lots of stairs (314 to be precise: they are numbered) and the other a steep cobblestone path. I went up the stairs and came down the path but I think that both would be hard work when you are going up. The stairs bring you to the back of the castle and it’s main entrance over the ‘moat’. The moat doesn’t actually have any water in it because the local red sandstone is too porous and it just soaks out again. The area was mostly used as a zoo by the various princes who lived in the castle. Just inside this entrance is one of the remaining areas of gardens. They aren’t much to look at at the moment but I imagine they are lovely when there isn’t snow and there are leaves on the trees. The Elizabeth Gate is in this garden and it was built in one night as a birthday present to one of the wives who lived in the palace, Elizabeth Stuart. They worked on it for 12 months and numbered all the pieces so that they could put it into the garden in a single night and surprise her.

The castle itself is mostly in ruins because of two wars and a fire. Most of it was just left to decay after the fire and only one small section has been rebuilt. The kings moved away from the area after the fire so they had other castles to live in. So mostly what is left is the stone facades of the buildings as they didn’t burn.

The pharmacy museum is mostly in German and I’m sure is much more interesting if you are a pharmacist but is worth a look and is lovely and warm inside (which is the main reason that I spent half an hour in there). It’s included in the price of the entry ticket to the castle, so you might as well have a quick look.

The big barrel is where the princes used to store their wine given in place of tax. It must have tasted really bad because it was just mixed all in together regardless of type and sometimes it even had cider added. They still drank it though and the entire castle went through 2000L of wine everyday. They had no safe drinking water so just drank alcohol all the time. The vat is so large that it can store 221726L of liquid inside it and it took 130 oak trees to make it. It is too leaky to store wine anymore. There were various smaller predecessors to this barrel and one of them had the room especially built for it. You can walk around the barrel and even on top of it. They used to have functions on the platform on the top too. There is a smaller but still very large barrel in the anteroom where there is also a wine tasting café place as well. There are loos here but you do have to pay 50 cents to the woman at the door to use them.

After the castle, I headed back down the hill to go to the Museum which is in the main street though fills most of a block. It’s been there for 100 years and has some quite interesting exhibits. Most of the writing is in German but there are short bits in each room in English too. Large sections of the collection are fairly self explanatory anyway (paintings, clothes, furniture that sort of thing). It took me nearly 2 hours to walk around and see everything but it would probably take another couple of hours if you actually read all the signs and things. It’s 3.50 euros to go in (only 1.80 on Sundays and public holidays) and I think that it is probably worth it, especially in winter when you need a break from the cold outside.

I then wandered back to the University which also has a collection of rooms that you can visit. The one ticket covers them all and it’s 3 euros. The first section that I visited was the University prison which was a series of rooms that were used to lock up students who had been bad. For many centuries the students of the university had to answer to the university courts not the normal courts if they committed an offence. So drunken behaviour, disobedience, unofficial duels and so on, were dealt with by the university board and punishments dolled out. Some people were expelled but many just had to spend time in the University prison. It wasn’t much of a prison though. They were still allowed out to go to classes and the library, they could have visitors, after the first two days you could have food delivered from the restaurants in town and it had heating. It didn’t have any water in the rooms so you did have to cart buckets up from the well in the courtyard below but really if that’s as bad as it gets. The students have decorated the walls of the building with various graffiti, much of it self portraits with names and dates and various fraternity symbols. Most of the stuff current visible dates from the late 19^th and early 20^th century. It wasn’t until 1914 that the prison was actually closed though prior to that many crimes were dealt with by the official state courts and it was more infringements of the university’s rules that caused you to be locked up here.

The museum of the University is pretty much in German only and goes through the history of the uni from its founding in the 14^th century through to today. It’s a quite prestigious university with quite a few Nobel prize winning staff and students. It’s also where Robert Bunsen worked for many years. He’s the man who developed mass spectrometry but more importantly the Bunsen burner! It’s quite interesting but also heavy going because much of the writing is about sciences and gets technical.

