No, not Fribourg/Freiburg in Switzerland. I got the heck out of that country before it could steal any more of my money. This Freiburg is in Germany.
After my rather stressful stay in Switzerland, I was ready for a much-needed weekend of relaxing. I was a bit nervous upon arriving in Freiburg, however. I would be staying in an Airbnb for the first time.
For those of you who don't know, Airbnb is a website that connects travelers with hosts all over the world. You pay a (usually pretty reasonable) fee to stay in their home, sometimes in a spare room, sometimes on their couch. I figured it would be a nice change from staying in hostels; I'd only have to share a bathroom with one or two people, rather than five or more. And I was interested to observe real Europeans in their natural habitats.
But on the other hand, in spite of all the great reviews for the Airbnb that I'd booked, I was anxious about staying with total strangers, in their home, in a foreign country. At least I knew my hosts spoke English.
My train pulled in to the Freiburg Hauptbahnhof on Friday afternoon, and I clambered off, my movement somewhat impaired by the weight of all of my souvenirs. I shifted the straps of one of my bags to the crook of my elbow, and then used my little T-Rex arm to fish out my phone and pull up my navigation app. The 25-minute walk looked pretty straightforward...until I was about 100 meters down the road and two minutes had been added to my arrival time to compensate for my sluggish pace.
Forty minutes later, sweaty and panting even in the crisp Fall air, I arrived at the address for my Airbnb and pressed the buzzer. The answering voice told me to come up to the 2nd floor, then buzzed me in. I groaned, remembering that in Europe, "2nd floor" means "climb two flights of stairs, not just one like you would to get to the second floor in America," and heaved the door open.
One of my hosts, a friendly-looking guy about my age, held the apartment door open, and encouraged me and all my stuff up the last flight of stairs. He showed me to what would be my room for the next three nights. I dropped my belongings to the floor, with a whispered "sorry" to the people below for the thump, and looked around. I was relieved to find that the room looked exactly as pleasant as it had in the pictures online.
I was even more relieved to discover that my hosts were pretty cool people. The guy invited me to join him and his friends for lunch in the dining hall at his university, where each of us got a huge plate of some pretty delicious tortellini, plus a salad, for €2.50. That was exactly what I needed to recover from all the expense of Switzerland.
I was seriously impressed by how well my host and his friends spoke English. (I also really appreciated it, because, as much as I want to learn German, I wouldn't have enjoyed the conversation nearly as much if that had been the language we used.) It turned out that all three of them--as well as my other host that I had yet to meet--were studying teaching at the university. It was pretty cool hearing about how the process of becoming a teacher works in Germany: it takes a total of seven years (five at university, and two interning) to become a teacher in Germany.
We also talked about the differences between going to college in the States and going to university in Germany. It typically takes longer to get a degree in Germany, but it's hecka decka cheaper there: compared to the thousands (or even tens of thousands) of dollars students pay per semester in the US, German students pay maybe €200 in fees per semester. The fall semester also starts later in Germany; the first day of classes was the day that I left Freiburg, October 17th. There's also more breaks during the school year, and competitive college-level sports aren't a thing (which, honestly, probably accounts for most of the difference in pricing).
My host, his friends and I also grabbed coffee at the library before parting ways. There, we talked about differences in another aspect of college life. The other way of saying that is that we compared notes on the drinking cultures in our respective countries.
My host then gave me directions to bike to the Altstadt (the old town). Yep, you read that right. I was getting back on the bike (both literally and metaphorically) and giving city biking another go. Luckily, Freiburg is a much smaller city than Frankfurt, so I wasn't on the bike for too long when getting from place to place. And there were fewer pedestrians and cars for me to potentially hit.
I wandered around the Altstadt for most of the afternoon, just taking it all in. I also popped into quite a few shops, just reveling in how cheap everything was, compared to Switzerland. I decided to treat myself to ice cream--only 80 cents a scoop!--at the Münsterplatz (the main square in the old town, where the cathedral stands). It was then, as I gazed up at the gothic spires, slurping at my ice cream cone that the unthinkable happened.
My ice cream cone broke.
As if in slow motion, I saw the top half of the cone, holding one scoop of dark chocolate and one scoop of raspberry, tumbling toward the cobblestones. Reflexively, my left hand shot out, and miraculously--blessedly, even--managed to snag the ice cream before it hit the ground. As I placed the ice cream safely back on the cone and set about licking the chocolate off of my fingers, I noticed a German guy watching me. He looked both amused and mildly impressed, and called across the square something that sounded congratulatory. I smiled, nodded, and went on my way.
That's right, the worst thing that happened on my first day out of Switzerland was that I almost--almost!--dropped my ice cream. It was good to be back in Germany.
I wandered until it began to rain, then swung by a grocery store on my way back to my Airbnb for the evening. I finally met my other host, a girl about my age who played handball, and was very interested to hear about the strange handball-like sport that I played. (If you're sitting there wondering what that sport might be, go to YouTube and search "Kronum" right now, and don't come back until you've watched at least three videos.)
