Heidelberger Herbst

Saturday morning, my attempt at sleeping in was foiled by what appeared to be two fanfares. I am not completely sure there were two, since the one seemed to consist only of percussion, while the other featured only brass; this suggests that they were different sections of the same band. However, since they seemed to be playing in blissful ignorance of each other's existence for most of the time, I could not altogether get rid of the impression that they were two separate entities.
I was rather annoyed at this unexpected beginning of the day. I felt I had not been warned properly; my only reason to suspect something was that I had heard there would be a flea market. It turned out that it was not just a flea market, but a complete Straßenfest, something similar to Dutch Queen's Day, called Heidelberger Herbst. It involved the usual crowded streets (cycling the Hauptstraße was now not only legal but also practically impossible), stands with people selling all kinds of things, but mostly jewellery and food, various stages of varying sizes with bands playing music of various genres, and increased presence of police and ambulances. One ambulance was actually trying to make its way through the crowded Haupstraße with its blue flashing lights on, but luckily without the sirene, since it was progressing only slightly faster than walking speed.
The Heidelberg municipal website could have warned me, it turned out. According to the section on the Heidelberger Herbst, it is a yearly happening, which turns the pedestrian zone in the Altstadt into a large market and festival terrain on the last Saturday of September. This was the case indeed, and the epicentre of the activities seemed to be around the Universitätsplatz, which is indeed in the centre of the Altstadt. What struck me there was the effort to make it look like a medieval market: a number of stands had been built, such as a Taverne, and there were many (medieval) market entertainment acts, such as jugglers and bands playing medieval music (I won't vouch for authenticity, but it sounded nice), and many stands selling the kind of 'medieval' clothing and jewellery worn by goths, LARPers, and the like.
Throughout the day, the weather was quite summer-like: sunny, warm and only a few clouds to be seen. 'Nice autumn festival,' I thought, but in the evening, the weather joined in as well. When I was in my room, reading, I noticed lightning, and shortly after came thunder, and then rain. I went out, expecting empty streets and people packing up their stands and going home, but to my surprise, it was still about as crowded as in the afternoon. Apparently the Heidelbergers didn't want to let the rain interfere with their festival... healthy attitude :).

P.S.: Pictures will follow.

Cycling in Heidelberg

Like all Dutch people in diaspora (such as this specimen, which by now, however, has returned to native soil), I must devote some space to the phenomenon of cycling in foreign lands.

Heidelberg is a cyclists' city, apparently, in German terms. And, true, there are many bicycles, again, in German terms. It's quite like home, in that respect, except for overwhelming dominance of mountainbikes. But then again, we have mountains here...
The main difference is that there are hardly any cycling lanes. Elsewhere, this might have undesirable consequences from the cyclist's point of view, but here I find it surprisingly refreshing: the effect is that cyclists are considered a mixture between pedestrians and automobilists, having the advantages of both but the disadvantages of neither. Traffic Supermunchkin! So they use the sidewalk, or the pavement, as they see fit, and it is all quite accepted. Wonderful! As some of you may have noted, I never had a very high regard for traffic rules, and now I get to live this out in full :). For those of you who do care: the rules, which apparently exist, are, according to my local sources¹, about the same as in the Netherlands.

Some people do seem to mind, though. Yesterday evening, I was cycling through the Hauptstraße, where this is officially not allowed, and was suddenly forced to make a rather sharp turn to avoid collision with a pedestrian. This was nothing new, but to my surprise, the pedestrian jumped in front of me and forced me to stop by grabbing my arm. This certainly was new. The pedestrian continued to explain to me that cycling was not allowed in the Hauptstraße, but did so in a dialect so far, and still, unknown to me. So, it took me the first few sentences to figure out that the man was not speaking Finnish, actual German ('proper', in the sense of Hochdeutsch, I wouldn't dare call it...). Of course I need not tell you that all this while, cyclists were passing by us at the usual frequency. In the end, I understood one sentence well enough to give a logical answer, and went on my way.

¹For those who know them: Leo and Fry, the brothers Jonas.

Commenting / new room

I have enabled anonymous comments. I must confess I hadn't looked at the comments menu before, but now you can all comment to your heart's content. Unfortunately there seems not to be a way of restricting anonymous comments to human posters, so I'll just try this and see what happens. If internet advertising company computers will appear to find my news very interesting, I'll have to restrict posting to members, but wie dan leeft, die dan zorgt.

