Anecdotes of a Globetrotter: Day 114

Heidelberg is located about 90km south of Frankfurt, and took me just slightly over an hour by bus.

It snowed when I was there. Here’s the scene from the window from my hostel!

Heidelberg is a beautiful small town, worth 1-2 days visit, with a Castle located up on the hills. One can also get a great view of the town from the Castle gardens.

Heidelberg Castle was built in the early 13th century, but was destroyed by war and fire, and had been reconstructed a number of times, thus one can see different styles on the Castle façade.

There is a limited section of the Castle that one can visit with the entrance ticket, with a couple of very interesting sections such as the HUGE wine barrel (probably the largest in the world), and the Museum of Medicine, which talks about how medications were once displayed in pharmacies in the olden days, as well as brief write ups on some herbal remedies.

There is a free walking tour which departs from the old bridge (meeting point next to the monkey) and leaves at 2.30pm from Thursday to Sunday. It is highly recommended.

Lasting for about 2 hours, and led by student volunteers, I learnt a lot of information which were not available through guidebooks or just from exploring the city on my own.

For example, it’s said that if one touches the mirror held by the monkey, it’s likely that one will come back to Heidelberg to visit again one day.

There are also 2 small mice next to the monkey and said to help with fertility, if a women touches it.

The main Cathedral in Heidelberg is another impressive building. We were told that most of the community in the town were Protestants and as such the Cathedral was also Protestant.

However in the 1700s, Vatican troops invaded the city and wanted to convert the population to Catholics. They did so by installing a partition in the Cathedral, where the front section had mass catered to the Catholics, while the back section remained Protestant.

This wall was later removed in 1936, and the Cathedral is back to being a full Protestant Church. Some of the population converted to Catholic, but majority were still Protestants.

During a World War II blast, although the Cathedral was not bombed, the stained glass panes on one side of the church were fully damaged from impact and had to be replaced.

One of the replaced glass was particular, as it was dedicated to the war victims of Hiroshima, and had the text at the bottom of the stained windows E=MC².

It’s also worth climbing up the tower at the Cathedral, as one can get a really good panoramic view from the top.

The tour also brought us to Jesuitkirche, a Catholic Church, which was built after the partition in the main Cathedral was taken down. It was equally controversial during the times when it was built.

It was of a simple elegance on the inside, but had a rather strange “Christmas display” put up on one side of the Church.

The tour also brought us through the streets of Heidelberg and with special mention of :

Haus zum Ritter

Built by a wealthy merchant.

It is said to be one of the oldest houses in the area, and as it was built out of stones, it was never destroyed by the war and fire that left most of the city damaged.

In respect to the King and Queen, carvings of the King and Queen were also made on the higher levels of the wall façade.

University and the University Biblioteca

The University Biblioteca is a beautiful building decorated with the statue of Prometheus, representing human quest for scientific knowledge, as well as Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

Within the Biblioteca, it also contains collections from as early as 1700, with an extremely old thick book encased and displayed in a glass box, containing collection of old folk songs and poems from Heidelberg.