I set about cooking pasta for dinner, glad to discover that my cooking skills weren't too rusty from the recent lack of use, and called it a night not too much later.
I started the next day early, eager to take advantage of the beautiful Fall weather while it lasted. I biked towards the old town, soaking in the fall colors and the cool architecture on the way. I parked my bike and went a-wandering again, stumbling upon the market at the Münsterplatz. And, oh did that make my heart happy.
One of the main reasons that I wanted to come to Freiburg was that I remembered visiting the city with my family the last time that we were in Germany. And one of my most vivid memories from that visit was the market. I still have the clay bird whistle and olive wood ring from the last time we visited Freiburg, eight or nine years ago.
At this market, there are dozens of meat vendors, fruit and vegetable sellers, and craftsmen and craftswomen selling everything from intricate floral wreaths to olive wood salad tongs to beeswax candles to painted ceramic toothbrush holders. I took about three laps around the whole market, scoping out the wares, before realizing I had nothing smaller than a 50-Euro bill on me. So I had to hit the ATM before I bought a woven basket, a patterned fabric hair and, two bars of honey-and-floral soap, a jar of
Waldhonig (honey from the Black Forest), a silver and mother-of-pearl ring, a bratwurst, and a glass of
Federweisser (new wine). I parked myself on the edge of the fountain to peoplewatch while I ate my bratwurst and drank my Federweisser.
I meandered away from the market, up and down streets that I'd somehow missed the day before. I realized, as I swapped my new basket full of souvenirs from one hand to the other, that I wasn't really sticking to my resolution of "no more big souvenirs." *sigh* It was going to be one long walk to the train station on Monday.
To distract myself from that disheartening realization, I found a sunny table outside of a café and treated myself to a cappuccino and a piece of apple cake. I then biked back to my AirBnb to drop off my souvenirs and unwind for a bit before going out in search of dinner. I'd resolved to go out that night after my absurdly early bedtime the night before.
So, after Skyping with my parents for an hour, I biked back into town. As it got dark, I wandered into the student-heavy part of town, hoping to find a good place for dinner, and maybe someone to talk to over dinner. I've gotten used to eating alone, even in restaurants, but solo meals simply aren't as much fun as eating with someone else.
After about forty-five minutes of walking around, I still hadn't settled on a place. Hangriness was setting in, and I had no one to blame but my indecisive self, a thought that didn't do much to improve my mood. I finally settled on a restaurant that I'd passed by thirty minutes prior, having dismissed it because I wasn't in the mood for burgers. But by this point, some American-style food actually sounded pretty dang good. So I ordered a Farmer's burger from the snooty waitress--my attempts to speak German apparently irritated her--and watched the students as they passed by, beers in hand, presumably headed for a fun evening out.
After devouring my burger and fries, I leisurely biked through the quiet residential streets back to my Airbnb. I'd transitioned quickly from "hangry" to "in a food coma," and my resolve to have a night out on the town had vanished with the last of my curly fries. At least I'd stayed awake until 10:00 pm this time.
I woke up almost twelve hours later.
Chalking it up to still recovering from Switzerland, I made myself a late breakfast while I chatted with my host. He didn't have any plans for another couple of hours, so he offered to show me to the hiking trail with a view over the city. It was nice to get out in nature again, and it was nice to have some company as well. And the view over Freiburg as pretty great.
After my host headed off to meet up with some friends, I biked to the complete opposite side of town to do some more hiking; once I'd had a taste of the outdoors that morning, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of the day. I biked on the paths around the Waldseepark for a while, then hopped off to sit by a peaceful little duck pond for a while.
I biked back into the city, parked myself at a sidewalk café, and spent the rest of the afternoon leisurely drinking several cappuccinos and sampling a variety of cakes. I'd earned it after all of the hiking and biking.
For my last evening in Freiburg, I played board games with my hosts. We played two games I'd never heard of before: Ligretto and Carcasonne. The first is a card game that involves quickly stacking cards in numerical order to empty your hand; I lost spectacularly. The second game is a somewhat complicated strategy game, centered on castle-building (named for the famous walled city of Carcasonne, France). Not only did I come out on top, I also scored a day trip idea for when I'm in France.
My train the next day didn't leave until 1:00pm, so I killed some time by grabbing coffee (and a pastry, of course!) while I wrote a postcard. I then realized--with the help of Google--that the only post office that didn't close for lunch, making it the only post office from which I could mail my postcard before I caught my train, was on the other side of town. So I once again clambered onto my bike. One twenty-minute ride later, I was standing at the end of a line that stretched out the door. Twenty minutes later, I still had yet to purchase my 90-cent stamp, and I was starting to worry about making my train. But then a blessedly-efficient postal worker came in from her lunch break, and I was out of there less than a minute later.
The next forty-five minutes involved racing via bike back to my Airbnb, scurrying to stuff my ridiculous amount of stuff into my bags, and trekking like a pack mule to the train station. I collapsed into my seat on the train, sweating profusely, and hoped the hike from the train station in Strasbourg to my Airbnb there would be shorter.