I have also heard that in my new room, where I'll be moving next week, the promised WLAN is not yet available. And the person I asked did not know when it would be, so I'll just have to arrange that myself. I will arrange something, since I am getting a little tired of having to go out to look up something on the internet, and not having it in the evening or in weekends, etc..
Apart from the apparent total absence of living room/kitchen-like spaces in the dorms on the campus, it seems to be very much like UC indeed, only half as expensive. Which is somewhat surprising, since it is a private university campus. But, no complaints: mensa and room and sports programme together cost 360 euros per month. Only I have no choice but to take the whole package. But, I can move out when I like, although I have to say so four weeks in advance; that's a difference with UC. And might be positive, if I would happen to find something nice... but first I'll see what it's like on that campus.

Revolution!

Thursday (21-9) evening, I went out with a few people from the language course, to say goodbye to Adrian, our Hungarian classmate. He is going back home, to Budapest, to join the street protests against the present government.
He told me that most intellectuals in Hungary usually vote for Fidesz, the right-wing party. I assumed that meant liberal, but, surprisingly, it is the conservative party. It turned out that Fidesz is simply the least corrupt big party, and that its conservatism looks much like the liberal socialism of, for example, GroenLinks in the Netherlands. We didn't get into details, but I got the impression that had he been Dutch, Adrian would have voted GL, or something similar. Interesting world, politics ;).

Landed / bureaucracy

I feel quite settled, as it is now. Apart from a room and a language course, I now have such things as a bicycle, which counts as a primary life requirement for a Dutch person like myself, and internet access, which also counts as such, even for non-Dutch people...
Friedemann, son of my dad's friend Reinhard, and I both wanted a second-hand bicycle, and therefore set out to buy them. Having found a shop with reasonable prices, and both having found a bycicle in there, Friedemann managed to get a discount of 10 euro's per person, in return for a promise that he'd tell everyone that it was a nice shop ;).
I also have internet access, as mentioned in another post, and even a German bank account. I have found out that paying with debit card, as I was very much used to at home, is not that widespread as a practise here. Also, here they use a signature as identification, rather than a PIN-code. Which of course does not speed up the whole procedure, since it means you have to wait for the receipt to be printed, etc. Which in turn explains why people don't use it that much over here.

I have fulfilled all the bureaucratic requirements for living and studying in Heidelberg for a year, and I managed to do all of them on one day :). I had prepared myself for a day or more of walking from one bureaucratic institution to another, with Kafka's Schloß somewhere in the back of my mind. I had read that I needed to get an exemption from the health insurance obligation, which I would need for my immatriculation, which I would need for my bank account. Now my problem was that I wanted to get a local public health insurance, since it was cheaper than my Dutch one. So there was a very nice circle: I needed a bank account for my insurance, which I needed for my immatriculation, which I needed for my bank account, etc.. But everything turned out to be quite fine: at the bank they didn't even ask if I was a student, but just gave me a student's account, and then the rest came quite easily.
The only nasty surprise was that I could not end or suspend my Dutch health insurance, because it apparently comes with being enrolled in a Dutch university and getting stufi... So I had to quit the German insurance again :(.

Language course

Monday 11-9: I found a language course! That is, I found several, but one of those actually had the right conditions for me to enter. I found a few that would start in October, at various institutes, and I found one that was full, at the Internationale Studienzentrum, and I found one that had started one week ago and still had place left, at the Heidelberger Pädagogium.
I had to do an Einstufungstest, which meant they wanted to know how good my German was. Having completed that, I was told I would be placed in the Oberstufe, i.e. the highest level of the three. The lady who did the placing wondered where I had learned my German, and asked me how long I had already been in Germany. When I said 'three days', she looked rather surprised, and complimented me on my pronunciation :).

The next day, being Tuesday 12 September, I had my first class, and found the following:

• The teacher, Herr Heim, fits my stereotype about German teachers relatively well
  
  
  
  • He knows lots of things about linguistics, speaks English, Spanish and French and reads Italian; a deutschgründliche Ausbildung, in short
    
  • Very careful Hochdeutsch pronunciation
    
  • Looks quite serious
    
  • What doesn't quite fit is that he isn't authoritarian at all, even seems a little insecure
    
  
  
• The other students are from Taiwan (1), Ukraine (1), Hungary (1), Italy (1) and Spain (2). As far as I can see, they are nette Leute, nice people :).
  
• Relief: my German is certainly not the worst of the class, but not the best either. At least, Claudia (Italian) and Shu-ming (Taiwanese) know their grammer better than I do.
  

The language course is every morning from 9 to 12:30 or thereabouts, which is good. It makes sure that I do something at least every day, and leaves the afternoon for doing nothing, reading up on physics, cycling around town, doing bureaucracy, doing homework, etc.. The only slight problem is that many university offices are only open between 10 and 12 a.m....

