Freiburg side trip and clouds over southern Germany

I made a quick solo 2-night side trip to Freiburg early this week to attend to important business (namely, to present a writing workshop and to stock up on Gelatine-frei gummi bears). I took a Deutsche Bahn double-decker bus, which on Sunday gave me impressive views of the ever-changing weather. This afternoon, I head back to Steinebach; for better or worse, the weather is beautifully sunny.

Freiburg wrap up

We planned far too little time in Freiburg. I taught half-day writing workshops on Thursday and Friday while Elias and my mom were tourists and Stefan met up with colleagues. Thursday evening gave us a chance to catch up with some friends, and on Friday afternoon we invited some of Elias's chums to a birthday party for the aptly-named, full-of-sunshine Solstice boy. Afterward, we walked up to the Jesuitenschloss for dinner under gathering clouds, but the sun emerged just before setting and turned the world a radiant yellow. Alas, we had to leave Freiburg early on Saturday morning, but hopefully we'll return for a longer visit next summer.

Multi-generational chess post party

Purple in the park

At the bottom of the hill before dinner

At the top of the hill after dinner

The world glowed yellow

My family glowed yellow too

Thus ended summer solstice 2013

Things change

We're back in Freiburg for a few days, and things aren't entirely as we were expecting. First, it was almost 100^oF today--hot for Freiburg, and hotter than it's been all year in Durham. Hot.

Second, Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is no longer the longest word in the German language. According to the UK's Telegraph, "the word--which refers to the 'law for the delegation of monitoring beef labelling,' has been repealed by a regional parliament after the EU lifted a recommendation to carry out BSE tests on healthy cattle." I'm not sure how Germans will refer to this law as history without the word, but I'm sure the Volk will work it out in due time.

Third, despite reserving a rental car two months in advance and talking with a rental company rep about how we needed a car large enough to hold Stefan's bike suitcase and four people, we were surprised today to receive a car large enough to hold Stefan's bike suitcase or four people. After much wrangling, Stefan negotiated upgrading to a larger car on Friday, the day before we need to drive the bike and four people to Austria for his 110-mile, 9000-ft elevation gain bike race. I'm not sure whether the chance to upgrade represents an improvement in German service over the past several years or not. Incidentally, the weather on race day is currently anticipated to be 50^oF in Nauders, with rain. Even compared to today's heat, I don't think that represents an improvement in the weather.

Some pics from the day:

A steam-punk bespectacled dog Wasserspeise

A dog or goat body therapist cheerfully massaging a human head Wasserspeise

Lunch at Chang Thai

Where muppet fairies sleep

Mock orange

Walking home from dinner

Sweat makes great hair-styling gel

Rose

Grape vines at 8pm

Staples

Here we are, already four days into this year's Germany trek, and I see I forgot to report on all sorts of things from last year. With apologies to last year's Regensburg--you were great, we loved you!--this year's travel blog begins with food, as a sense of place is often intertwined with the sense of taste.

See the jet-lagged child (who, perhaps for the first time in his young life, did not barf upon disembarking an easterly trans-Atlantic flight) at peace in the hectic Zurich airport thanks to a salty twist of bread:

We are spending the first leg of our trip in warm, sunny Freiburg. Monday's first stop (parents' choice): the farmers' market in the Münsterplatz, where zingy ripe fruit helped disperse the fog of travel.

Second stop (Elias's choice, and second only because the farmers' market stood between us and his goal): vegetarian-friendly gummi bears at the Bären Company shop.

When Mad Cow Disease was making its way across Europe in the 1990s, several German pharmacies responded by selling gummi bears made without Rindsgelatine. We happily snarfed our way through a few kilos of those before Stefan's brother, a large-animal vet, managed to tell us through his tears and guffaws that while they didn't contain cow gelatine, they most assuredly contained pig gelatine. Listen--do you hear him chortling still? Thereupon followed a multiyear gummi bear drought, until we walked into Freiburg's Bären Company in 2009. To our credit, today is Thursday and we still have about 15 Bärlchen left (as well as two days to replenish our supply before leaving town).

