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Heidelberger Herbst

30 September 2001

Heidelberger Herbst (Herbst = autumn) is a huge street festival in the last weekend of September in Heidelberg. It's the biggest festival in Heidelberg and most of it takes place on Saturday. It seemed like the entire old part of city was filled with vendors. The entire length of the main street through town was filled with vendors and thousands and thousands of people. The side streets were filled with flea market tables and more thousands and thousands of people. The biggest squares had stages sponsored by various radio stations and there were bands all over. I tried to walk down a side street where there are a lot of student pubs around 8 pm and it was wall to wall people, outside wall to outside wall in the tiny street. I gave up, shoved my way back through, and went down a side street to get to the next street over to go that way. There were a lot food vendors and probably everything small enough to carry was being sold somewhere. I tried mead, both cold and hot, and new wine. The Universitätsplatz had this whole medieval theme going, which was where they were selling mead. Around there, there were stands selling spices, candles, medieval clothes (pretty but too expensive), handmade brushes, toys, and all kinds of "medieval"-y stuff - lots of leather and fur. One of the traditional foods was Zwiebelkuchen (a kind of onion quiche, I think), but it had meat in it, so I didn't get to try that. There was also tons of wurst and several roasting pigs. Yech.

I wandered around the flea market in the morning and walked the entire length of the main street. There were so many people that I didn't get to see lots of the booths unless I stopped and cut across the street right and left. I hit my crowd tolerance and then walked to a home depot-like store to buy a few bike tools for the bike I bought last week. Last Thursday, I went to the nearest bike store, which I somehow missed in my tour of Heidelberg bike stores a week ago, and asked if they had any used bikes. (It amazes me how my grammar falls apart with sales people. My pronunciation goes to hell and my adjective endings and word order are more often wrong than not.) It turned out that they'd gotten a small men's bike the day before. I bought it right then, overjoyed to have found a small enough bike which seems to be in good condition. They told me that students come in all the time asking for used bikes and that they vanish quickly, so I'm lucky that I went when I did. I'm contemplating replacing the handlebars and the seat, but it's not crucial at all. I haven't ridden around much yet, but I'm going to go for a test ride tomorrow. Hopefully I won't break down in the middle of nowhere. The population density here is high enough that there's not tons of nowhere, though.

There were stages all over the place with bands. I never hung out around the stages, but a walked by a lot and all of the groups sounded really good. We spent the most time in the evening around the medieval section, where they had a kind of new age "medieval" band, a mixture of old and new instruments and traditional sounding songs. It was interesting.

I met up with a bunch of people from my language class in the evening and we struggled to keep our group of seven together in the crowds. It was not easy. Around midnight, the music was over, we were walking down the main street, and it was often solid people between the outside walls which are a good 25-30 feet apart. We stopped in front of the McDonalds for some people to run into the bathroom and almost ended up in the middle of a fight, which luckily didn't last long. Then we managed to find a table a cafe/bar just outside of the old part of the city and hung out until 2 or so. By the end of the night, the streets were fairly empty, but covered in trash and broken glass. As one of the guys pointed out, people partying in a different city don't have the same respect for it as the inhabitants because they're just leaving the next day anyway. I was amazed at how clean it was today.

The medieval square was still going today, so we hung out there for a while. It's cool to talk to people who are from so many different countries. The other people I know in my dorm are from the US, but the people from my class are from all over. It's cool, but I'd like to meet some real Germans, too. Hopefully when the semester starts...

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