Getting lost

Last night, I got out my list of formal-you pronouns and phoned Herr Professor D. at his private number to talk about organ lessons. Even with the list, I panicked under the pressure of declining formal-you-accusative (Sie) and formal-you-dative (Ihnen), but deftly recovered by avoiding all sentences that required either. It was a pleasant conversation, and hopefully I will be back in the organ swing of things by the time we meet in person in September.

With little to do today between dropping Elias off and picking him up, I decided to figure out a new running route. My friend Robin has observed that running is a great way to get to know a new place. To that, I'll add, so is getting lost, which I'm quite adept at in Germany despite my Garmin GPS toy.

One of the many lovely things about our neighborhood is that you can be halfway up a small mountain and in the middle of the woods within about a fifteen minute hike. I carefully studied my city map before setting off and planned a mostly flat, 4-mile jogging loop. I hiked up to the fitness trail in the woods, and double checked the map posted there (which says, sunnily, "Exercising twice weekly makes you fit!"--an odd piece of advice for anyone with the energy to hike to the trail in the first place).

There are many more trails in the woods than are shown on the maps, and at one three-way intersection with five trail signs pointing in four different directions, I took the far left rather than the near one and zig-zagged a few miles down the other side of the hill, finally emerging near the University Sports Complex, considerably farther from home than planned. Fortunately, Freiburg is filled with helpful landmarks, including the Dreisam river, which I followed back into town. The path along the river is beautiful, with babbling brook, weeping willows, grassy playgrounds (one with a zip line!), gorgeous tall houses (think Chicago brownstones with a European flair), and fit students everywhere--all of which made getting lost on a leisurely afternoon well worth while.

Stefan has also been enjoying the easy access to mountains. Yesterday after dinner, he rode up Schauinsland--40 kilometers round trip, with an elevation difference of ~900 meters. He said there must have been fifty other cyclists on the road with him. I asked if he had passed any, and he said no, but that several had passed him. "Freiburgians are really fit," he explained--and this is from a guy who bikes to work every day and rides metric centuries a few times a month back home.