Rome

...is not strictly Heidelberg, so maybe it does not belong on this weblog, but it is nonetheless nice :p. To quote Reinhard, das kann man alles ruhig so lassen. It has a number of Heidelberg's qualities, but then in greater measure: nice old buildings (some so old that they have become ruins, or puintuinen), somewhat anarchistic traffic proceedings (in Heidelberg, this is limited to pedestrians and cyclists; in Rome, everyone joins); also it is in general bigger.
For those who are wondering how I came to this subject: last weekend, there was a family meeting, in Rome. My sister, younger brother and dad came from the Netherlands, my other brother from Switzerland (although his usual residence is in Canada) and I from Germany, for 'a meeting on neutral territory' in Rome. We have experienced claustrophobia on the stairs to the summit of the San Pietro, which are built into the walls of the dome, we have awed at the unparallelled art of the Renaissance masters who decorated the papal rooms and Vatican museums, wondered how the popes managed to live in such rooms, without a single quiet empty spot on the walls and ceilings, we have walked around the many vie and piazze and noticed that the Dutch are always easy to find by looking twenty centimetres above the average head height, and enjoyed the warm 'autumn', if one may call it that (there is a law in Rome forbidding people to turn on the heating before the fifteenth of November...). Also, to add a bit of human oddity, I have caught a cold over there.
In conclusion, it was nice. Now, I have to get back to studying, which can be nice, but always has the drawback of obligation to it.