Freiburg

We've been in Freiburg for two days now, and are thoroughly enamoured with this city. The vibe is a mix of Asheville, NC, and Portland, OR, with maybe a little Berkeley, CA, tossed in. Freiburg is grungier than Munich, but in a welcome, earthy way. Elias and I have spent two entire afternoons at the Stadt Park near the old city center and have heard people speaking German, English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Russian. The park is the hangout for laid back jam-sessioning musicians, shirtless young men tightrope walking, aging hippies with more blond dreadlocks than clothes, college student frisbee players, bicyclists, strollers, joggers, and to Elias's great delight, lots and lots of kids of all ages. As afternoon merges into evening, the park fills up with more and more people, but it hasn't felt too crowded yet.

I took the photo above (the Vodafone gods are smiling upon our internet connection tonight!) on Sunday evening, so the square around the Muenster was relatively empty. Check out all those cobblestones! The Altstadt streets and sidewalks are paved with stones, many of them arranged into mosaic designs (mostly white borders, but also pictures of faces, coats-of-arms, and scissors). There are also small canals running along many of the streets. The canals are much like the ones I saw in Malaysia when I visited my parents there in 1990, except they're shallower, paved in cobblestones, and not filled with stinky garbage. Yesterday, as Elias was hopping back and forth over one of the canals, I predicted out loud that he would fall in a canal at least once before December. He managed to check that off the list about 10 minutes later, pretty surprised and pretty drenched by his tumble.

We hadn't planned on visiting the square today, but while Elias and I were climbing up and down the Schlossberg this morning (a big hill near the park, with a lookout tower on top), we heard bagpipe music wafting up from the old city. After a month of Lederhosen, I wanted to see kilts, so we walked over to the square after our hike and found--lo!--no bagpipers, but a gigantic farmers market with meter after meter of fruits, veggies, cheeses, breads, meats, jams and honey, wooden shortbread cookie forms, handwoven baskets, jewelry, etc. I guess the sound that farmer's market sirens make to lure wayward travellers to their financial doom is bagpipe music.

And speaking of music, this evening we enjoyed an organ concert at the Muenster: Zuzana M.-Maria Ferjenčiková, from Wien. We were too cheap to buy a program, but I could identify Bach (Aus tiefer Not), Mendelssohn (Sonata No. 4), Schumann (Six canons in the form of an Etude), and Liszt (something with a lot of B-A-C-H). Virtuosic playing, but the Muenster organ makes me appreciate how good the organs at Duke Chapel are.

Other signs that this is going to be a great place to live: tons of bicyclists everywhere; and clean public restrooms. Would you believe the public restrooms in the Stadt Park have a toilet brush in every stall?