"Huckleberry Berg" a Heidelberg Travel Page by Sjalen

Heidelberg was a place I knew was touristy but I nevertheless wanted to visit to see what all the fuss was about and it did look beautiful in photos. It was. Both touristy and beautiful. Now at least I know where the Queen of Sweden was born and where Mark Twain spent an important part of his writing career! :)))

Getting to Heidelberg by train you end up in an area not very scenic and all, and might wonder what all the fuss is about, but I was warned about it and I also knew I hadn't landed in Altstadt. Making our way to our hotel there, we noted that even the taxi drivers were more geared up for tourists here than elsewhere in Germany as they joked and smiled a lot. You can also see just by studying the official tourist website how geared up to tourists everything is: http://www.cvb-heidelberg.de

Wandering around in the Old Town later, we couldn't muster that "wow" feeling that historical places sometimes gives you. Instead, it all felt very "artificial". Not until we later went to the castle on its hill did we get a feeling of what the city is about, with stunning river views across the hills and plain towards Mannheim. I liked this view so much that it has now contributed to making Heidelberg one of my biggest pages, sadly knocking down Venice from my intro page! At night, it got even better when the illuminated castle made me think I was in a German equivalent to Edinburgh. Still, the feeling of artificial creations never really left me, and before we left, I said to kitan that this is one of the few German cities I could probably never live in - it's too un-German.

Having got all this out of my system, Heidelberg is still a lovely place. Once you get to grips with hoardes of lost-looking Japanese tourists and the fact that all bar staff seems to speak American English. The student atmosphere is great, with lots of trendy cafes and other meeting places, as well as book shops that a city might otherwise not have as many of. Out of 135 000 inhabitants, 30 000 are students and it shows! We also found no less than two breweries with excellent ambiance and beer to remind us that we were indeed in Germany after all.