Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Philosopher's Walk

The last night I was in Heidelberg, a friend and I went and took a walk to the north side of the Neckar River. There's a walkway that runs for miles on the hills above the river called the Philosopher's Walk. There's statues of "famous" philosophers (I hadn't heard of any of them ...) and lovely views across to old Heidelberg.

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The way up was a steep incline, troubled by construction in the road. We took the "lower" path, which was still quite high, but apparently had more expansive views. Certainly, it seems any "view" of Heidelberg includes the castle.

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We also stumbled upon a little park up on the hill. We saw this fun-looking gizmo that seems to be a combination of a merry-go-round and a seesaw. The kids were having a blast on it, but I could totally see "lawsuit" written on the side of it. Wish I were younger so I could've kicked those kids off so that I could have played, and not felt bad about it!

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We had been told that there was some sort of amphitheater up the hill. Rumor had it that the Nazis used to have rallies at this amphitheater, so my friend and I were curious as to what it was. We didn't find it, but we did find this funky tower.

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We climbed up it and found a cauldron on the top. It was totally cool and filled the entire top. We were even more surprised to hear voices floating down from up inside. We couldn't see them, but some people had climbed up on top of it. They were insane, because the only way to get up there was to climb up the edge of the tower and dangle 80 feet off the ground to haul themselves up there. Wacky.

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It's funny how climbing up is always a different experience from climbing down. We didn't realize until we headed down just how high up we really were.

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Along the way, though, we saw some spectacular scenery. The following picture is perhaps my favorite picture of the entire trip. It's just so peaceful and reminds me of the remarkable serenity that I felt walking through the forest. The only thing missing? My wife on my arm.

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