Graffiti

I've never carved my name into a tree, a picnic table, or the paint on a bathroom stall door, let alone spray painted Hello-Kitty ninjas in an underpass. After visiting the Freiburg Muenster today, if I ever want to deface something, I'll aim for a more permanent surface.

I meant to do that (or, Getting lost, take 2)

One of the problems with living in a pretty city surrounded by beautiful forest-covered mountains with endless hiking trails is that, for the navigationally impaired, the hills all tend to look the same.

Yesterday I decided to explore the neighborhoods in the southern part of Freiburg. I jogged past the Altstadt and over the Dreisam into Wiehre, then into the woods on the other side of the valley and around the diminutive Waldsee. I continued through a city park and came to what I thought was the big soccer stadium--the badenova Dreisamstadion where Freiburg tied Hamburg 1:1 on Sunday. Back into the hills I shifted from jogging to hiking and figured if I generally veered left, I'd be back home relatively quickly.

Near what was supposed to be the end of my journey, I emerged from the woods atop a hill to admire the view of the Muenster, but below me, Freiburg was nowhere to be seen. Thanks to the mapping and navigation options on my trusty Garmin Forerunner 205, I learned that my internal compass was seriously broken--apparently I had never turned left--and that to get home I needed to go 4305 miles due west (ah, that'd be Durham, NC). I eventually arrived back in Herdern with 10 miles of pavement and trails behind me, having seen places I never would have thought to visit otherwise: Kappel, from afar, and Littenweiler; Freiburg's older Möslestadion (had it been the badenova Stadion, I'm sure I wouldn't have gotten lost); and some mean-lookin' Hello-Kitty style Ninja graffiti along the Dreisam.