Freiburg to Steinebach

On Thursday I bid adieu to the Lutheran church choir, with whom I enjoyed music-making companionship while in Freiburg, and on Friday we said goodbye to the ravioli guy and the produce woman at the St. Urban farmers' market (thanks for the cookies, ravioli guy! Thanks for the pear, produce woman!), but I didn't choke up until this morning, when I told the proprietor at the corner Lienhart bakery that we were leaving. No more cakes, no more tortes, no more accidentally saying Semmeln and Zwetchgendatschi when Freiburgers say Broetchen and Pflaumkuchen, yet being understood anyway. Frau L. didn't know what to do with me, but gave a warm bow and elegantly wished us a good trip.

We managed to pack more social engagements into our last five days in Freiburg than into most of the previous five months (thanks for dinner on Saturday, Familie M.! Thanks for breakfast and the ride to the Hauptbahnhof today, Familie R., not to mention the Plaetzchen for the road! Thanks Paul, Ricarda, Friedi, Johannes, and Anne for being Elias's best pals!), and still found time to thoroughly scrub and scour our apartment before handing the keys over to our landlady and promising to meet up with her the next time we're in town. Stefan traveled by suitcase-stuffed car and Elias and I by train, and I choked up again as I watched the snow-covered hills of the Schwarzwald--and some ruins we hadn't gotten around to visiting--passing by outside the window.

The train ride itself offered some solace, thanks to an ever-changing variety of compartment companions. For the Freiburg-to-Karlsruhe leg, we were greeted by a woman who insisted we had the wrong compartment. "No, you can't have reserved these seats: this compartment is full." I disagreed. "No," she insisted, getting up to show stupid me the electronic reservations sign outside the cabin, "you're wrong. See, it says right here...Oh, wait, you're right. You have that seat. This seat is mine. See, it says right here...Oh, apparently you have this seat too." She got up and took someone else's seat. Eventually she realized that all of the seats in the cabin were taken, and she quietly slunk off to find another spot.

We changed trains in Karlsruhe. Having a bilingual child is a great conversation starter, so I know the woman we sat with until the first stop was training in Freiburg to be a midwife and had dreams of traveling all over the U.S. and eventually ending up in San Diego. "Americans are so open and welcoming," she said wistfully. After she departed, we were joined by a student coming home from Koeln. She had been waiting for late trains all day and was delighted that ours was on time. We gave her a clementine, and she showed Elias how to whistle with four fingers. After she left, a well-dressed older woman with dyed hair and a leopard-spot scarf stepped in and sat down next to Elias in the uncomfortable-looking fold-down seat. "I have to ride facing the direction the train is going," she explained, while I pondered whether German etiquette demanded that I switch to the other side of the cabin so she could have one of the cushier seats. She rode with us until the next stop, where she got off and was greeted with a loving embrace by a man on the snowy platform.

In Ulm, we were joined by two well-dressed but pungent-smelling men who spoke cheerfully to us in a dialect I could barely understand. While they engaged in enthusiastic conversation with one another, I started surreptitiously taking notes in my Sudoku book and suddenly realized their vocabulary sounded familiar--Hoam, guat, da Ding, weida zu bringn. Stefan says if I couldn't understand them, they were probably from Austria rather than Bayern, but the shift from Alemannisch to Bairisch-ish made me feel like we were returning to familiar territory.

On the S-Bahn ride from Munich-Pasing to Steinebach, Elias discovered the joys of static electricity. We also discovered that the S5--the name of the Herrsching-to-Munich S-line for the past 37 years--has been replaced by the S8 and now runs from Herrsching all the way to the Munich airport.

City seal

The Freiburg Stadtarchiv has a collection of Freiburg city seals and stamps dating back to the 13th century. A seal from 1245 depicts the town wall with three archways, three towers, two watchmen blowing horns, four stars, a fleur-de-lis, and the text, "SIGILLVM:CIVITATIS:DE VRIBVRCH IN BRISGAVDIA:" ("Civic seal of Freiburg im Breisgau"). Copies of the seal can be found all around the Altstadt on the charming manhole covers, bearing the less regal text, "Kanalisation Freiburg i. Br."

