Dancing and Hiking: A Weekend in Freiburg

This entry is about last weekend. I was in Hamburg for most of the past week, but I did a lot and took some good pictures last weekend, so I want to write about that first. Hopefully tomorrow I will start to cover the Hamburg trip.

Anyways, last weekend was my first real weekend in Freiburg, as there was no IES orientation trip or anything else I had to do. On Friday, I went to a discotheque with some friends, and danced until 3:30 in the morning! I had never been to a club before, and so everything, the lights, the DJing, was new and exciting. The group of people I was with decided at 11:30 to stop being the cool kids in the room, so we descended onto the empty dance floor and began the party, literally, because then everyone else came and started dancing. The DJ played hip-hop, and all but five songs or so were in English, very common for any of the music, on radio and TV, that I have heard in Germany. At least it meant we knew a lot of the words! We had to fend off the advances of some men with gelled fauxhawks and mullets, but other than that, it was a really fun night.

Saturday the weather was beautiful, so I went to the city in the afternoon and finally took some pictures. I wandered around the oldest part of the city, near Schwabentor, pictured below, one of the two reconstructed gates that lead to the old city. This part of town, like much of the inner city, is all a pedestrian zone, allowing only the street trains and bikes. The bächle, gutters carrying water diverted from the Dreisam river, run through the cobblestone streets. Most of the buildings are in an old style, giving the entire area an historic, medieval feel.

Schwabentor, bikes, and bächle

I made my way to the Münster and finally got some pictures of it in daylight. I passed a global warming protest on the way there, people carrying huge blue balloons representing daily CO2 emissions-- just another Saturday in Freiburg.

Closeup of the Münster clock

Every day there is a farmer's market in the plaza around the Münster, and it was just packing up as I got there. The steeple is under renovation for the next five years, sadly, hence the scaffolding.

The münster steeple

I am amazed at the colors of some buildings in Germany. This tiny alley is one of my favorites.

Alley by the Münster

I finished my walk at Bertoldsbrunnen (Bertold's Fountain), the center of Freiburg, where all the street train lines cross. Bertold was one of the old founders of the city. As you can see, there were a lot of people walking around, as there always are, no matter the day or time.

Bertoldsbrunnen

On Sunday, after a French toast breakfast with other IES friends who live in Littenweiler (we have done a Sunday breakfast for the past three weekends), the four of us plus another guy on the IES EU program went for an all-day hike to Schauinsland, the hausberg ("house mountain") of Freiburg. Basically, it is the largest mountain near the city, 1284 meters or 3281 feet tall. We left from Littenweiler, because about two minutes from my dorm the Sudschwarzwald nature preserve starts. The trail first ran by houses and little farms, and then into switchbacks the higher we went. There were some great views of Littenweiler along the way. We got to the top of the ridge at an 800 meter high point called Kybfelsen and had a quick lunch on a beautiful rock outcrop there. There was a great view to the south and west, and we could see down into the southern part of Freiburg.

Lunch at Kybfelsen

Sudschwarzwald

Our hike was far from over there, however, and we pressed on, going back down to a picnic area, past the occasional mountain biker and trail runner, and then going back up again on the long climb to Schauinsland. There had been some snow on the trail before, but now, as we got higher, the snow got a lot deeper. I would estimate maybe a foot and a half or so, maybe even a bit more, but it was packed snow so we could walk on top of it. The climb up was hard. The snow was slippery and the elevation change was fairly intense for the last hour or so. We finally got to the top, however, and climbed up the observation tower that was there. I had to fight my fear of heights, but I am glad I made it to the top, since it gave a great view of the surrounding area. You could see Feldberg, the mountain we went snowshoeing on three weeks ago, and lots of other peaks in the area. There was some cloud and smog, but it was still worth the three or so hour climb.

Feldberg from Schauinsland

We decided to be hardcore and hike all the way back instead of going down the gondola and catching the train. We stopped at Kybfelsen on the way back again, just as the sun was beginning to set behind a layer of cloud or smog, which made the view very different from before.

View from Kybfelsen on the way down

Going down was a lot easier, of course, and we got back just as it got dark and had a well-deserved meal at Pizza Boxx (yes, two Xs).

The weekend was a lot of fun, and I look forward to spending more of them in Freiburg to see what else the town has to offer. Look for a Hamburg update soon. Also, I hope you like the new layout.

