Heidelberg and the Grosses Fass
This is about the point in my trip where I start fancying a new piercing or possibly a tattoo. I did pass by the piercing studio several times during my stay in Heidelberg but no, I was mostly just using that one-liner to get you to read this entry. I know, I’m a turd. This doesn’t mean that I won’t have one or both of those adornments by the time I leave Switzerland, but it turned out that Heidelberg was just not where it was going to happen.
If Heidelberg was a band it’d be sort of a one-hit wonder. The major attraction in the town is the Schloss Heidelberg, a once magnificent castle built in 1214 that’s now about half of what it once was. Mark Twain actually stayed in Heidelberg for three months, during which time he wrote the book A Tramp Abroad, where he mentioned that the castle would be quite stunning if Napoleon hadn’t managed to pass through and do a major number on it. The castle does have a lot to see, so it’s not as if I rode the train for another four hours to see a pile of rubble. It’s a grand fortress, even with parts of it missing. There’s a dramatic view of the old town below from its ramparts, a pharmacologic museum (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde style), and best of all kleines Fass and grosses Fass, the little barrel and the big barrel. In fact, when I first walked in, I thought the little barrel was the big barrel. Here’s kleines Fass, with a guy in the photo for size comparison:
Teensy, ain’t it? Now check out grosses Fass:
My feeble photography attempts can’t even do this wine barrel justice. It’s so big that you can take a staircase to the top of it where there’s a deck big enough for a BBQ. That’s one helluva keg party.
The Deutsches Apotheken-Museum (German Pharmacy Museum) has a surprisingly large collection of scary beakers and glass vats from the 13th century onwards. They’re mostly those long-nosed things that hang over the shelf and empty into another freaky long-nosed beaker or some kind of vat. It would appear that stuff is boiled inside these beakers at which point they bubble over through the spout, but frankly, I didn’t get close enough to find out as they gave me the heebie jeebies.
There’s a really impressive view of the castle if you’re daring enough to climb up Philosopherweg (Philosopher’s Way) in the middle of a July heat wave in Heidelberg. It’s said the walk is for lovers, but after standing out with a sign for hours that said “Ich brauche Liebe” and coming up empty-handed, I braved the path alone. Halfway up I ran into an English couple complaining incessantly about the heat (ok, only the wife was) and the steepness of the grade. I sat down on the bench at the lookout point where they’d stopped to bitch and their daughter jumped out of the bushes and tried to ask me in German about as terrible as mine if I’d take their photo. “That German,” I replied, “probably won’t work too well. But I can totally take your photo in English.” This was enough to get the mom and dad to start chatting and eventually asking me all about my travels and life in Switzerland. I’ve become pretty good at summing up life in Switzerland in five minutes, but less successful at briefing people on where I’ve been since January. If I’m not forgetting Rome, I’m forgetting South Africa and vice versa. But yes, there are worse problems one could have.
The view at the top was spectacular, even on an overcast day. The postcards weren’t kidding. I probably took a hundred photos of the same view but slightly different, but I spared you guys and only uploaded one. I spent the next hour up there eating blackberries stolen out of someone’s garden (at least I think it was someone’s garden because they were behind a fence and a locked gate) using a hooked stick. Hey, I have ADD, gimme a break. And I love wild berries.
Back in town, anyone with a hint of talent can set up shop on a street corner (or probably any German tourist town for that matter) and start playing the accordion or the violin or whatever their talent might be and make some money (although I think the market for people pretending to be robots is a tad oversaturated). One of my favorite shots of the day came unexpectedly while I was sitting at a restaurant’s outdoor tables having lunch. A girl with neon red dreads and a black dress came unassumingly around the corner and quietly set up her music stand, opened her violin case, tuned her instrument, and began playing some modest songs. She got a few euros, but then about ten minutes later her friend showed up, hugged her, set up camp, and together they started playing a fantastic duet right there on the corner. They were so good that people walking by started to block the thoroughfare. When two guys with guitar cases on their backs stopped for a while to observe the girls and their success, I got the photo. It was a little bit of sweetness on an otherwise cloudy afternoon in Heidelberg.
Since I’d been in a hotel two nights in Cologne, I stayed in a hostel that evening in Heidelberg for the company. The trouble with hostel company is that it’s completely unpredictable and erratic. The only guy in the room when I first checked in was an international relations major from Pittsburgh on a scholarship. “You’re from Pittsburgh,” I said to him, more as a statement than a question. He nodded enthusiastically, as all people from Pittsburgh do for some reason. “Wow,” I said, “imagine me coming all the way to a tiny town in southern Germany to meet someone from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What are the odds.” “Isn’t it crazy?” he responded. I laid down on the upper bunk of the one bed that appeared to be free. “There’s a guy from Arizona here too!” he continued. I took a nap. When I woke up, I met a guy from Bavaria and his friend who said that he himself was not a “real” German since he came from the north. He motioned to his Bavarian friend as the real deal after we were all introduced.
This whole northern/southern Germany thing is obviously something I will never fully understand, not being German myself and not having grown up anywhere near Germany. About once a month someone German broaches the topic when I mention a city in either half of the country. Inevitably they respond in order to say something snarky, to which I can only reply by saying “Oh, ok,” and staring dazedly at them. Whatever comment they make is painfully entertaining only to them, and perhaps for the short duration that I’m living in Switzerland, will remain that way.
The Bavarian guy was in Heidelberg to start uni (which is what everyone in Europe calls college) at the very same University of Heidelberg. The three of us sat outside the hostel with drinks while he waxed poetic about his future life. “I can’t believe I’m going to be here for two years.” There are worse places to be. I didn’t say it. I simply stared at him while sipping my soda. “I actually wanted to go to ETH,” he said. If you really must know, ETH stands for Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule and it’s a university in Zurich. “I didn’t get in though, so I decided to come here for two years and apply again.” It must be hard, not getting into the college of your choice out here and then having to instead go to what in this guy’s mind was a European community college. If only the College of San Mateo was in the middle of an historic medieval town in southern Germany, I’d have been in no hurry to enter the UC system! “It’s not a bad place,” I remarked, in understatedly British style. “It’s going to cost €3000 a year to go here!” he said. My head was now rolling over my fist and smushing up my face. “Well,” he appended, “I guess that’s nothing compared to how much you pay in the States.” “Thanks for recognizing that,” I said.
They weren’t bad dudes at all. So nice in fact that I woke all of them up at six in the morning with my suitcase zipping and door banging as I left to catch the early train out of town. On to Rothenburg ob der Tauber… but first, here’s the whole Heidelberg gallery.
