Tübingen

After Emmendingen Michael's friend Philipp picked us up and we drove through the Schwarzwald (curvy, beautiful roads, Michael said "here's where they film those car commercials!") to Tübingen... a really cute little university town with old houses and a town square straight out of Grimms Märchen...

i don't know if it's a hunter or a soldier, but i thought my dad would be interested in the guy with the big rifle on the top left...maybe stag hunting. :)

wandering in the Schwarzwald

So we went on this walk to the Ruine Hochburg, the second-biggest ruin in Baden-Württemberg after the Schloss in Heidelberg...it was really amazing, and you could wander all around and through the ruin, no entrance fee and few other visitors. At the top they had a little stand where they were selling wine from a local vineyard, too. I had a glass of Weißburgunder (pinot blanc) for 2 Euros or so.

below: a view from the ruin with the hilly Schwarzwald in the back

we had fun tempting fate along the high walls of the Burg...

below: you can see some of the vineyards on the incline, then fields

Michael trying to look like a cow

Biergarten!

Freiburg-Bilder

Freiburg has these little open gutters all througout the city, which I guess back in the day were used to water livestock, not sewage but clean water

below: notice how horrible--McDonalds RIGHT ON one of the most beautiful, historic city gates. :( This is why the Italians founded the Slow Food movement. Eat Wurst in Germany! Eat Pizza in Italy! NOT McDonalds!

below: Michael noticed this: a memorial to the witches who were burned here. ha!

Freiburg im Breisgau

a few days now in Freiburg, in the very southwest of Germany, near the border to France and Switzerland, in the Black Forest. The city itself is amazingly beautiful...pastel-colored buildings, a tightly-woven Innenstadt with winding little cobblestone streets, lots of students and cafés, nice atmosphere. The light rain this evening even felt refreshing after all the sun the last few days.


More pictures to come!

Emmendingen im Schwarzwald

above: the Marktplatz, town square in Emmendingen, below the Altes Rathaus, where the Diary Archive is located where I did my research (third floor)




So while visiting an archive in Emmendingen, we are doing a bit of a short vacation in the Schwarzwald... The village we are staying in is truly a village. One main street which brings you to the next town, a school, a church...The houses are surprisingly dense together. And it feels really rural, with farmland all around, although the people really live in well-kept, close houses.

The horizon blurs into bluish green sillouettes of mountains, the Black Forest. The surroundig farmland has houses scattered into clumps of villages here and there, light-colored with reddish terra cotta roofs.

It's really hilly, lots of steep roads--and narrow! I can't believe they are two-way roads. And tons of bikers. Maybe since we're close enough to France there are people who are training? Or it's just a huge hobby of people, because we've seen everything from families out biking, couples young and old, more serious looking "teams" or groups of cyclists.

After being in Berlin it's such a total difference, so calm and quiet and everything is so clean and beautiful. The town has a Marktplatz, a real town square, with pretty pastel-colored houses surrounding, contrasting shutters.

Essen: last night at Kartoffel Hof...Michael: huge Jägerschnitzel with creamy mushroom sauce, potatoes on the side...1,5 Liters of Bier to wash it down. :) me: their specialty Flammkuchen...white wine from the region

Today: huge breakfast/brunch in the sun at a café, typical German breakfast of rolls with cheeses, meats, marmelade, a Frühstücksei [hard-boiled egg], honey, a bowl of fruit...coffee and orange juice. That prepared us for a long day of hiking around the area.

Highlight: hike up to a huge ruin, where we climbed around and took pictures. It was an unbelievable outlook to the Black Forest, the villages below, and just a gorgeous sunny day.


Größere Kartenansicht

journey: Berlin --> Black Forest, and German traditions

High speed train from Berlin to Freiburg, in the Black Forest. Northeast corner of Germany to Southwest...808 km, 6.5 hrs in the ICE train...and so comfortable. Pretty uneventful.

Then we changed to a small regional train to get to the small town which was the end destination...and along the way we happened upon a group of maybe 15-20 men celebrating a bachelor party...which is way hilarious in Deutschland: Junggesellenabschied. All drunk, all having a great time, and all wearing burlap sacks and drining out of a small plastic boot tied around their neck. They were carrying a few of those 5-Liter kegs.

The guy to-be-married (named Christian) was dressed up like a joker, in a full-body costume, and had to carry around a variety of things to sell people to earn beer money for the group. They were singing, had music, a loudspeaker... And we ended up in their compartment in this small, non-air conditioned train for 45 mins. It was pretty funny actually, also when the train controller came through to check tickets. He had a pretty good sense of humor about it, but told them not to drink while the train was moving and asked them to keep it piano, as there were other people in the train. Oh man, I love traditions like this. hilarious.

I've been on the Marktplatz before when women were celebrating, too. They are always all dressed up, the whole big group, and sell things to people.



Größere Kartenansicht

Sonnenschein...endlich!

the Berliners were happy to be out in the sun after a lot of cool, cloudy days...me, too!