Upstairs from the library is the Alte Aula which is one of the old lecture theatres of the university. It’s neo-renaissance in style so not that old really but quite lovely. It’s very dark with lots of wood but a nice painted ceiling. You can get an audioguide for the museum and the alte Aula but I decided that  I didn’t have enough time before it closed. It closes at 4pm during the winter months. And believe me it closes exactly on time. I was leaving at 3.55 and the two women in the museum were already putting their coats on and turning out the lights.

I had dinner in a little bar on the Cathedral square called Green Bar. It seems to do organic stuff and fair trade coffee and the like. The food was pretty good and the service quick and it was nice to have something different to everything else in town. I don’t even need to read the menus of the bier kellers anymore because they all serve exactly the same thing. Surely the Germans have more than 20 different traditional dishes (though I suppose there are only so many things that you can do with pork and potatoes!). The only thing that really differs (and were talking only slightly here) is the price. Which I think as more to do with your position than the quality of the food.

The next morning I got up, had breakfast and headed to Heidelberg Altstadt train station which is at the opposite end of the town to the Hauptbahnhof. I was heading out for the day to Neckarsteinach and Dilsberg, a pair of towns on either side of the river about 20 minutes out of Heidelberg. I headed first to Neckarsteinach as it’s the easier town to get to. All the trains heading up the valley stop there and there is one about every 30 minutes. It’s a small town that seems to be a satellite suburb of Heidelberg despite the fact that it’s actually in a different state. The only work in the town seems to be in restaurants and accommodation. I assume in summer it takes the overflow from Heidelberg.

The train station is at the other end of town to the only real attraction, the four castles. If you catch the bus (which runs a little less frequently) you can get dropped off at the start of the walk next to the zum Schiff hotel and it saves you the walk through town. That said it is only 10 minutes tops and it’s flat. From the hotel the walk up the hill begins but it’s not too bad. The first two castles are still privately owned. The first you can’t really see as it’s in the middle of the property and they have lots of trees around the house. In summer it must be almost impossible to see from the path. The second is easy to see and you can walk around three sides of the building. It’s the largest of the four and must be quite impressive on the inside. It’s even got a tower with little turrets. The third castle is a ruin and has been for quite a while by the looks of it. The original castle was built in the 13^th century and had various owners over the years after the original family moved elsewhere to built a new castle. You can go into the ruin and there are steps up into the castle tower which must give a good view of the river but I wasn’t game to head up them with the thin covering of ice and snow. The hill then gets much steeper as you head across the cliffs to the Swallow’s Nest the final of the four castles. It’s also a ruin though is in pretty good condition. I think if I read the sign right, it didn’t become a ruin until the 18^th century which probably explains why it looks so good. It was also built in the 13^th century originally but most of the building that is still standing isn’t that old. It has the best view of the valley off the four castles and good views across the river to Dilsberg (though it was quite misty the day I was there so you couldn’t see anything clearly) It also has a tower that you can go into but again that layer of semi melted snow was putting me off. It took about 1 hour to walk up the hill and see all four of the castles (though it would have been longer if I could have gone into the towers) and walk back down to the bus stop at the beginning of the walk. I jumped on a bus and headed back to Neckargemund where I could change to a bus to Dilsberg. Unfortunately I didn’t realize the bus at the stop when I got off was the bus to Dilsberg and the only one that was going in the next hour, so I had to wait an hour in Neckargemund.

The area around the train station wasn’t particularly attractive so I walked into the older area of town which has a couple of churches and a nice old square. The churches were locked so I have no idea what they are like inside but they are cute enough on the outside. That killed all of 20 minutes so I ended up sitting at the bus stop reading my book while I waited. The bus trip isn’t long as it’s only 5km to Dilsberg. I would have been tempted to walk it but for the fact that 3.5 of it is up a very steep hill. Most of the buses don’t go to the old fortified town on the top of the hill but to the newer suburb part way up it so this is where I got off. From there it’s another 10 minutes walk straight up the hill to the town. The entire thing is surrounded by a wall with only one entrance tower. The locals have built houses all along the walls on both sides pretty much. The only places where you can see over the walls are the church at the far end of town and the palace gardens which face away from the river. There is a walkway around the bottom of the wall that has reasonable views of the river and the towns on the other side but much of it is blocked by trees. Inside the town there isn’t much other than old buildings, two churches (both locked) and the old castle. It’s also a ruin but unlike the other two it’s locked and you have to pay to go into it. It doesn’t open until March (or at least it only opens on weekends when it’s not raining and only for a couple of hours in the afternoon – which pretty much means that it doesn’t open at all between November and March). You can see most of it from the gates so I don’t think you miss much other than climbing another town. With the weather the way it is I don’t think the view from the top would be that good anyway. In the summer they hold various events in and around the castle. It seems that the good townfolk are into dressing up as knights and hitting each other with sticks.

