Heidelberg

Introduction

Heidelberg Alt Stadt

© nikio

Heidelberg is a city in Baden-Württemberg, in the central southwestern corner of Germany. Located just over 100m above sea level along the Neckar River, it has about 150,000 inhabitants and is a popular touristic place.

Neighbourhoods

Heidelberg consists of six sectors with a total of fourteen districts:

• Central area: Altstadt, Bergheim, and Weststadt.
• North: Neuenheim and Handschuhsheim.
• East: Ziegelhausen and Schlierbach.
• South: Südstadt, Rohrbach, Emmertsgrund, and Boxberg.
• Southwest: Kirchheim.
• West are Bahnstadt, Pfaffengrund, and Wieblingen.

Sights and Activities

• The old town (Altstadt)
• The Heidelberg Castle, 80m above the old town
• The University (see below for link) is one of the oldest functioning educational institutions in Europe, dating back to 1386
• Church of the Holy Spirit
• Church of the Jesuit's
• Providence Church
• St. Peter's Church

Events and Festivals

• Heidelberger Castle Festival - July/August
• Ball of the Vampires - February, Carnival
• Classic Music Festival - March/April
• Half marathon - last weekend April
• Frühlingsmesse on the Messplatz - May
• Heidelberger Schlossbeleuchtung fireworks display - June, July and September
• Old Town Autumn Festival - last weekend September
• Heidelberger Theater Days - October/November
• International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg - November

Weather

Heidelberg has relatively warm summers and winters which are still relatively mild, though snow and frost is certainly quite common. Summer temperatures from June to early September are generally around 25 °C while nights are around 15 °C or a little lower. Winters last from December to February when temperatures are above zero during the day, with nights around or just below zero.
Precipitation is quite evenly distributed throughout the year, though May/June and November/December tend to be just a little wetter. Most months see about 60-70mm of rain/snow, June almost 90mm. March and September are driest, around 50mm.

Getting There

By Plane

Although Heidelberg doesn't have its own airport, there are three other options nearby: Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden.

• Baden Airpark is located some 40 kilometres from Karlsruhe and just 12 kilometres from Baden-Baden. It's mainly served by lowcostairlines, like Ryanair which flies to/from Alicante, Cagliari, Dublin, Girona, London, Porto, Rome and Stockholm.
• Stuttgart Airport offers a wide range of flights. Although there is only one runway, it's the major hub for German based lowcost airlines German Wings and TuiFly. Together they form the bulk of arriving and departing flights, with connections throughout Europe and the north of Africa mainly. A few destinations include Moscow, London, Agadir, Funchal, Barcelona, Reykjavik, Madrid, Rome, Luxor, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Palma de Mallorca, Vienna, Warsaw, Thessaloniki and Lisbon. KLM has regular flights to Amsterdam and other destinations with airlines include Atlanta, Helsinki, Paris, Tel Aviv, Copenhagen and Malta.
• Frankfurt is Germany's main International Airport. Flughafen Frankfurt am Main (IATA: FRA) is found at 12 Kilometres from the city centre, and receives flights from almost all national and countless international destinations. Among others, Frankfurt is the primary hub of German national carrier Lufthansa. The Lufthansa Airport Bus links Frankfurt Airport with Heidelberg almost hourly. It takes about 75 minutes one way.
• Although located 120 km from Frankfurt, the Frankfurt-Hahn Airport (HHN) can be of some significance if you want to have more choices regarding lowcostairlines. Ryanair is the main operator with flights to/from Alghero, Alicante, Bari, Berlin, Birmingham, Bologna, Bratislava, Cagliari, Carcassonne, Dublin, Edinburgh, Faro, Féz, Gdańsk, Girona, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Jerez de la Frontera, Kaunas, Kerry, Klagenfurt, Lanzarote, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, London, Lübeck, Madrid, Málaga, Manchester, Marrakech, Milan, Montpellier, Osijek, Oslo, Palma de Mallorca, Pescara, Pisa, Porto, Prague, Reus, Riga, Rimini, Rome, Santander, Santiago de Compostela, Seville, Stockholm, Tampere, Tenerife, Trapani, Valencia, Venice, Wroclaw and Zadar.

By Train

Deutsche Bahn (DB) has frequent trains to Baden-Baden (1 hour), Frankfurt (1 hour) and Stuttgart (40 minutes).

By Car

Heidelberg is located just east along the A5 highway from Frankfurt to Karlsruhe.

Getting Around

By Car

Parking is expensive, €1.50 an hour, €16 per day!

