The two weeks in between Amsterdam and our next trip, there was little action. But the weekend of July 4th, Sebastian and I took a trip to visit his parents, who were taking a Eurotrip of their own. They had arrived the week before, first arriving in Zurich and continuing to Munich, and now Heidelberg. So they booked the two of us a room in the hotel they were staying in, and we arrived on Friday, with plans to leave on Sunday.
The hotel that Sebastian's parents booked (and subsequently booked for us) was pretty awesome, with an old, yet new look to it so you felt like you were experiencing the city while living in class.
The city of Heidelberg is awesome. It's pretty much an old old ancient city with a huge castle on a hill, overlooking the city. The city is made up of a modern section (which we really didn't spend any time in, other than the walk from the train station to the hotel), and an old town section (which is depicted in all of these pictures, and includes the castle and the old shops and churches in the city).
The weekend we were there, actually, there were a ton of people there, and the city held an open air concert/festival where people walked around the streets and listened to music, enjoying the atmosphere of the city and socializing with friends. Heidelberg is known for the being the center of Romanticism in Germany, clearly justified in the beautiful architecture of the city, and the area known as the "Philosopher's Walk", which deserves its own post later.
One of the most awesome things about Germany/Europe/Heidelberg (I'm not really sure since I only experienced it in Heidelberg) is the Spaghetti Ice. it's basically soft serve ice cream (though not quite, I can't figure out what they add), and they add some strawberry sauce, some whipped cream, and some shavings of something, to look like Parmesan cheese. Basically, it was absolutely delicious, and considering it was about 85 degrees all weekend, it definitely hit the spot.
Heidelberg also has a ton of souvenir shops, where I found this fantastic hat that I didn't buy. I thought it made me look particularly German though.
One hilarious thing that happened....In Germany, it turns out when people have weddings, both the grooms and brides go around cities in Germany before their Bachelor/Bachelorette parties. The goal is to fund their party by selling random things to random people in different cities (I suppose cities usually near where they live). They go up to random people and ask for donations so that they can have their party and they give you some tchatchkie in return. Here you can clearly see Sebastian's parents getting won over by the women raising money as the children look on with shame.
Walking around the city, we found a really old church with a bunch of people inside rehearsing for a baroque music concert later that night. We didn't stay for the actual concert (I think we read it was around 3.5 hours long or something), but we listened to some of the rehearsal and it was great.
Anyway the city of Heidelberg was pretty cool, and the only other things which I'll have to write about later are the dining, the castle, and the Philosopher's walk, which I found to be exquisite awesome, and interesting. The city itself was like a very touristy, typical German city, where we could walk around and see a number of artifacts from the middle ages, where the Roman Empire built outposts and perimiter fortresses.
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