Laurel Came for a Visit!

Laurel and me on top of Schlossberg

Hello, loyal readers. I am going to try this 'quick entry' thing again, because it worked out alright last time. No, my giant Rome entry isn't done yet. Honestly, until my 12 page research paper due in 12 days is done, I probably won't get it posted up here. But never fear! I will regale you with tales of my time in the Eternal City...sometime. I promise.

I did want to let you all know, quickly, how I have been in the last two weeks or so. First, I made another photo album (where you can see pretty pictures like the one to the right), with photos from the past three months or so from Freiburg and a couple day trips (Strasbourg and Heidelberg).For some reason, there are not as many pictures as I thought. Maybe because the longer I wait to put them on the internet the more picky I become. But also because I stopped taking so many pictures of Freiburg the more I got settled in actually living here. I still need to put up Rome and Munich pictures, but that will happen later.

Anyways, what's been happening with me lately? Well, Laurel, a good friend from high school, came to visit last week! This was sort of a last-minute arrangement, but I was very glad to see a familiar face. I basically decided to take a week of vacation from work and schoolwork to show her the city, and except for a few meetings and my uni class which I had to attend, it was a relaxing, pleasant break (the calm before the storm of paper-writing I am in this week and next...).

Speaking of storms in the metaphorical sense, there were a lot of storms in the literal sense in Freiburg last week. People who are native to this city say the weather is unusually bad. Despite the rain, Laurel and I still traipsed around downtown Freiburg, from the Münster to St. Martin's Gate ("Mcdonald Gate"...see the picture) and back again. We went out to dinner at Tacheles one night, home of the famed 7.50 euro schnitzel dinner, had a beer (or two...or three) at Feierlings Brewery, and enjoyed the Freiburger Winefest, which conveniently took place just as Laurel was visiting.

McDon- I mean, Martinstor

The winefest was set up on the Münster square every night for a week, and we went the first night. You paid a little bit to get a glass, and then a little bit to fill the glass from various tents representing regional wineries. This area of Germany and also eastern France is well known for white wines, so we sampled some varieties, engaged fellow festival goers (mostly older Germans) in conversation and procured recommendations from them (they were very happy to practice their English skills on us), and had some delicious flammkuchen.

On Friday afternoon, we decided to take a chance that the impending clouds in the west were not going to pour on us, and visited Strandbad, an outdoor pool very close to my room. It was a little cold for swimming, though we took a dip, but then we spent what turned out to be a pleasant, partly-sunny afternoon on the pool grounds. The storm held off until we got home, and then it hailed, a lot:

Hail on our balcony

Saturday was the 4th of July, and Laurel and I were invited out to a barbeque other IES students still in Freiburg were throwing. This was at a park west of where I live called Seepark. There were at least two other big groups of American students also out in the park celebrating the 4th. There are a lot of foreign students in Freiburg from a lot of different study abroad programs and universities. We grilled food, drank German beer, ate "Cool American" Doritos chips, tossed a frisbee, and had a nice, relaxing afternoon and evening.

I am not making this up.

On Laurel's last full day in Freiburg we climbed Schlossberg, the big hill overlooking the city, and also scaled the 30 meter observation tower at the top. It was my first time going up there, and the somewhat confusing hike was definitely worth the view. The sun was setting and the clouds were dramatic and all the walking allowed us to digest the huge döners (think Chipotle burrito, but Turkish) we had eaten for dinner. Freiburg really is situated in a beautiful region-- I sometimes forget that the hills of the Black Forest are just out of sight and rising everywhere to the east and north and south.

Littenweiler from Schlossberg

Laurel left Monday morning for her own adventures and travels beginning at Lake Konstanz, and this week I have been paying for the week of impromptu vacation I took. I have been working every day at my internship and trying to begin my university hausarbeit, or final paper. This morning I scheduled my room check out date: July 22. That's coming up soon. Time has been moving quickly in these last few weeks. I'm going to head out to the local bakery, grab a chocolate croissant (I am really going to miss German bakeries), and settle down for a full day of hausarbeit writing/reading.