Hiking Schlossberg and the Last Week of Language Classes

This is the last week of our language orientation classes. Today and tomorrow we take placement tests that determine which German class we take for the rest of the semester. We have also continued with our outings around Freiburg. On Tuesday we toured Breisgau Milch, a milk factory on the outskirts of town. The tour guide rambled a lot and there were too many of us to really hear what he was saying most of the time, but walking through the packaging rooms was cool. We got to see a giant machine that took in recycled bottles, cleaned them, and then sent them back out to be filled with milk. The company takes milk from famers all over the Black Forest, so it is a regional milk company. We even got a goody bag with yogurt and chocolate milk at the end. I went out for St. Patrick's day on Tuesday evening with some people, to one of two Irish pubs in Freiburg. It was crowded but fun, and I tried my first ever Irish car bomb.

On Wednesday all three IES language classes went on a hike to Schlossberg, the hill overlooking the city. We stopped at an observation area and took pictures because the elevation afforded a nice view of the surrounding area. That day was a bit hazy and the sun was in the wrong spot, so the pictures could be better, but here, finally, you can get an idea of how Freiburg looks.

The Münster is undergoing renovation, and sadly the steeple is covered in scaffolding. But you can get an idea of how dominant in the cityscape it is from this picture.
I took a panorama of Littenweiler, the area where I live. My dorm is on the left side of the picture, near the base of one of the hills there.

We ended up walking around the ridge for maybe forty minutes or so until we came to a little chapel, St. Ottilien's (or St. Odile in English). The chapel (and restaurant, this is Germany, after all, and every hike ends with a restaurant) supposedly marks the spot where Ottilien fled from her enraged father and the ground opened up for her so she could hide from him. Now a spring begins there (see right for a picture of the grotto), and its waters are said to cure eye maladies, because St. Odile is the patron saint of eye afflictions (and of the Alsace region, by the way).

Her symbol is a Bible sprouting eyeballs:
We walked down the hill and I took the train back to Littenweiler. Tomorrow I have an oral exam, and then the weekend begins!

"It's the healthy mountain air!": Sledding in the Alps

In the story Heidi, Clara goes to the Swiss Alps and recovers her health, and so did I this past weekend.

Last week I had a cold, which kept me inside for most of the week when I wasn't at class, but I decided I couldn't miss an opportunity to go to Switzerland for the first time with IES on Saturday. We drove the three hours to Grindelwald, a small town in the Swiss Alps (the Bernese Mountains, to be specific). There is a large skiing area all over the mountains around Grindelwald, so we took a gondola up to a stop called First (7,113 feet) and were given sturdy wooden sleds with metal runners. We couldn't begin our sledding from First, however, because of avalanche warnings, so we went down one spot to a place called Schreckfeld (6,414 feet, also what a great name) and were told we could sled down to Bort (5,150 feet).

I did this route a total of three times. At first, I had difficulty steering. You had to put your feet on the runners and push down in the opposite direction you wanted to turn. At higher speeds little shifts in body weight changed the direction of the sled, and at some points the trail took sudden, sharp turns and featured drops into big snow fields. We also had to cross skiiing paths at some points...my friend lost his sled down one of these tracks at one point, which was humorous in a dangerous way. I was waiting at the bottom of a turn for people to catch up when I see him running down the hill, his sled in front of him. Once you let go of a sled on the side of the mountain, it keeps sliding down a long way. Anyways, I tried to jump in front of it to stop it, but it ran over my legs and fell down into the skiing area, prompting a lot of shouts of "achtung!" from the people on the slope until it disappeared from view. We never actually found the sled.

So the first time down featured a lot of stopping and awkward braking with my feet. The trail got steeper and steeper the further down we went, running along by little mountain cabins and trees and even a little Alpine stream. The day was warm, so there were a lot of other sledders on our trail, and I heard something like 5,000 people were on the slopes that day in total. We rode the gondolla back up to Schreckfeld and went down again. Each time down got easier, and eventually I picked up speed and made it around some corners easily. I was no expert by the end, however, and still crashed a few times (luckily the snow on the sides of the trail was really deep, so any impact was soft). I never got comfortable enough to entirely let go and stop braking on the steepest parts.

Being in the Alps was wonderful. I have never been in or around mountains that high, and certainly never in winter. You could always see the giant, 12,000+ feet peaks to one side, Wetterhorn, Schreckhorn, and Eiger, complete with ice-blue glaciers.


I did end up feeling a lot better after being outside and active for most of the day, and now my cold has almost subsided. Sledding was the last weekend trip IES had planned for us, so this coming weekend I am staying in Freiburg. Next week is an IES trip to Hamburg, and then the week after that IES classes start already!

