Heidelberg 2009

On Monday, I made a pilgrimage to the city of my birth, Heidelberg, Germany. I was born there, not because my parents were German citizens, but because my father was stationed in the US Army base there during the Berlin Wall Crisis in 1961. My father was not unfamiliar with Germany at the time he was called up; both of his parents' families emigrated from Germany around the turn of the century, and he had studied German in college. But for my mother, still a fairly new bride with a six-month old (my sister) on her hip, moving to Germany was a big deal. She didn't know the language, but she was resourceful, and my birth happened without too much fanfare - well, depending on your view, that is. [The Army doctor told my mom that he was going on vacation, so they induced her to birth me. Regardless, I still think of myself as a Taurus!].

My Dad took our family on a trip overseas when I was 10 years old; we bought a VW Camper in Amsterdam, figured out how to put up a tent for 5 of us, and took off for Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland. We visited exchange students and their families, whom we had housed during the previous several years, which added a personal component to all the cities we visited: Copenhagen, Stockholm, Stuttgart, and Geneva. Along the way in Germany, my parents made sure we stopped in Heidelberg, so I could see the city where I was born. At this point in my life, I wasn't busy filling out forms about where I had been born, so I think it was more my parents wanting me to see the place, rather than some curiousity of mine. I don't think my sister or brother ever asked to see the hospital where they were born in Greenwich, Connecticut.

I don't have an independent memory of that first trip, but there are family pictures of me and my sister sitting on the ledge of the Heidelberg Schloss, the six hundred year old castle that sits up on the mountain overlooking the town and the Neckar River. Heidelberg has an Old Town, like most European cities, that sits along the river, and where you can find the tourists milling through expensive stores and novelty shops. But Heidelberg is, as it has been for the past century, a University town, and students have been milling around the town for hundreds of years.

I think that is the last time I visited Heidelberg, until Monday. I have been in Germany at least three times over the past few decades, but it wasn't until I was planning this most recent trip that I thought to include a detour to my birthplace. During the past four months (almost five!) I have been living in Europe, the subject of my birthplace has come up frequently with my French friends. For in France, as it is all over Europe, it is where you were born that dictates who you are, as opposed to the US, where it is what you do that is your defining feature. I am proud to say that I was born in Heidelberg, but embarrassed to say that I don't speak German. But I did pretty well over a few days of picking up enough words to be polite, at least. Learning languages becomes easier the more you learn...

I drove up to Heidelberg from Remshalden-Grunbach, where I was visiting my friend Uli (and staying in his aunt and uncle's hotel, Hotel Hirsch). It was raining that morning, but I took off anyway, determined not to spend the day hanging around the hotel. Uli helps out at the hotel, but mostly runs his own restaurant, Uli’s Hirschstüble, about 1 km from the hotel. The night before I left, Uli invited several of his friends who speak English, two of whom I first met over 25 years ago, to have dinner with me at his restaurant. I had visited Uli just twelve months previously, in December of 2007, so it was like old-home-week, catching up with Bertin, Tomas and Hans. It turned out that Tomas had been a student at the University of Heidelberg, but he did not give me many thoughts about what to do in the town. We were too busy dissecting the grade reports he had received of his eldest son, who is spending the year in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, attending the high school there.

It took me an hour and a half to reach Heidelberg, which is northwest of Remshalden. I found the train station easily (the Haptbahnhof), and the large tourist center there. I parked and walked inside, telling the receptionist that I was there to see the town. She handed me a map (just like they do in Nice, when you go to the Tourism office), told me which bus to take, and suggested a few things to do. It being Monday, like in most other places in Europe, many of the stores and museums were closed. But the castle was open, and that seemed like a good place to start. At the suggestion of the young woman, I drove to the castle and parked in a parking lot nearby, rather than take a bus and park downtown. Given the day and the weather and the time of year, it was no surprise that the parking garage I found was not full.

I walked out of the garage, and followed a man who was walking up a set of stairs in the direction of the castle. And indeed, the stairs took me to the entry of the castle. It looked almost deserted; the rain was falling still, and the one shop I passed had a sign that said it was closed for the day. But I found the ticket kiosk, and bought an entry ticket and headed for the schloss. Inside, I found the booth to buy a ticket for a guided tour in English, which was not to start for another forty-five minutes. The guard I spoke with thereafter suggested I take a look at the big wine cask in the bottom of the castle. I headed in that direction, and found the enormous cask, built into its own room, in the basement of the castle. During a certain period of time, it held the wine (both red and white mixed together, my tour guide later recounted) for the towns in the surrounding areas. It was where the soldiers and labourers would come for their daily allotment. Today, of course, it is a curiousity, and there is some good marketing, with the large room outside the cask room set up as a wine-tasting area, with tables for standing and sitting, and a cafe in the corner for those who want to sit and hang around for a while. Which is what I did, taking out my improvised lunch (apples, juice box, crackers), and catching up on some writing while I waited for the Tour.