Die schönste Stadt der Welt

Wise Guys - Die Nachrichten:

"Der Bundestag beschloß in knapp zwei Jahren, von Berlin, endgültig, mit Pack und Sack, nach Bonn zurückzuziehen. Der Umzug wird nicht beleuchtet, doch er dient 'nem guten Zwecke: die schönste Stadt der Welt..."

...ist ja Heidelberg am Neckar.

(People who don't know the Wise Guys: never mind...)

Heidelberg feels like the ideal university city. Small enough to be 'gezellig', old enough to have beautiful old buildings, small streets, and the general 'packed' old city centre atmosphere, and it has a good university as well. And a river, on which people even sail :).
On the north shore of the Neckar are the Neckarwiesen, the Neckar meadows, which are quite reminiscent of the grass around the UC campus squad, only larger, and with a river in front of it. They make the idea of studying until the end of July a bit more attractive, although I am still of the opinion that the Heidelbergers are just late with their summer. (Still no signs of autumn, for example. Not that I'm complaining, though :).)

My room for September is in the middle of the Altstadt, practically at the Hauptstrasse, in a Studentenwohnheim¹. It is relatively small, for UC standards at least, i.e. some 10-12 square metres, but has rather large closets to compensate. The view from my window is nice, full of old red roofs, like the view from the hallway window opposite my door (pictures will follow). The room does unfortunately not have internet, or at least none that I can use. But, all in all, I am satisfied with this room, at least for a month.
There are other people living on the same floor: one from France, two from China, one from Germany and one from Georgia (the one in the Caucasus). So far, they seem nice people, although I have not had very intensive contact with them. The Frenchman, called Pierre, has kindly shown me the internet room in the university library, which is gleich um die Ecke, and even shared his account with me. The two Chinese people, called Zheng and Xu, I believe ('Xu's name' is hard to transcribe) have allowed me to use their computers in my search for solutions to my internet problems, but that is more or less the limit of the contact, apart from 'business-like' contacts about who is to keep the floor clean during which week and such.
I said 'floor', rather than 'flat' or 'unit', since that idea does not yet seem to have taken root here. There is a kitchen, granted, but it is fairly minimal (think UC-kitchen, but then only the room needed for the kitchen, so about 4 sq. m.), and lacks the usual attachment of a living room. That is a drawback. It is a consequence, I think, of the fact that here, students mostly eat in a mensa and use their rooms only for sleeping and studying. There is one such mensa, two minutes walking from my room, and I must say that I see why one would eat there. It has the social function of UC's Dining Hall, and the food is quite good. And, even better, it has a nice patio, with grass in the middle, trees around that, and tables around those. And it also has wireless internet...

All in all, my room and its immediate neighbourhood are not bad. This makes me all the more curious how my new room will be. The story is as follows: Heidelberg, being a small city with a big university, has a large shortage of student rooms. Large meaning the following: there are about 4 000 rooms available in student dorms, and the university has about 26 000 students. The university is not the only higher education institute in the city; all in all there are about 50 000 student places in Heidelberg's higher education sector. So, I am happy that the Akademische Auslandsamt has found me a room, from October onwards. And also one for September, but that's not the same room. The new one is in the West of the city, on a private university campus, and has, if I can believe the information on this campus' website, no kitchen, but to compensate it does have internet, and a mensa. In other words: one more year of UC-like living :). Except for the fact that I'll be studying elsewhere.

¹ A German-French interpreter once told me that the German language is much more specific, with the result that translating from German to French meant leaving out information, and translating the other way meant specifying more things. I think this also holds for other languages than French, of which this noun is an excellent demonstration; I would consider it quite obvious that in a student house, students live...

Title

Before I came here, I have been warned some three or four times, by different people, completely independently of each other, that I might lose my heart over here. I didn't quite know what those warnings were referring to, but apparently Heidelberg and the losing of hearts go together. Later, when I was trying to think of a title for my weblog, I realised that I was quite beginning to see why these two go together, and hence decided on this title.

For those of you who haven't heard of me for the past two weeks and would like to know what I've been up to: the following few posts will be devoted to that. Those who have heard from me know what to skip.
For those of you who are not that fluent in German, Dutch or English: my apologies. I mean, I will most probably frequently mix German, or Dutch, into my English, or even quote shorts bits unmixed. If you want to a translation (into whichever language of the three), comment, or e-mail or so.

Oh, and the title means '...where one loses one's heart...'.