SC Freiburg Fußball Game vs. Alemannia Aachen

On Sunday I went with a few other IES students to a soccer game, SC Freiburg vs. Alemannia Aachen. Freiburg is in the Bundesliga 2, Germany's second-tier pro soccer league, but they are currently undefeated after six games, so if they continue to do well this season, they could move up to the first league. This was my first time attending a professional soccer game, and I had a lot of fun.

We stood in the cheap standing-room section behind the goal, but I still had a good view of the field, and it was fun to be close to some of the crazier fans. We got there too late to get a spot right in the middle with the guys who were beating drums and waving flags, but there were still some dedicated fans around who got really into yelling at the refs and players.

The game was exciting. Aachen tied it about halfway through and there were some tense moments, but then Freiburg scored a header in the last ten minutes to win 2-1. There were lots of great fan cheers and everyone sang the fan song at the beginning and end of the game:



The full fan song is on Youtube, if you're interested.

This week has been normal so far. I have a cold, so I have been trying to take it easy, because on Saturday we're taking another day trip with IES, this time to Grindelwald in the Swiss Alps for sledding!

Colmar and Wine-Tasting in Alsace

Yesterday we took our second IES weekend outing, this time to Colmar, a city about 45 minutes west of Freiburg in the Alsace region of France. Upon arriving by bus, we got a tour of the city. In the process I learned about Alsace, which has had an interesting history, having switched between French and German possession a few times. The people of Alsace, especially the older generation, speak in a distinct French dialect that adds in some German words and flavor. I got the impression they think themselves a bit distinct from the rest of France, if only because the rest of France has at times looked down on their peculiar dialect. The tour guide pointed out lots of shop signs made by an Alsatian artist, and he described how every sign he made not only uses the French colors (blue, red, and white) but also depicts something distinctly Alsatian, like a traditional costume, for example. You can see the women in the sign below is wearing such a costume and also the French colors in her clothing:

The old city is beautiful, with lots of half-timber houses painted in wonderful colors, cobblestone streets, old Dominican cathedrals, and delicious-looking French bakeries and patisseries. There were at least two street musicians playing the accordion, which lent a suitable and also cheesy French air to the whole place. It was also a new experience not knowing the language being spoken around me. I usually ended up panicking responding in both German and English when shopkeepers would say "merci" or "au revoir," even though I know a few basic French words. Here are a few pictures from walking around:

A typical street in the old part of Colmar

St. Martin's Church

This church had a big stork nest on its roof. Alsace's symbol is the stork, because they represent faith and happiness and also are said to bear children. To keep storks in the region, the Alsatians have been good about giving them good places to nest and also, because frogs are getting scarce, importing frozen frogs for them to eat. Some of the storks like it so much in Alsace that they stay there through the winter.

Little Venice district

We had lunch at a place called...Flunch. It was a cafeteria-style almost fast food restaurant, but it had a cheap buffet option, so we made the most of a hot lunch. We had two hours to walk around by ourselves, so we went into St. Martin's church and then got some coffee (cappucinno, probably some of the best I've ever had). The museums were all closed from 12-2, right when we had free time, so we didn't get to see the famous Isenheim Altarpiece.

After having an opportunity to walk around the city ourselves, we drove to Eguisheim, the home of Wolfberger winery. We got a brief tour of the winery but it was mainly useless except to see the giant barrels they use. Then we got to taste the wine. And by taste it I mean drink it. They gave us this almond cake called Gugelhopf, and then a lady walked out and poured us glasses from four different types of white wine, a sparkling wine, riesling, pinot gris, and a spiced wine called gewürztraminer (they are best-known for white wine in this region). No one told us a thing about what to look for or how to taste the wine...no fancy glass swirling or anything, so it basically just ended up being all of us drinking different glasses of wine. It wasn't exactly the educational experience I expected, but it was fun nonetheless.

We drove back to Freiburg, where I went out with some people to dinner and then walked around a lot with them, ending up in a bar but going home early because of the long day. I took some pictures of the Münster at night, however, since it was lit up and the moon was perfectly positioned:
Sadly, they are restoring the steeple, and will be working on it for the next five years, so the scaffolding will not be gone in my time in Freiburg. Even so, it is an impressive building.

My Room, Littenweiler, and the Past Week

First, I have created a public photo album here. I'll upload the same pictures on Facebook, too, and maybe Flickr after I edit them a bit.

