Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The Black Forest (Germany #17)

HEIDELBERG--Suddenly stricken by a bronchial virus, I took to my hotel bed for two hours in the afternoon, regrettably missing a guided tour of the baroque old town, which is dominated by the ruins of Heidelberg Castle on steep wooded slopes high above the River Neckar. The castle, a popular tourist attraction surrounded by a park, is a mix of styles from Gothic to Renaissance. An old stone bridge (erected 1786-88) and medieval bridge gate were originally part of the town wall.
Located in south-west Germany in the Rhine Rift Valley, Heidelberg (pop.145,000) occupies mainly the left river bank and is bordered by mountains. It’s among the warmest regions of Germany, with plants atypical of central Europe, including almond and fig trees. It’s an historic city, as well. The University of Heidelberg played a leading part in the era of humanism and reformation in the 15th and 16th centuries. Heidelberg's library, founded in 1421, is the oldest public library in Germany still intact.
From 1933–1945, Heidelberg was a stronghold of the Nazi regime. Non-Aryan university staff were discriminated against. By 1939, one-third had been forced out for racial and political reasons. During Kristallnacht (9 November 1938), Nazis burned down two synagogues and started systematically deporting Jews; 150 were sent to Dachau concentration camp, and thousands of others followed.
On 30 March 1945, the civilian population surrendered to the U.S. Army without resistance. Historians believe Heidelberg escaped bombing in WWII because it was neither an industrial center nor a transport hub, and America wanted to use the city as a garrison after the war (we’ve had a military base here since 1951).
On our second day here, I’d recovered sufficiently to take part in a trip to the Black Forest, a wooded mountain range in southwestern Germany bordered by the Rhine valley. It was a long drive, made longer by traffic congestion and fog that hid the high peaks and scenic hills. It was so named by the Romans because its dense growth of conifers blocked out most of the light inside the forest. Today, the Black Forest mostly consists of pines and firs, some of which are grown commercially. Due to mass logging and land use changes, it’s only a fraction of its original size. And in 1999, a cyclone downed trees on hundreds of acres of mountaintops, leaving some bare.
On a happier note, we had a fabulous lunch at an inn that included the famous Black Forest cake, which of course is made with chocolate cake, cream, sour cherries, and Kirsch.
On the way back to Heidelberg, I visited Kloster Alpirsbach, a Benedictine monastery magnificent in its starkness. Now a protestant church, it nonetheless has a Catholic church attached to it; a reminder of the days when if your prince changed his religion, everyone did. Monks began brewing beer there in 1095. A yeasty aroma in the air--and a sign on the brewery next door proclaiming theirs the “World’s greatest beer”--indicated that the beer-making tradition remains.
In the evening, we dined at a 350-year-old “romantik hotel” in the wine-growing region, where the vineyards grow on nearly vertical mountain slopes and all work must be done by hand because mechanized farm equipment can’t get up there.

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