The 13th-century values represented by the logo became a life-sized physical reality (minus giant horn blowers) in 1895-96, with the construction of the Wasserwerk building on a hill above Wiehre (along the southern edge of Freiburg). Presumably the manhole covers then followed as part of the new water works branding concept. The building is known as the Wasserschloessle because it's too small and too kitschig to be a Wasserschloss.

Shutters

Every day that we're in Freiburg, I look around at the beautiful historic edifices; the flower boxes and carefully tended gardens bright with yellow, red, and fuchsia blossoms; the stately Jugendstil apartment houses in our neighborhood, with their swooping arches and stained glass windows; the tables of colorful fruits and vegetables at the farmers' markets; the dark green pine-covered hills of the Schwarzwald; the pleasant parks and playgrounds, filled with kids of all ages; the standing wave patterns of the water in the cobblestone-lined canals of the Altstadt; and the crunchy brown leaves and Lindenbaum flowers fluttering down from the trees as summer merges into fall; and I think: I really need new glasses. If it gets bad enough, I'll blog about finding an optician in Freiburg.

As lovely as the sights are in Freiburg, people here don't necessarily want to see them--or perhaps people themselves don't want to be seen--after about 4pm. Thankfully, shutters offer a not-entirely-cumbersome way to shut out the noisy, harsh, outside world, allowing residents to create impenetrable, cave-like atmospheres in their very own homes. The amazing thing is that shutting out all the light can actually be charming (at least from the outside) when you do it with old-fashioned, functional shutters. Check it out, suburban America--shutters that actually open and close!

Of course, closing such shutters requires opening your windows, which you might not want to do in the middle of the winter. To address this problem, humankind invented the hideously ugly custom-made polymer shutter, which you can close over the outside of your window by pulling on a strap inside the house.

To compensate for the resultant dungeon-like darkness, humankind invented the €14.95 lamp at Ikea.

Roadtrip to Freiburg

I’ve just come off two hours of listening to an eight-year-old sing the same one and half phrases of Puff the Magic Dragon over and over, non-stop, out of tune and with a mix of original and newly invented words. The kid scores points for enthusiasm; his parents score points for endurance. Thank goodness we’re finally in Freiburg.

We left Steinebach this afternoon a little before 1 p.m. and took the Autobahn to Lindau, the city farthest west in Bavaria before you enter Baden-Wuerttemberg.

Driving on the Autobahn is just like driving on American highways, except that every driver gets to choose his or her own speed, regardless of the posted speed limit. For example, if the speed limit is 120 km/hr, you might drive anywhere between 60 and 140km/hr, unless you are driving a Ferrari, in which case you get to drag race with other Ferraris at 200km/hr. Be sure to check your blind spot before changing to the fast lane, as cars too far away even to be seen in the side-view mirror will be on top of you in the blink of an eye. In case road construction necessitates merging, do not take advantage of the driver who’s trying to let you into her lane, but instead wait with all of the other fast cars so you can all try to change lanes together at the last possible moment.

We pulled off the highway in Ueberlingen in the hopes of finding a cafe, but found something even better: ripe, fresh fruit, everywhere. Miles and miles of immaculately pruned pear groves and apple orchards; fruit stands offering strawberries, blueberries, and cherries; and vineyards and fields of hops. We bought enough fruit in Ueberlingen to supply us for our first few days in Freiburg, and then ate most of it before we reached the end of the Bodensee.

From there it was up onto a plateau to Donaueschingen, source of the beautiful blue Danube (Donau), and into the Black Forest, which is neither black (as expected) nor exactly a forest (unexpected). Turns out the Black Forest is more a region than a contiguous forest; many of the trees on level ground disappeared, probably centuries ago, to make way for farm land. The long, steep descent into Freiburg was more in line with expectations, with stunning, steep cliffs and dense forest.

And then we arrived in Freiburg. We strolled through the center of the old town, over mosiac cobblestone streets and past the Muenster with its pealing bells (announcing that it was 7:47 p.m.?), and found dinner at a middle-eastern restaurant near the University. We enjoyed inexpensive falafel and hummus and--bestill my beating heart--copious and myriad fresh and crispy vegetables! Hooray for university towns!