There are also some tunnels under the town that have bats in them but they don’t open until nearly April so I didn’t bother walking down the side of the hill to go and see them. It seems that the little town of Dilsberg is pretty dead outside of the season. There were no cafes or restaurants, one shop that was open with craft items and that was it. I saw maybe five other people in the whole time I was there. I’m sure that it’s probably more of a happening place when there are more people around and the weather is warmer. It was a pleasant enough way to kill an hour or two though. I walked back down the hill to the bus stop (you are better off going down two stops from the castle as there are more buses going past that stop) and got a bit of a drive through the countryside on the way back to Neckargemund. You can change there and catch a bus back to Heidelberg which makes it nice and easy.

I still had a couple of hours of daylight left but decided that what I wanted most was to have some Kaffee und Kuchen or in my case, heisse Schokolade und Kuchen. I knew that I had seen a place with really good looking cake somewhere in all my wanderings but couldn’t remember where. After walking half the length of the main street without success and checking out all the places in the Marktplatz, I was about to give up when I spotted the cakes at Café Knosel through the window. Here it was! So I headed in and had a very delicious Himbeer-Sahne-Torte and a hot chocolate. The hot chocolates were huge and not too hot which is just how I like them. It’s a funny little building with little rooms joined together and the menu claims that it’s the oldest café in Heidelberg. The walls are covered in photos from the late 19^th century of various events in Heidelberg. I don’t know whether they belong to the family or whether they have collected them over time. It was also nice to be able to sit and not feel pressured to move on (I was keen to stay as it was raining outside and had got cold again). The evening I spent packing up my stuff and I just had a quick kebab for dinner (the kebab place on the main street that is nearest to the cathedral and about one block up from it isn’t bad) as the next morning it was up bright and early to get on the train to Mainz so that I’d get a full day of sight seeing in. I had been hoping to go to a place called Persepolis which is opposite the chairlift up the hill to the castle. It’s an Iranian place that does set dishes each day and Martin at my hotel had recommended it. I’d walked past earlier in the day and it smelt really good but unfortunately it was shut by the time I was hungry enough to eat dinner.

Just a quick review of my hotel. I stayed at Pension Jeske which is about half a block back from the square in front of the town hall. It’s a funny little old house that has been converted into a hostel type hotel. The rooms are good value at 25 euros for a single though you don’t get breakfast. Not that this matters much because on the corner of the street is a supermarket and a bakery that both open early in the morning and have more than enough to satisfy. The rooms are clean and the mattress in my bed was really comfortable. It has the same annoying german pillows that you get everywhere (it doesn’t matter how much you pay you will still get the same pillows – the germans must all sleep on their backs). The bathrooms are shared and there are 2 for the house. I never had trouble with them both being in use at the same time and the house was completely full for the time that I was there. The bathrooms are nice and clean and have good water pressure. The one upstairs also has a really good heater that warms the room up really fast. The house has wifi that you can use for free if you have your own computer. If you don’t have a computer there are a couple of internet cafés near the university. Martin owns the pension and is really helpful. He has maps of the city available and marks all the important sights on them. He can help with restaurant recommendations too. He’s not there all the time though, so remember to ask him things when he is around. From what I hear the new hostel which is a couple of streets away is a bit of a party place so if you want to get some sleep, this is the place to stay. I would recommend earplugs though simply for the fact that it seems like there are bells every 15 minutes from every church in Heidelberg for the entire night.