About sixteen of us had gathered by 12:15 for the Tour. Our guide, a small but energetic German man wearing a beret, used fairly good English to recount the history of the Schloss, the building and the people who lived there. Components of the building were familiar to me, as one who has seen lots of castles on my travels, from Ireland to Austria to St. Petersburg, Russia. The kitchen (which we could not see directly) was built to feed 2000 people, there was a beautiful chapel, and we saw rooms with large porcelain heaters for the cold winter nights in Germany.

The tour took about an hour. Afterward, I took a walk around the gardens outside the castle, gardens which also overlook the Neckar River. I was freezing at that point, and had been debating the idea of going for a run. I had come up with the idea before I left that morning, and so had brought all my running clothes with me. If it had been pouring rain, I would not have run, but the rain had lessened, and the skies were opening up as I toured the garden walk. I knew a run would warm me up, and I decided to go for it. I went back to the parking garage, took my clothes out of the trunk, and changed inside my little Fiat. As I was heading out of the garage, I found a WC (toilet), and it was very warm inside - I thought, this is where I will change when I return!

I headed down the hill and through the old town, and then to the pedestrian bridge across the river. The wind was whipping as I ran across the bridge, and I held onto my Barnard cap as I ran. On the other side of the river, I headed west, toward another bridge, deciding I would do a loop. It looked like at least 3 miles, anyway. As I was getting close to the bridge ahead of me, I was stopped by a young German woman, who asked me for directions. She asked me about a street, which I didn't know, but she also asked about the Philosopher's Garden, which I told her was nearby, but I had not found the way to reach it. This conversation was a mix of German and English; already I was finding I could come up with some German words (or at least understand some of them) when necessary. Prompted by her question, I turned away from the river and headed down a street or two, eventually finding a sign that indicated the way up the hill to the Philosopher's Garden. It didn't take very long; I'm surprised how easily one can just stumble along things when one isn't really looking.

I headed up the hill, which took me past a University building and a number of students walking back to class (it was around 2 p.m. in the afternoon). I climbed higher and higher (huffing and puffing a bit), and was amused to see messages written in chalk (or paint) along the path (once I left the street), clearly intended for runners in a race at this height. Eventually I reached the Philosopher's garden, which overlooks the town from the opposite side of the river as the castle. There is a tradition of academics and philosopher's in the town, but I did not read up on this too much. There are plenty of places for you to do so; here's one useful site I found. I was happy to be up high, with a fantastic view of the valley and the Neckar river, in spite of the greyness of the day.

After heading back down the hill and back across the river, I ran through the university campus and back to my car. A good 40 minute run; a good sense of the town. I have a tradition, since I first starting traveling on my own back in 1983, of using a run as a way to explore a new place, and it has always enhanced my experience in a new place. And, by careful memorization of maps and street signs, a bit of caution, and using my fairly decent internal compass, I have never gotten lost (completely, anyway).

I changed back into my clothes in the WC I had found in the garage, drank the apple juice in my car, and headed out of town. My destination was the Hotel Rose, in one of the neighborhoods of Heidelberg. Before I had left Grunbach that morning, Uli had called his friend Beate, whose family runs the hotel. The two of them had been in hotel school together, but it had been a long time since he had seen her or talked to her. But he didn't hesitate to contact her when he knew I would be in Heidelberg. Also, his friend had married an American (stationed in Heidelberg), and Uli thought that the family would have a pretty good working knowledge of English (for my benefit). It turned out, after speaking to Beate's mom, that Beate would not be there that afternoon, but Uli gave me directions to go visit the hotel anyway.

So, after asking for directions, I found the Hotel Rose in Rorhbach. I entered the hotel and was directed to the woman sitting behind the registration desk. I told her I was Uli's friend, and after a moment, she brightened, and welcomed me into the dining room. She asked if I wanted anything, and I said coffee and perhaps...she volunteered, Cake! So over kuchen and caffe, I had a hour's conversation with Frau Fein. This conversation too was a mixture of English and German, but it was easy to understand her. We talked about the next day's inauguration, her visit to the US several years ago (including a personal backstage tour of the Met Opera by an Austrian-born Met tour guide who was so happy to have German speakers in her tour group), and the state of the economy in Heidelberg (of which the US Army and its personnel are a significant part). It was a lovely visit. As the afternoon darkened, I told her I needed to head home. She said, the Americans - always on the move! She told me to tell Uli that she would come visit his restaurant, but she also said that she and her husband rarely go anywhere. Ah, a very different mindset than my own!

The drive back was longer, through rain and heavy traffic as workers headed home. There were several accidents on the autobahn, and I was happy again that I don't commute to work (actually, I don't work at the moment, do I?). It was a brief visit to Heidelberg, but when I think of the town now, I won't think of that long-ago picture of me with pigtails sitting on the schloss wall, I will think of the river and its bridges, the old castle and its broad gardens, and the friendly German people I met there.