Heidelberg

I have found it! Toast and Peanut butter!! I must admit, I haven't been looking forward to the rest of my trip as much, now that I don't know people and have seen most of the stuff I was really excited about (Holland, Rome, Pompeii, Roman ruins, swiss mountains, just the Louvre left really). I'm sure I'll find stuff to be excited about, just I was focussing on interviews in Switzerland and kinda forgot about planning the next step... Luckily for me, Andrea had two good friends in Heidelberg who let me stay at their very lovely apartment. Man it is so much better staying with friendly people than a hostel. I think I've always been too old for a hostel.

First the train ride to Heidelberg, I met this lovely lady who was a retired diplomat for Switzerland! She said her two focuses of her career were getting Switzerland to join the UN and women the right to vote. In Switzerland, women only got the right to vote in 1971! The lady said it was because Switzerland is such a democracy, nothing gets passed unless of majority vote. In other countries women were allowed to vote because of constitutional challenges, but in Switzerland it only happened when more than half the men voted to allow it. Anyway, it was fantastic to talk with this woman, she talked a bit about negotiations and how you learn the skills and that she was in Berlin when the wall was going down, and in Cairo and Stockholm. It was all really interesting!

Then in Heidelberg I met up with Andrea's friends. We had a lovely glass of wine and chatted. They are both psychology PhD students.

The next morning I was given use of one of their bicycle and rode it into town. It had a crazy lock on it that was difficult to operate. That morning we were having a discussion about pigeons that would show OCD when they were given random events (good or bad - the pigeons would be obsessed on a behaviour to try and control the event). Trying to unlock that bicycle lock felt a bit the same, I would just try everything and sometimes it would work...

The city gates on the old bridge.


I went to visit the castle ruins and took the self guided audio tour. You can see most of the grounds including the grassy terraces that used to hold the gardens for free, but it was 3 euro to get into the courtyard.

The castle was pretty impressive and very lovely as part ruins.


I liked this lion, he's look up and kind of rolling his eyes.

In the gardens was a pond and in the pond where these strange newt? creatures that I've never seen in the wild before. Perhaps they are a transition stage for salamanders?

They also had a museum devoted to the apothecary. In the museum were old pharmacies that had been moved to the museum and it also had the old lab equipment. Here is a centrifuge. Man, and I'm bored in modern times when I have to wait for the thing to brake. Here you have to crank by hand.


This is the roof of the University library that is located close to old town. Heidelberg isn't very big but very lovely and busy. The first night as I was waiting for a bus it was full of young teenagers all out to get drunk. Apparently all the local kids from surrounding villages all come down to Heidelberg because it has the reputation of being the party town.

Next up in Munich! This time I am more or less on the ball and I have a hostel booked.... yeah for dorm rooms!