Heidelberg

We went on our first proper day trip yesterday, to Heidelberg - a place I associated only with dueling scars, an old university, and study abroad students. Knowing it had a mediaeval old town, I somehow thought it would all look like a Dürer print - at once austere and decorative, perhaps - but it turns out that the old town is full of lovely baroque buildings... and, perhaps, Georgian, whatever that ma, all tasteful and symmetrical and airy with the breath of enlightenment and reason.

Here is the old town, with the ruined rebuilt and re-ruined castle above it, apparently a key site for German romanticism:

We rode up to the castle on the funicular railway - though if we'd known it just went up inside a tunnel for a short distance, we'd probably have walked. The view from the castle over the town was impressive, and all Christmas-sy with the snow:

There were Christmas market stalls in the various squares of the old town, and next to the castle too. A cone of seasoned chips with mayonnaise to dip them in fortified us there; then we looked round the "inside" of the castle, where the sun on the light stone reminded me of Edinburgh. The mixture of designs is interesting, but we didn't have any information on it (unlike the people wandering round who had somewhere got hold of laminated information sheets); anyway, we didn't really go to see the castle but to see the town, so we'll go back another time after learning a bit more about it. There was also an unexpected little pharmacy museum within the remaining buildings, and also an equally unexpected giant barrel in which wine from various communities used to be collected. The photograph below is the only one taken by me - I've abdicated my photographing responsibilities to someone with a smartphone.

We went back down to the Altstadt, the old town, and wandered around looking at buildings - including the university, and a lovely baroque church near it, the Jesuitenkirche. In the university square, we enjoyed some Glühwein. Then we found a nice little falafel place in which to shelter from the biting cold for a while.

 Finally, getting tired, we went to look at the Old Bridge:

Then it was time to go home again, though not without seeing dusk fall, so that all the Christmas market  stalls the little shops on the main street could start to glow in the darkness.

We went there and back by IC (inter city) train. Two different colleagues had told me to buy a Shönes Wochenende ticket, something you can get on the weekend for up to 5 people, that makes travel on Deutsche Bahn  trains much cheaper. So we did, from the red machines in the station - only to discover (from me reading the ticket once we were already seated on the train) that it isn't valid on IC or other higher speed trains, but only for local services - you can get to Heidelberg on a local train, in fact, but it takes an hour and a half or so instead of just 50 minutes, and stops everywhere. Luckily I worked this out before our IC train departed, and we got off again, went to the DB counter and got our ticket changed (albeit losing an hour in the process). The lady at the counter confirmed that if we'd gone with it and the guard had come through the train, we'd have had to pay the full fare over again. The lesson is, don't go believing your colleagues too quickly even if they have been here for much longer than you.