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.