Heidelberg is a town of 150,000 and it houses Germany's oldest and most prestigious university that makes up a fifth of the population. Twain spends chapters of his book describing the bloody, yet structured fencing duels that took place here a century ago, and I was surprised to learn about the depths of this violent and honored pastime between the fraternities of the school. Thankfully, these matches that would lead to dismemberment and death no longer take place. Another relic of the bygone era was the Studentenkarzer, or Student Jail. Misbehaving students would spent at least three days in their spartan cell fitted with little more than a bed, chair, desk and lots of paint. Floor to ceiling is covered in two hundred years worth of graffiti - silhouettes, dirty poems and charred initials jockey for space as inmates brag or lament about the deeds that landed them confinement.
The Student Jail stands in University Square where grand old school buildings mingle with a Jesuit church and impressive library. Underground is the foundations of the Augustinian monastery where Martin Luther defended his revolutionary "95 theses" in 1518. We took a pause here to sit in the warm sun with many of the tourist and indulged in a local treat called a Schneebällen, fried dough rolled into balls and dusted with powdered sugar to resemble snowballs.We continued through Market Square with it's imposing Gothic church and the Hercules fountain, where medieval criminals were placed in stocks to suffer the ridicule of the mobs. Not far from here was the Old Bridge that spans the Neckar River. After dutifully touching the brass monkey's mirror for good luck and wealth we paid homage to the statue of Karl Theodor, who is rumored to have fathered 200 illegitimate children as prince. We did not rub anything on this memorial, but it proved to be a great vantage point for the Philosopher's Way on the North bank and the grand Castle to the South.
When we completed the steep walk up to the castle grounds, the three of us were greeted with a lively atmosphere of musicians, clowns and hordes of tourists laying siege to the crumbling Schloss. Mark Twain described the place perfectly when he wrote, "Out of a billowy upheaval of vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge ruin of Heidelberg Castle, with empty window arches, ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers — the Lear of inanimate nature — deserted, discrowned, beaten by the storms, but royal still, and beautiful." The courtyard is true ravaged by time, but not neglect as scaffolding attest to slow improvements on the Eastern walls. The Schloss also hosts an interesting pharmacy museum where we can see many approaches to medicine over the ages, as well as the Grosses Fass. Claiming to be the worlds' largest wine cask, it took 130 oak trees to create and holds more liters than there are people in the city. Again I will turn to Twain, who was less impressed than I at the sight of this behemoth, "Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense."
We took his advice and after a quick lap of the wine cask we heading outside and made our way back to the train station. Not embracing emptiness, but full of appreciation for this storied city.
~Kyle
