For Your Consideration: Heidelberg

Where the Smart People Go

Reinhard Wolf, Talstraße 13, 63128 Dietzenbach., CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

For traditional newspaper folks, Heidelberg means one thing: printing presses. Sure, our hero Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press down the river in Mainz, but Heidelberg stole the technology, and its printing presses have ruled the newspaper industry for a long time. In fact, I’d bet the presses the Atlanta Journal Constitution is set to shut down in a few weeks are all Heidelbergs.

If you’re not a print nerd, you might know Heidelberg as a university town. Heidelberg University is Germany’s oldest and most prestigious school, and the university dominates the city. Students making up about a quarter of its 160,000-resident population.

Heidelberg is one of three cities that form a little cluster near the convergence of the Neckar River and the Rhine—the others in the triangle are Mannheim and Speyer. The three of them set up like a fractured fairy tale for three very different kingdoms—religious, industrial, and intellectual. With its 1000-year-old cathedral, nearby Speyer is the religious center of the region. Mannheim is industrial, and is where both the bicycle and the automobile were invented. Contrary to popular belief, the Steamroller was not invented in Mannheim.

Philosopher Walking The Planck

The university draws a large English-speaking community and makes for a very welcoming environment for American expats. It also leads to a vibrant cultural scene, with the student population drawing in major touring acts along with stoking its own arts scene. With four Max Planck Institutes based in the city, it has a particularly strong international research community. This place is so caught up in being smart, even the city’s main hiking trail is called The Philosopher’s Walk.

Heidelberg Castle—still looks better than the East Wing

But there’s much more to recommend Heidelberg than the university. For most tourists, the castle is the draw of the city. They have called writers and artists for centuries, and were a focus of the Romantic school of painters. Even Mark Twain toured it and wrote glowingly of it in A Tramp Abroad. Twain had a pretty low tolerance for bullshit, so I take his recommendation seriously. Not surprisingly, the heart of the city is its Altstadt. Heidelberg’s is busy and popular, with lots of great dining options and clubs.

Beyond the castle, Heidelberg has landscape to spare. It straddles the Neckar River and is protected on three sides by moderately sized mountains. That shelter leads to one of the warmer climates in Germany and crops such as figs and almonds grow in the area.

Heidelberg is in the Pfalz region, known by vinophiles as the Tuscany of Germany. The mix of a wealthy international community, an emphasis on local and organic agriculture, and great wine leads to a lot of fantastic dining options around the city.

So let’s take a look at the numbers.

The Scorecard

Overal Score: 4.2

Heidelberg really takes a hit based on cost of living. Renting/buying is tough in the city and not much better in the surrounding areas. Groceries, dining, etc. are also rough. Overall, it costs about 10% more to live in Heidelberg than Freiburg, the most comparable city on the list.

Song of the Week

In this era of 70s and 80s nostalgia, somehow CB radios and 18-wheeled convoys have largely been erased from our collective memories. In general, I’d endorse that erasure. But given that I made a quip about Mannheim Steamroller, I thought I’d mention that the whole CB radio phenomenon was launched into the public consciousness by the hit country single, Convoy, by CW McCall. CW McCall wasn’t a real person, but was actually a cash grab by Will Fries and his friend Chip Davis, who’d also launched his new age musical entity, Mannheim Steamroller, around the time Convoy spurred a Sam Peckinpah movie starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali McGraw.

It’s the Christmas season, so if you happen to go to a Mannheim Steamroller holiday show, be sure to hold up a lighter and shout out “Convoy” like a drunk redneck trying to get the band to play Freebird.

And speaking of cash grab, I’d really like to know what the Rhodes Scholar/musical genius behind Me and Bobby McGee and Sunday Morning Coming Down was thinking when he signed up for this role.