This week has been consistently cold and rainy, except for a few hours Wednesday afternoon, but I didn't have my camera with me, so no city pictures yet!

I do have a picture of my room, though:

It is large with nice, big windows and IES even gives every student a TV to use (so far I have watched the Simpsons in German and a soccer game). We took a trip to IKEA last week with IES to buy things to spruce up our rooms, but I opted just to get a little desk lamp. Later on I might hang up my map of Freiburg or something, but I am fine with mostly bare walls and plain sheets for the next five months.

I live in an apartment with two other people currently, but the apartment holds five people total. The university is on semester break now, so I expect other students to move in as the month goes along. I have not really gotten to know my other suite mates too well. They keep to themselves, and I am often not home at the same time they are. There is also no common area save a tiny kitchen, so there is no real place to hang out except your own room, which doesn't help with getting to know them.

The part of town I live in is called Littenweiler; it's about three miles east of the city center. I like Littenweiler so far, though I have not yet had a chance to explore much of it. My dorm is on the campus of the Paedagogische Hochschule, or education school, and I am about a three minute walk away from a mensa, a five minute's walk away from a bakery (open on Sundays!) as well as a Deutsch Bahn train station, and a ten minute walk from a street train stop. The hills of the Black Forest are very near my dorm, and once the weather gets better I intend to explore some of the trails that lead into the forest. Here's the view from my dorm window, so you can see both the forest and how poor the weather has been for the past few days:

Normally you can easily see another row of hills/mountains behind, but it's too grey and misty these days to see that on camera!

Let me fill you in a bit on what I have been doing in the past week. Last weekend, on Friday, my housing tutor had all the IES students who live in Littenweiler over for some German food, potato salad and fleischküchle, basically delicious hamburger-like meatballs. Saturday I went snowshoeing (see my previous entry), and that night I went out to eat Italian with some other IES students and ended the night at the Freiburger Bierhaus, a venue offering over 300 varieties of beer. I tried malzbier, found it disgusting after about three sips, and then a weißbier from Frankfurt (see picture), which was very good. Sunday I played pickup ultimate with DISConnection, the Freiburg team, in a park west of the city. It was the first time really doing sports in three months, so I was tired at the end, but it was fun to play again. I haven't been able to go back to practice with them this week because I was very sore for about two days after Sunday (like...the most sore I have ever been in my life) and then too busy to sort out where to find them afterwards, but I hope to play with them again next Monday.

This week, as I mentioned in my last entry, the language courses have started. So far we've toured the city museum (see this entry if you're interested), explored a neighborhood of Freiburg called Vaubon that really deserves its own entry, and got a brief and very interesting tour of the Münster that also deserves its own entry with pictures. Today we had no field trips, which was fine with me because it was even colder and wetter out than earlier this week. I like the class a lot, both the teacher and the students. Tonight I am going out into the city again, and tomorrow we're going to Colmar, France for museums and Alsace region wine-tasting.

Freiburg, A Mini History Lesson

I have been in Freiburg now for almost a week.  This time seems like it should be longer because so much has happened in those six days.  Last week was filled with IES orientation meetings, getting to know other IES students, becoming familiar with the city and my apartment, then the IES trip to Feldberg, and this week we have started a three-week intensive German class, intended to give us a review of grammar, practice speaking German with each other, and give us more information about Freiburg.  I placed into the intermediate level class, and this is good because it will give me a review of grammar I never technically learned but also not be too easy.  My professor is a very nice, refined woman who has lived both in France and Germany.  The class is small, which allows me to get to know the people in it a bit better, and we will be taking lots of field trips within the city.

Today we learned about the history of Freiburg (as well as verb tenses, but I'll spare you).  Then we walked to the city museum and looked at paintings, models, and photographs of Freiburg throughout its history.  I found this really interesting, mainly because in America the oldest structures, aside from Native American cliff dwellings in the west and burial mounds in the east, are, say, 400 years old, at most.  Where I live, 200 years is about as old as it gets.  Freiburg was founded in 1120, so that is 889 years of history.  And the city has gone through some enormous changes in that time.  At one point the city center was surrounded by a wall with tower gates (two recreated towers still survive; my train into the city drives through one), a moat, and large earthen bastions.  This was when the city was under French occupation, but when the French left it in the hands of the Habsburgers from Austria, they tore down most of their fortifications.  Today there are a few places around the old city where you can see remains of the bastions.  The mensa (cafeteria) of the University is built on one, for example.  There was also a massive fortress on a hill overlooking the city, but apparently all that survives of that is one wall.  I found it really interesting that so much used to be there that is now almost completely gone.

