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!