Back in the day when college took four years to complete, US students would have a tough choice: spend 3rd year buckling down for actual learning (it’s that year, in particular, where the heavy academic lifting gets done). If you had serious plans to go to grad school, you needed 3rd year to cultivate the profs for recommendations, and lay the groundwork for any graduating thesis you would produce in the next year.
Or, you could blow it all off and spend a semester, or even the entire year, “studying” abroad. Now it’s not impossible that taking classes in a distractingly foreign location under a language that may not be your primary tongue is conducive to learning. Asian students flock to US schools, after all, and they seem to thrive. Then again, they’re spending a full four years – sorry, three, since they take 6 courses at a time – and you probably don’t see them hitting the collegiate frat party circuit.
No, for the typical US student, a semester abroad is supposed to be a "learning" experience, just not in the classroom. That experience usually included a wild romance (you may recall my write-up on Barcelona). Or, at least, the right to say awful things like, “this wine is delightful, though it still doesn’t top the ’85 Chateau Margaux I had when I was studying at the Sorbonne.”
Some students have darker ambitions, though – wines and sunshine hold less appeal. Dimly lit stone basements, hushed conspiratorial tones, and the occasional outbreak of beery laughter are what they seek, and for them, Heidelberg is the dream. It holds the promise and danger of some unspoken knowledge.
If any of this still exists – I suspect it does not – you likely won’t find it as a tourist, and most certainly not on a day trip. Heidelberg is often described as the quintessential German town, and the buildings themselves fit that moniker. Stately sandstone facades, red tiled roofs, and semi-regular cobbled streets are the hallmarks of German city planning. We chose to start our tour at the towns largest landmark, the castle above town.
Students of the 30 Years War that devastated Germany will recognize the name Frederick V, Elector Palatine. He was not a particularly capable noble, though not cruel or completely incompetent; his English bride was fairly ambitious; the result was, he was talked into backing a complicated dynastic scheme that would have made him king of Bohemia, and installed a protestant as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Even if you don’t already know, one look at the ruined castle will tell you how that plan worked out.
The tourist manual says you must see the castle, and it’s worth the time, though to get the full effect, take the tour (which we skipped). Without the tour you’re really just looking at the hollowed out façade along with a nice overlook of the city.
I tried to get the boys interested in all the statues on the wall – of all the previous Electors – some in armor, some in robes – I figured they could try to work out why the clothes were different. They didn’t pay much attention. Learning opportunity...poof! There’s also a museum devoted to the history of pharmacies: you basically see a bunch of medieval jars. It’s more interesting as a study of museums themselves. You’ll go to a lot of museums on a trip like this, and at some point, you can start comparing different ones not for their actual content, but for their design. The apothecary museum was too detailed for kids, for example. Maybe throw in an animatronic statue of a pharmacist with his mortar & pestle? A wax figure of a sick guy in a bed? A scratch and sniff for the different medicinal herbs? Kick it up a notch, people!
The castle’s real delight is the view you get of it from the city below – especially from the pedestrian bridge that links the old town to the Philosopher’s Way across the river. Even more stunning are the views of the town and castle from that walkway – poets and painters have marveled at Heidelberg’s beauty for centuries – though be prepared, it’s a steep walk, and we didn’t get that far. The bridge was far enough, and well worth the trip.
Indeed, from the town, the castle still looks intact, and at the right time – sunset, particularly – the beauty of the location (and make no mistake, Heidelberg is beautiful, situated where the Neckar opens up to the expanse of the Rhine valley) will be augmented by its apparent authenticity. Perhaps it helps not to see behind the façade.
Anyway – we walked, window-shopped (a better class of souvenir shops, but still) and had another German lunch (which included potato pancakes for the boys, I’m glad I found those). I bought my cranberry liqueur for which I’d been searching for years now. We toured the old “student jail”, a four story house where they’d lock up misbehaving kids (pinching a policeman’s helmet being a popular pastime). The “jail” was no worse than some of the places I’ve lived in, and, assuming some booze could be smuggled in, I imagine it worked out to a 2 day party for the ones sent there. Or a chance to sleep off the party that got them sentenced to begin with.
In the end, Heidelberg represented a dilemma. The guidebooks praise it endlessly, but that means a mass of tourists who take the guidebooks’ advice. In fact, Heidelberg was the first stop on our entire trip that I felt was on any American’s map. It's hard to feel like you're the quintessential German city when you're surrounded by your American compatriots.
The alternative often mentioned to Heidelberg is Tuebingen, which was perhaps a little closer to us. Tuebingen, the books say, has much of Heidelberg’s look and feel, without the mass of tourists. It’s akin to recommending Siena over Florence, if you’ve ever had to consider that choice. Best to do whtm both, really, but not for us on this trip. We had two days left, and one was going to be rainy, that much was clear. It had to be Heidelberg. I love Siena, but it's not Florence.
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