There’s a Dead Fly on my Tenner

So. Heidelberg. Yeah… that was a few weeks ago. Many weeks ago. It was probably either a month or so ago. Anyway, so you’re probably curious about the title. Well, we were in a café in Heidelberg and I was about to pay for my hot chocolate. I go into my wallet, remove a tenner and discover there is a dead, squashed fly on it. Now my assumption, because I would definitely notice a fly in my handbag and/or wallet, is that the note came out of the ATM with the fly squashed on it. It wouldn’t be the first time Sparkasse’s ATMs have decided to confuse, perturb and generally be mean to me. Oh, and I have photographic evidence, in case you’re curious.

I swear Sparkasse’s ATM have some sort of hatred towards me. My other Sparkasse adventures include: getting out €200 only to be paid out €200 in €5 notes, trying to withdraw €20 and being given (and charged) €100 and trying to withdraw €50 and being given (and charged) €400. I can understand that sometimes ATMs must do odd things, either because of a malfunction or a lack of larger notes, but four times? Really? Unless it’s some sort of German bank tactic to stop people withdrawing and spending money…

Anyway, this is a post about Heidelberg, and when I say it’s a post about Heidelberg, I mean that it’s a photo entry and that I’ve recently decided photo entries will be 85% photo and 15% words. Having said that though, my maths is so shoddy that I actually just checked the computer’s calculator to make sure that 85 and 15 do indeed make 100. The basic idea though is that it’ll be mostly be photos plus words when something particularly memorable leaps into my mind.

This is Maddy, Sarah and Sarah standing in front of a statue of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, which, respectively, stands in front of some sort of departmental building of Universität Heidelberg. Aside from being a lovely photo (who doesn’t love some cherry blossom?), they’re standing in front of the man who discovered caesium and rubidium (both of which are really quite explosive). He also created the Bunsen burner, as you’ve probably guessed by now. He found highly explosive elements (both are located on the Periodic Table) and created the Bunsen burner. I like this man.

     

Also that. It’s a shop. Called unicorn. Of course I’m going to have my photo taken standing next to it. It would be very unlike me to walk past a place called unicorn and not throw my camera at someone so they can take a photo of me standing next to it. The inside was disappointing because it was full of touristy tat, but with a name like that, it can be forgiven.

Left is Heidelberg Castle from the Altstadt and right is a picture of the Altstadt from Heidelberg Castle. Yeah. The city’s gorgeous but the weather really really wasn’t when we went. The weather was actually quite foggy and showery and unpleasant, which, arguably, is better for a day trip with lots of walking than a day of glorious sunshine and high temperatures.

Left is the castle from outside and in the photo (from left to right) you can find Sarah, Gary, Sarah and Maddy. I, obviously, was taking the photo, but it was just the five of us that went. The photo on the right is inside the castle and it is a proper castle. The reason I say ‘proper castle’ is because the German Schloss also refers to what, in English, would be called a palace. Schloss Sanssouci in Potsdam, for example, isn’t so much a castle as it is a palace. On a vaguely related note, Schloss in German also refers to a padlock. You know, just to confuse you some more. The photo at the bottom is of the castle and the Altstadt from the castle’s gardens, where we wandered about for a bit and found a bust of Goethe.

Also, I’m sorry if you’re not finding out a lot about our adventures in Heidelberg (which involved looking and running away from a very expensive dirndl/lederhosen shop, meeting up with Sarah’s friends from university, eating in a Mexicany place, me thinking I’d booked the wrong train back when I hadn’t etc.) but it’s a photo entry and if I’m ever going to catch up on all the day trips and stuff (which at this point may not be entirely likely), I can’t afford to write essays. Though avoiding my essay is exactly what I’m trying to do by writing this entry…

You know how Heidelberg has a university? You know how universities have students? You know how students like to drink? Well, Universität Heidelberg had special powers to police its own students. How it policed these students was to stick them in the Studentenkarzer, ‘detention room’ or ‘campus prison’, until they’d slept it off. Except the students did what all good students do when confronted with a wall, they wrote and drew all over it. Resulting in what you can see there today, which is really quite cool and the writing is literally everywhere. Ceiling? Graffiti. Walls? Graffiti. I’m impressed so much of the ceiling was covered actually, though I do have to wonder how they got up there…

Yup. So, that’s Heidelberg. It was great, though the weather wasn’t and we all had a good time. I just want to finish off with one photo and one word that I feel really capture the spirit of Germany and many other European countries, for that matter.

BIKEAPOCALYPSE!