Things I'm going to miss

In no particular order:

1. Gun control. I have yet to see a newspaper headline about someone being shot in Baden-Wuerttemberg. On the website where I check my hometown news, three of today's regional headlines are about people being shot: a seven-year-old hit by a stray bullet at an ice-skating rink in Charlotte, a Goldsboro teenager hit by a stray bullet while hunting with his father, a Sanford man murdered in his apartment. Germans tend to use knives to kill one another. When people fight with their rivals and wave weapons around to look intimidating, they're less likely to accidentally stab a skating seven-year-old in the knee than they are to accidentally shoot her.

2. Walkability. 90% of what we need here can be reached by foot.

3. A philosophy that discourages befouling one's environment. Germans recycle pretty much everything. The government offers incentives for reducing carbon footprints, from providing affordable mass transit to building extensive networks of bicycle paths. Solar panels abound on rooftops.

4. The idea that it is worth sacrificing excess consumption for improved quality of life. The grocery store on the corner is small, but it has pretty much everything we need, it's innocuous, and we can walk there.

5. Abundant farmers' markets that emphasize fresh local and regional produce. At the St. Urban farmers' market in particular: the ravioli guy, and the produce lady who always has a pear or apple or clementine for Elias, whether he's shopping with me that day or not.

6. Having an elementary school in the backyard.

7. Elias's third grade teacher, who is mature, laid back, practical, and enthusiastic, with sensible priorities.

8. A school system that gives teachers flexibility with classroom curricula, that maintains high enough standards for certification that no one thinks twice about trusting teachers with said curricula, and that doesn't mandate day after day of in-class, multiple-choice testing as a way to answer the question, "is our children learning?"

9. Trail-covered mountains five blocks east of the front door, and the option to walk or bike from any town in Germany to any other town entirely on designated pedestrian and bike trails.

10. The idea that all of society benefits when its members are well educated and in good health, backed up with a general willingness for tax dollars to go toward services that serve people other than oneself.

11. Alemannisch, Bairisch, and Schwyzerduetsch.

12. Rot Spaetburgunder, trocken.

Roßkopf

The four windmills atop the Roßkopf, a mountain above the east side of Freiburg, are a convenient landmark. Visible from assorted freeways and Suedschwarzwald peaks, they help us orient ourselves in the direction of the city wherever we are.

This afternoon I headed northward into the hills. Three miles later, I unintentionally arrived at the windmills, having followed the simple prescription "immer aufwaerts" ("ever upward").

The windmills are very, very big. Really impressively big. The spinning blades cast gigantic shadows and make a quietly eerie humming sound.

A short distance away from the windmills is a diminutive 10-story high viewing tower that was erected by the Schwarzwald Verein in 1889. I didn't make it to the top to admire the curlicue wrought iron filigree, as the rickety wooden steps and the larger-than-usual "climb at your own risk" sign made me content to stop at the second floor.

On my hike down, I came across the St. Wendelin Kapelle, an isolated chapel basically in the middle of nowhere. The current stone chapel dates from 1895 and replaced a wooden chapel built in 1713. The original chapel was used as a shelter against storms and as a stopping off point for pilgrims travelling between Freiburg and St. Peter. St. Wendelin is very, very small. Really impressively small. If you had an interest in doing such things, you could probably pack a dozen or so St. Wendelin chapels into each windmill tower.

Balance

Now that Sommerferien is over, we are at last finding a balance in our lives between school, work, practice, and play.

This morning I practiced at the Lutheran church. The Braunschweig is kind of like a pre-adolescent golden retriever: its bark is relatively small and its feet a little oversized, but it's enthusiastic and eager to please, so you forgive it when its wagging tail whaps you. At precisely 11:30, the next organist came up to the loft, and I went my merry way back home, the falling leaves and light autumn breezes all the more lovely for the two and a half uninterrupted, productive practice hours. Right now I'm sitting outside, listening to the shouts of children enjoying Pause (recess) at the elementary school and to the church bells up the road chiming 12:00.

Later, I will go out with Elias for our regular go-grocery-shopping-almost-every-day-because-your-fridge-is-small-plus-you're-a-Hausfrau-therefore-you-have-time-to-shop-every-day experience. Grocery shopping in Germany is BYOEFB (bring your own ecologically friendly bags). Because you don't buy very much stuff at any one time (how many times must I remind you, your fridge is small), the check-out counter is only 4 feet long, giving you about two feet to put your items down and two feet for the checker to ring them up and push them forward and for you quickly to bag them before the next customer needs the space. As you bag your items, you think about how the small check-out space balances not only with the small fridge at home but also with the population-density-demands-packing-maximal-necessities-into-minimal-spaces rule. Because roads are narrow and cars are cramped, you also appreciate that there are four grocery stores, a fruit store, and two bakeries packed within easy walking distance.

Occasionally you will meet an eccentric German who likes to buy in bulk, like Stefan's mom's hairdresser. He throws up his hands at the diminutive packages of Philidelphia (as Bavarians call American cream cheese) sold at Tengelmann, and instead buys the two-kilo tub at the German Costco equivalent. He stores it in the large refrigerator in his shed, because the fridge won't fit into his kitchen.

King of Schauinsland

Southern Germany is a bicyclist's heaven. The scenery is gorgeous, and almost every highway (except the Autobahn) in Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg seems to have a bike path running parallel with it. But Freiburg is clearly the hottest of all bicycling hot-spots. In 2007, Deutsche Welle reported that the city had twice as many bicycles as cars. According to the city's own website, Freiburg has over 400 km of designated bike paths, and about 30% of transportation in town is by bike. Freiburg even has a "glass shards hotline" for reporting flat-tire risks on the roads.

Here is my handsome husband on Sunday morning before setting off to ride in the Schauinslandkoenig Bergzeitfahren (the Schauinsland King mountain time trial race), which covered 11.5 km distance while ascending 800 meters up Freiburg's highest mountain. There were bicycles, duple and triple tandems, unicycles, in-line skaters, hand-powered cycles, recumbents, and bikes towing kiddie trailers. Stefan finished respectably in the middle of the pack of 950 but passed on the opportunity to put a crown on his head and have his photo taken at the top (in this race, everyone is "ein kleiner Koenig").