Tsang's RISE Trip

Heidelberg

Heidelburg is a beautiful student town in a valley, situated along the Neckar River and overlooked by an old majestic castle. It is home to Germany's oldest university and is one of the nicest towns I have been in so far. It was also the site of the RISE Meeting of Scholar's sponsored by DAAD where participants from all over Germany converged onto this small university town to meet and greet each other and share our experiences.

The majority of the Dortmund group (minus Reed and Sasan) left at 9:38am Thursday morning and ~4 hours later, we arrived in Heidelburg after a quick changeover in Manheim (I think...I don't remember). We ran into other students from neighbouring towns and caught the bus to our Jurgenburger (Youth Hostel). It was a really nice modern building with a pretty decent sized cafeteria. After checking in, we sat through several lectures illustrating how RISE has expanded and grown over the past year and how important it was for us to be there and to spread the word back home.

Thursday night, Ozel (Queen's 06) took us on a tour of Heidelberg's student night life which included a stop at a place for one of the largest absinthe bars in Western Europe as well as a bar which served 33% (probably more like 13%) beer which had the viscosity of molasses.

Highlights of the trip for me would be the excursion to the castle, the actual tour of the Merck manufacturing facilities, jumping off a 40 foot dive platform 5 times (this was a serious rush), a nighttime trip back to the castle to hang out in on the castle gardens, going on a walking tour of Heidelberg, taking the philosopher's path and walking up the hill to get a better view of the city, and dipping my feet into the Neckar waiting for the time to pass. That's about it. I do wish I had more time to check out the other places such as the student prison and some of the bars with live music, but overall, it was a great trip. I've thrown in some of the nicer photos that I like from Heidelburg.

posted by ktsang @ 4:27 PM