On Saturday we all took the bus downtown for a tour of Heidelberg University with a wonderfully hilarious guide named Mrs. Sweeney. Heidelberg is one of the oldest universities; Martin Luther visited there in 1519. It currently has a student population of 30,000. One of the sites we saw was the old student prison used for punishing those who violated university policy. The prison was located above the caretaker's house and had bars on the windows, and it was closed in 1917 to prepare to war. Most of the streets surrounding the university were called alleys, except one. Three kings street was originally named Jew's Alley, but no one would live there due to the stigma of the name, so it was changed at the end of the eighteenth century. During our tour we visited the childhood home of the first German president, President Ebert, who took office in 1919 after World War I. He is known for signing the treaty of Versailles. At the end of the tour, we made our way to a microbrewery called Brauhaus Vetter for a traditional German lunch before heading to our next presentation.
We met our next presenter in the classroom of a satellite university nearby. His name was Professor Timo Goeschl and he was a faculty member of the Department of Economics at University of Heidelberg who had come to talk to us about the environment and technology. His focus was on the green race: the race to be the first to develop a green technology that can lower emission without increasing marginal costs to businesses or consumers because without innovation, people would have to reduce consumption by 50-80% in order to reduce future expected carbon emissions. Green research development first started in 1970s with rising oil prices. Germany, the United States, and Japan are the largest environmental innovators with the largest increases in environmental patent applications since 1995. Whoever is the first to develop economically efficient green technology will have a monopoly on the market.
We had free time after the presentation, but unfortunately it was raining. A few of us ventured downtown for dinner. Nearly everything was closed, but we found an American style restaurant where I had a Curryworst. It is apparently a pretty popular dish in Germany that is a combination of hotdog, barbeque sauce, and curry powder, and it was surprisingly good. After dinner, we went back to hang out at the hotel for a while before heading back downtown to go dancing/bar hopping.
Peace, Love, and Heidelberg! ~ Naomi
Pictures of the Day
Heidelberg University
University Library
Student prison with bars on the windows
Student prison wall sign
Three Kings Street, formerly known as Jew's Alley
Ebert poster
Tiny doorway inside Ebert's childhood home
Markings of the flood levels of all the time Heidelberg's flooded
On the bridge with a castle in the background
With our tour guide Mrs. Sweeney
The brewery was decorated with hops. Even a hops chandelier in the corner!
Dessert!
American satellite school in Heidelberg where we had our energy presentation
Curryworst dinner
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