By Public Transport

Tram 5 links the Hauptbahnhof with Bismarckplatz and buses 11, 21, 33, 34, 41 and 42, as well as tram 1, run between Bismarckplatz and the Hauptbahnhof. Buses 11 and 33 go directly from the Hauptbahnhof to Neckarmuntzplatz.

By Foot

Much of Heidelberg is easily explored on foot.

By Bike

Eldorado offers bike-rentals.

Eat

• Wirtshaus "zum Seppl" - The oldest student "Wirtshaus" in Heidelberg. Dating back to the late 17. century this place has kept its former charm. The food is also very traditional and homebrewed beer is also available. Although there are not so many dishes to choose from, they are all prepared with fresh ingredients and offer the real taste of traditional german cuisine. Address: Hauptstraße 213, 69117 Heidelberg, Phone: +49 (0) 6221 23085, Hours: Tuesday - Saturday from 5:00pm, Price: average

Sleep

You can use the form below to search for availability (Travellerspoint receives a commission for bookings made through the form)

Learn

• University of Heidelberg
• Heidelberg American High School

Keep Connected

Internet

Internet cafes (rates €1.50 to €5 per hour) are starting to become less common due to widespread offers of free wifi by shops, restaurants or cafes. Sometimes it requires minimum consumption but usually it's free within the premises. Phone shops will often offer internet access, too. In general hotels offer internet access. In several cities, projects exist to provide free "community" hotspots for wireless networking. Passenger lounges at some airports and central railway stations also provide internet access to their customers.

Several pre-paid SIMs allow Internet access for a monthly flat fee, for example those available at Tchibo coffee stores (o2 network, €10/month limited to 500 MB, €20/month for 5 GB) or Aldi (E-Plus network). A regular O2 sim card, which can be used for calls and text messages, is €15 and another €15 buys 1GB of data valid for 1 month. Vodafone offers a prepaid sim card for €25 which includes €22.5 of credit, out of which you can get 300 MB of data for 2 days for €15 and be left with €7.5 of credit.

Phone

See also: International Telephone Calls

The international call prefix in Germany is 00. To dial out of Germany, dial 00, followed by country code, area code, and the telephone number (for example 00 44 1234 567890). If you're using a mobile phone, simply add the plus sign "+" before the country code to call out of Germany (for example +44 1234 567890). The general emergency number is 112 and the additional number for less emergent issues for police is 110.

Mobile phone coverage on the four networks (T-Mobile, Vodafone, E-Plus and o2) is excellent across the whole country. UMTS (3G data and HSDPA) and EDGE is also available. UMTS is still somewhat limited to urban areas. All mobile providers use GSM technology on the 900 and 1800 MHz frequency ranges. If you stay for a longer period of time, consider buying a prepaid phone card from one of the mobile phone companies; you won't have trouble finding a T-Mobile (in a "T-Punkt"), Vodafone, E-Plus or O2 store in any major shopping area. In most supermarket chains (for example ALDI), there are prepaid SIM cards from their own virtual providers available. These are normally quite cheap to buy, but expensive for international calls (around €1–2/min), but incoming calls are always free and SMS cost around €0.09–0.19. They are available at: Aldi, Lidl, Penny, Netto, Tchibo, Rewe, toom. A registration via Internet or (expensive) phone call is necessary after buying to activate the SIM card.

The cheapest way to call abroad from Germany is to use the internet cafés run by immigrants. They sell special calling cards that give the best rate to certain countries as well as offer cheap international calls from phone booths. It is also the cheapest way to call landlines in Germany.

Post

Germany's postal system is very efficient, their logistics branch DHL is one of the best companies in this field world-wide, with domestic post or within a radius of 400 kilometres, send within a day. The website of Deutsche Post has an online calculator for postage fees as well as a post office finder. Stamps are available at post offices and sometimes at newsagents or shops selling postcards. Also stamp vending machines can be found at a lot of places around the cities. You can purchase every stamp you need from this machines. They are unique as they accept every coin from 1 cent to 2 euro but change is only given in stamps. It costs about €40 to send a small package to Australia and €1.70 to send an old-fashioned letter to any place in the world outside of Europe. Within Germany, sending postcards costs €0.45 and standard letters €0.55, within Europe it is €0.65 for a postcard, standard letters to places in Europe cost €0.75. Outside Europe, the prices for sending a postcard or standard letter are €1 and €1.70 respectively. Although you will find the old post offices (mainly in the city centre), most of the smaller neighbourhood post offices are part of a small tobacco shop or grocery store. For larger package, you might consider competitive private companies like UPS, DHL or TNT.

External Links

• Official Governmental Website
• Official Tourism Website