After dropping Elias off this morning, I walked through the Altstadt and across the Dreisam river to the Freiburg public authorities office and Ausländerbehörde (Aliens Authority). I had tried to visit the office yesterday afternoon, but forgot that in Germany, the day you decide to visit a government office is the day the office closes at 12pm. Because we're living here more than three months, both Elias and I need to apply for visas. Our family also needs to register with the city--even Germans need to do that--so that the city knows we're here and so we can get our garbage collection sticker.
Germans take garbage and recycling very seriously--so seriously that there's very little actual garbage. Paper and cardboard go into one container, glass bottles into another, biodegradable food waste into a third, and all packaging materials (plastic containers, cans, foil lids, etc.) into the "gelbe Sack" (yellow sack). What's left is Restmuell. We share Restmuell space with another tenant in our apartment building; our combined monthly allotment is about two cubic feet. That's not a lot of garbage. The gelbe Sacks, however, fill up fast, so we need that sticker.
After speaking with a friendly woman at the Ausländerbehörde, I made a visa application appointment for September and collected a stack of forms to fill out in the meantime. On my way home, I visited the farmer's market at the cathedral. Locally grown produce is sold on the north side; local and international produce and goods are sold on the south side.Daily markets facilitate daily shopping. Germans go grocery shopping more often than Americans, in part because the daily shopping habit developed when most households included a stay-at-home wife, and also because most refrigerator-freezers are only about three feet tall. My new rule for buying food: if the backpack is full, the fridge will be full. Also, a kilo of green beans is a heckuva lot of green beans.
Last night, our landlord, Frau H.--a retired Gymnasium English and French teacher and a trained tour guide--took us on a tour of the Altstadt, so thanks to her I know the Muenster has been a market site for at least 700 years. The west tower was completed in 1330; carved into its base are records of the size of a loaf of bread in AD MCCLXX (1270), AD MCCCXVII (1317), and AD MCCCXX (1320). Want to make sure you're getting your money's worth? Hold your loaf up to the loaf outline carved into the Muenster stone. (Click on the photo for a larger image. I don't know if the three white circles are graffiti or other bread records.)
Frau H. also pointed out the very rude gargoyle on the south side of the Muenster. Seems the stonemason was displeased with his pay, so he arranged to have the bishop's house permanently mooned.
2 comments:
Too good!
REGISTERing with the authorities: then no more hassles with registering to vote, decennial censuses, less cheating on social and welfare payments,... BTW, most/many(?) European countries with the notable exception of Gr.Britain have similar registration requirements
GRAFITTI: Some German visitors remarked about the almost grafitti free Madison (really?). When we asked a German prof.-teacher couple "why not catch these 'artists' and make them clean up their mess?", they rejected that as too much of a danger to personal expression and freedom.
GARBAGE collection: Whenever I am in Freiburg I shake my head about the tedious and onerous procedures the city imposes on its residents.
For example: In a 2 unit house each party has a barrel for waste/Restmuell. Since each party consists of just 1 person, the space in the 4 foot barrel is reduced to 1 foot at the top, and both guard their 1 foot square allotment jealously. So 2 barrels crowd a narrow space at the side of the house where 1 would be fine... And let's not observe the hassles people have to go thru to get rid of their little bit of shrub clippings and other waste from their typically tiny gardens.
I think the city of Freiburg administration needs a lesson on cost benefit analysis applied to garbage collection.
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