Ein Musikalischer Spaß

Freiburg is apparently a city in which laborers and civil servants find subtle ways to express strongly held opinions. Today I learned that someone in Freiburg's city planning department was a Wagnerphile.

I was exploring the neighborhood north of our apartment when I looked up and noticed that three street signs at a five-way intersection were for Brucknerstr., Richard-Strauss-Str., and Richard-Wagner-Str.

"Ah," I thought, "the late Romantics intersection! Must be one of those suburby areas where all the streets are named after a common theme." (This suburb is relatively old, however; one of the houses had 1934 in plaster relief on its exterior.)

I continued down the street and laughed out loud at the next corner, where Brahmsstrasse met Richard-Wagner-Str. Despite the composers' divergent views on musical progress, here their paths permanently intersected. Perhaps the city planner had a sense of humor.

At the next corner, I laughed again: the intersection of Schumannstrasse and Richard-Wagner-Str. But wait a sec...Wagner got the through street; and while Stauss, Bruckner, and Wagner flowed seamlessly into one another, both Brahms and Schumann ended at Wagner. Let's see now, Wagner gave us 15 hours of leitmotifs (and OK, a few gorgeous overtures), and Brahms gave us four of the greatest symphonies and two of the most spectacular piano concertos ever composed (plus the song "Sonntag," with its totally sexy upward leap of a major 9th at the words "Das tausendschöne Herzelein"--man, it makes my knees weak every time)--and Wagner gets the through street?

Mendelssohnstr., alas, was nowhere to be seen. (Indeed, I checked my Freiburg map when I got home and there isn't a Mendelssohnstr. anywhere in town. We're talking 64 years post-WWII. Shame on you, Freiburg.)

Next street: Schubertstr., a through street, followed by Haydnstr. Across Wagnerstr., Haydn becomes a footpath with several large, permanently placed recycling bins--a commentary on Haydn's reuse of musical motifs?

Rather than ending at Bachstr., Wagner ends at Händelstr. Of course, Bach permeates the Altstadt, with its several kilometers of canals, or Bächle (diminutive for Bach, which means stream).

Somewhat irritated by the lack of Mendelssohnstr., I turned back and walked down Schumannstr., where I was pleased to discover an actual Joh.-Seb.-Bach-Str. Apparently Bach led directly to Schumann, not Wagner; I can live with that.

There's also a Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Str., a short footpath between Schumann and Schubert. Really now, Weber but not Mendelssohn?

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?