It's that time of week again - updates from the increasingly cold country that is Germany. It's actually amazing what a difference a few weeks can make - I remember looking across at my weather widget, and feeling quite happy that Germany was at least on par with Sydney's temperatures. Looking at it now though it's a completely different picture, with Sydney having really quite reasonable temperatures, and the temperatures in Heidelberg just dropping like a stone. I'm going to have to bring out the thermal stuff soon, and I'm not too happy about it, since I'm acknowledging that winter is actually about to arrive.

I spent my Saturday basking in the late summer weather around Speyer, which is a town just north of Heidelberg. It's known for its old cathedral, and is a nice place to check out - there was some good weather and light, so I managed to take a few snaps around there which I'm quite proud of. One thing about Speyer is that they've got this great big bowl outside the cathedral, which is filled with wine whenever a new bishop comes in. The current bishop is about 80 now, so apparently everyone is hanging out for the new guy to come in, so that they can get some free wine. We've been told to drop everything and come up to Speyer to get in on the action.

After coming back from Speyer, I headed down to the Heidelberger Herbst festival, which is actually a celebration of the beginning of Autumn. One of the autumn specialties is the Neue Wein, which is basically wine which hasn't fully fermented. I'm not too sure about it, since it tastes a bit too much like an alco-pop to me, but I wasn't going to be the one to be a spoilsport. The entire town was packed that evening - there were apparently about 100,000 people in the old city across the period of the entire day. I'd say there were about 10 thousand people in the city in the evening though, and it was nice to be able to sit outside one last time and drink some of the tasty brews. Once it gets a bit colder, I'll have to be drinking the Glüh wein.

After getting up a little later than normal, and feeling mighty fragile, I headed down to the station to meet up with Shaunak and Devang, who had come from London to spend the afternoon in Heidelberg. I used them to try out my new routine as tour guide for Heidelberg, but I quickly realised that I didn't really know much about the town. That will teach me for not studying up beforehand. One thing I definitely didn't know about was the renaissance fair that is on in the old towns on some Sundays. It's really cool, as you've got all these people walking around with swords and stuff, crazy folk-singers, bohemian types, and these old women dressed like witches. If you click on the picture of the witches, you can see the rest of the photos from our afternoon in Heidelberg and my trip to Speyer (Keep going to next photo to see them in some kind of order). I'm especially grateful to my uncle who went the extra mile and ground up some Tea masala for me, and along with the Indian savouries that came along with the guys, I can now have some proper tea and ghatia for breakfast.