Heidelberg Conference:

This weekend marked two important events of the summer. First, its the halfway point of my time here in Germany (already!) and secondly, all the North American students who are here through the same program (about 200) met for a conference in Heidelberg. I left Stuttgart Thursday afternoon and got to the youth hostel [Here] by 3:00. Opening remarks for the conference happened later that afternoon at the nearby University of Heidelberg (the oldest university in the world).

Heidelberg old city and Castle from across river

Saturday, the majority of the day was spent doing a company tour. Groups went to several different comanies in the area, and I was with the group going to Heidelberger Druckmaschinen. They make large commercial printers (the type that print 150,000 pages in an hour, fill a whole room, and cost over 3 million euro), which are apparently the highest quality on the market. Their factory was huge and they were making a lot of large, high precision parts, but truthfully I couldn't really get excited about printers. It was interesting, but compared to the Porsche factory, well... enough said.

That evening, the whole group went to the Heidelberg Cultural Brewery for dinner. The next day (Saturday) there was another short meeting, then the conference concluded with a guided tour of the town and castle. The town is very touristy, with a couple cathedrals and a long shopping street, but the central point is really the castle [Here]. We got a bunch of history thrown at us, but in short the castle has been around a long time and was partially destroyed/rebuilt more than once. The castle still shows heavy damage, but parts have been rebuilt even in the last several decades. The castle also holds the world's larges wine barrel, with a capacity of 220,000 liters (20 feet dia x 35 long)



Damaged fortifications of Heidelburg castle

What happens when Civil engineers don't do their job (or the French set off the powder armory) ->

After the tour, I struck off for the afternoon hiking up the hills on both sides of the river (1000/1500 feet above the river). On one side [Here] were some ruins of varying epochs, going as far back as the Roman Empire. One ruined middle ages cloister had a tower rebuilt which was open to climb. There were also some fairly extensive ruins of a monastery and a Nazi pagan worship ampitheater known as a thingstätte. On the other side of the river [Here] was a viewpoint accesible by vernicular, although I opted to take the trail, with 1200 some odd rock steps along the way.

Monastery ruins. The small semicircle in the middle is the location of an older Roman temple

The weather was absolutely perfect both Saturday and Sunday, hanging right around 28 degrees (85 F) without a cloud in the sky. After checking out from the hostel on Sunday, several of us went to a nearby swimming pool/park and just chilled for most of the day. After dinner back in the old town we all went to the train station and headed home. It was a long weekend and a good chance to meet students from all over the USA and Canada, and Heidelberg is a nice little town to spend a weekend in.