Heidelberg, Germany.

I had a long weekend, so I visited a friend in Heidelberg, Germany. (She's an American studying abroad there for a year.) I stayed for three days and saw some cool things and some beautiful things.

Heidelberg is a relatively small city. It doesn't have tons of big attractions to go see. Rather, I get the impression that it's the kind of city where you just go explore and see what little wonders you can find. So that's exactly what I did. This is what I found:

We climbed up a big hill with lots of pretty autumn trees. I can't remember if we got to the top, but this is what our view was like:

I really really like that bridge. It looks like it comes straight out of an Impressionist painting. By the way, the river in Heidelberg probably has a name, but my friend and I called it the Slurpy river, on account of the sound it was making while we were walking along it one night.

The highlight of my trip was seeing the student jail. Heidelberg is a major university city in Germany, and back in olden tymes the university had legal jurisdiction over its students. When the students broke the rules, they would sometimes be put in the jail. Eventually it became a rite of passage for the students, and they would harass officers or behave rowdily, with the specific intention of going to jail for a few days. Nowadays, the jail is open to the public. Graffiti have accumulated over the centuries; it's really quite a sight.

I don't know German, so I couldn't read the graffiti. My friend, who does know German, told me that a lot of what we were seeing was really weird poems.

I leave you with another photo of the majestic Slurpy: