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 Bergfriedhof Heidelberg | Heidelberg Cemetery

There are some sights in Heidelberg visitors will never miss: The castle and the old bridge, the famous big cask in the Heidelberg castle. Maybe they'll walk the "Philosophenweg", a street opposite the castle with the best view at Heidelberg's picturesque downtown.There are several other interesting places at Heidelberg to visit if one has more than a day to spend there. I will present some of them in loose order in this blog.

One of my favourite places in Heidelberg is Bergfriedhof Heidelberg.

The cemetery was created by landscape gardener Johann Metzger in 1842. It is located at the foot of "Königsstuhl" mountain, where parts of Heidelberg Altstadt (Heidelberg downtown) are located. Metzger seamlessly fit the 18 ha cemetery in it's natural surrounding, so it is similar to a park and one part of "romantic Heidelberg" - accentuated by mature trees at the older part of the area. Since 1844, when the cemetery was officially opened, a lot of famous people have been buried there. Some of them: politician Friedrich Ebert, conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler, chemist Robert Bunsen, politician and sociologist Max Weber or poet Hilde Domin. Part of Bergfriedhof is a jewish cemetery, which is still in use, just like the rest of the burial site.

Visit the Bergfriedhof Heidelberg photo gallery at
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Bier PhotoIf you travel through Germany, you'll soon find out that most restaurants and pubs are connected to one single brewery. This is typical because the pubs usually have an exclusive contract with the specific brewery.

You should know - probably you travelled exactly for that reason to Germany - that the beer brewing tradition is one of the main accomplishments of German food culture (besides baking, tart making and sausage production). The oldest, still existing brewery in the world ist the "Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan" where beer is produced since 1040 (!) and the oldest monastic brewery is running since 1050 at Kloster Weltenburg at Kelheim.

In Heidelberg, the brewery tradition is not that old-established. At the beginning of the 19th century 38 breweries in the city, most of them very small ones, supplied the local citizens with "hop juice" ("Gerstensaft" and "Hopfentee" are non-official terms but nevertheless understood by every waitress - as a tourist you'll deeply impress them with your fine sense for the German language ;-))

At the begin of the 20th century only two of them remained "Engel-Bräu" and "Heidelberger Schloßquell", of which only "Schloßquell" has survived to the present day.

"Schloßquell" derives from "Schloß" = the famous Heidelberg castle and "Quell" = spring / well. One nickname for Schloßquell is "Schloßqual" and "Qual" = torture.

Unfortunately Schloßquell is IMHO and in the opinion of most of my fellow beer drinking fellows a middle class beer, in the best case. This is not really a warning, you should give it your own try! And if nobody would like it - hey, they would have been vanished from the market.

Some other local breweries around Heidelberg are Welde (they offer their beer in stylish bottles but the quality is also not really outstanding), Palmbräu (recently bought by Welde, the future is uncertain / their "Unser Bestes" (Our Best) is quite good but the standard brew you'll usually get in the pubs is also more or less middle class). "Dachsenfranz" is a special beer from a small brewery in the nearby little village of Zuzenhausen. If you can find it, try it!

Beer afficionados should definitely try the microbrewery stuff of "Vetter's" Steingasse 9 or "Kulturbrauerei" Leyergasse 6 - both located in downtown.

The main brewery of nearby located Mannheim is "Eichbaum". As most of the breweries, which have become too big, the output of Eichbaum tastes actually like mass production. But this is - as all the verdicts in this article - my personal opinion and taste.

If you're more interested in tasting really great beer look for "Rothaus" or "Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu" - they might be not so easy to find because the breweries are located in the black forrest, 200-300 km away - but they are definitively worth searching for. Cheers!

Archie-Shepp-Enjoy-Jazz-2007-Schindelbeck

Das kulturelle Ereignis im Herbst in Heidelberg, Mannheim und Ludwigshafen hat am 2.10. begonnen: Enjoy Jazz 2007

Beim Jazzblogger wird laufend über das Festival berichtet - aktuell ist der Beitrag über das Eröffnungskonzert von Archie Shepp. In der Sendung Jazzology, im Freien Radio Rhein-Neckar bermuda.funk wird ebenfalls laufend berichtet, jeden Montag ab 21 Uhr auf 89,6 MHz (Mannheim, Ludwigshafen) und 105,4 (Heidelberg und Umgebung).

Print Media Academy Photo Schindelbeck

Die Kollegen vom DJV hatten zum Kongress mit dem Thema "Ethik 2.0 - Schöne neue Online-Welt" in die Print Media Factory in Heidelberg geladen. Das Programm war wohl eher für Internet-Laien gedacht und der Workshop mit Björn Sievers von Focus und Oliver Reuter von SWR3 zum Thema "Neues aus der Webpraxis" brachte außer bahnbrechenden Neuigkeiten wie, daß die Navigation derzeit quer oben zu liegen hat, Banner oben rechts rein gar nichts bringen und bei Focus Online die ganzen - ach so hippen - Web 2.0 Spielchen: Leser-Foto-Online Galerien, individuelle Startseiten und ganz viel direktes Leser-Feedback eine bedeutende Rolle spielen, eher wenig. Allerdings erfuhren die beiden Referenten von ihrem vertretungsbedingten Referenten-Glück erst sehr kurzfristig und damit kein Vorwurf an sie - was hätten sie schon tun können, als von den aktuellsten Infos zu ihren Websites zu erzählen?

Immerhin wurde aus erster Hand die bittere Wahrheit bestätigt , daß Paris Hilton Fotostrecken allemal mehr Traffic generieren als jede Politikmeldung. Im Web nichts wirklich Neues - Web 2.0 ist Web 1.0 nur ist es inzwischen so einfach, daß es jeder nutzen kann ;-) Und aus diesem Grund gewinnen die Community Websites erschreckend an Boden.