The one significant exception is the Münster, the big cathedral in the center of the city.  Construction started around 1200, and it has survived since then, making it one of the oldest and best examples of gothic medieval cathedrals in Germany.  In 1944 80 percent of Freiburg was destroyed by Allied firebombing, but somehow, miraculously, the cathedral was barely touched:

The city was rebuilt to look much the same as it did before the war, and the planners then made it so that the old city center would be mostly a pedestrian zone.  So, most of downtown still maintains its medieval feel; all the streets are cobblestone, there are mosaics in lots of the sidewalks, and the buildings downtown all look like they could have been there for hundreds of years.  The city manages to do this convincingly, too, without seeming cheesy or touristy.  I really like the downtown area, there are always lots of people and bicyclers, cafes, shops, bakeries, and, of course, the Bächle, or little open rain and river water gutters running along the side of most streets downtown.

I do not have many pictures yet because I have been so busy and this week it has been grey and rainy.  I will definitely go on a walk the first sunny day that I have time, however, so you can get a better feel for the town.  I am amazed at how easily I am able to navigate around already.  The tram lines are all very clear, too.  In general I feel at home here, much earlier than I thought I would.  Tonight, for example, I cooked dinner with some friends from IES who live in the area; they are nice and I am glad that I get along with them well.  Next post I will tell you more about the area I live and give you a picture of my room, but it is getting late so I should finish up my homework (yes, homework! it's kind of fun after being out of school for so long...) and get to bed.

Snowshoeing on Feldberg

Sorry for the lack of updates. First the plug adaptor I had did not fit in the wall, and so I did not have enough battery power on my laptop to write a decent update, and in general, I have been really busy for the past few days without much time to write an update. But I don't have anything tomorrow morning, so I can stay up a little later to write.

I'll write more about the city and my apartment later, but I wanted to cover the trip we took yesterday (Saturday). IES does a good job, especially in the beginning, of taking us on weekend trips. This weekend we took the train and bus to Feldberg, the tallest mountain in Germany outside of the Alps, for some snowshoeing. It is a mountain in the Black Forest range, about 1,500 meters or almost 5,000 feet tall. It's not at all remote, however, since there's a skiing area on top, and the bus took us to the main building there where we go snowshoes. The weather was gorgeous today- blue skies and quite warm. I was soon just wearing a t-shirt as we hiked up (see picture), which felt strange because it was still very snowy on the ground. We had a guide, a park ranger of sorts. The Feldberg and the ski area are actually in a Black Forest nature preserve, so around the ski lifts it is all forested.

The hiking was initially very strenuous because we basically just walked up the side of the mountain. Having had mono and not doing any exercise for the past, oh, three months made it somewhat difficult, but the guide stopped often to talk about things like the trees and animals the nature park holds. We got to the top, or so I thought, after maybe forty minutes or so. There was an observation tower, but it was closed, sadly. The view without the observation tower was still wonderful, however. Since it was so clear, you could see the Alps rising in the south, with the rest of the Black Forest range before them, lost in cloud and mist. Our guide said views like that are somewhat rare because the mountains get a lot of moisture which usually makes it foggy or cloudy.

As I mentioned above, I thought we were at the top, but technically the highest point was about a twenty minute walk further away-- not a direct climb up, but it was more like another peak of the mountain we had to walk to. The view from there was a little anticlimactic because there is a TV tower as well as a weather station there. Like I said, we were not that remote. Still, this side provided good views of the north and east, and we could see Freiburg and its surrounding mountains.

We walked down a big slope, and by walk I mean ran/fell down. You can take these big, bounding steps in snowshoes and run down in deep snow, which was fun. We ended up at a little guest house and had lunch there-- classic German fare, sausage, bread, and onions (see left for what I had).

Then we continued our hike for an hour or so, first on a packed-down path with lots of cross country skiers and families lugging their children around in sleds. Sometimes these parents would pass me...I am normally not a fast walker, and the snowshoes didn't help, but still, I do not understand how I was that slow. The last part of the hike was actually out in deeper snow and that was fun. Snowshoes are kind of awkward, but they are great in deep snow. We made it back to the main ski lift area, returned our snowshoes, and rode the bus/train back to Freiburg. The trip was a really nice way to see what the surrounding countryside has to offer, and I hope to come back when the snow is mostly gone for some hiking without snowshoes.

(You can see the Alps in the distance in this picture)