Freiburg - Possenhofen

There was a heavy frost overnight. The regulation 2 bread rolls must have been used up for the week as there was only sliced bread left this morning.

We left by the wrong road but got a nice photo of the sun breaking through the clouds over the mountains and a very frosty field, before we turned back to get to the right road.

The sun was out for the morning as we travelled through the mountains (in the Black Forest) through the ski resort of Feldberg. It looked to be a good day for skiing - clear and sunny.

Just as we headed out of the skiing areas it clouded over and we moved into mist. We missed a turn off, but made it onto the right road eventually. We stopped for morning tea at a roadhouse at about 12 (no Avon convention this time) where I used a loo that had a wacky seat-cleaning thing. Driving on, we stopped for lunch at about 2pm (a lot of roadhouses have enormous eat-in sections where you can order just about anything you like, from roast dinners, to fish and chips), and then continued on. We passed a bad accident just before we stopped for lunch, where a woman had slammed into the side rail, but amazingly appeared unhurt though the car was completely smashed.

We finally made it to Possenhofen by 4pm, only to discover that reception wasn't open until 5pm! We waited around in the ultra modern youth hostel until the staff turned up and then we booked in. Dinner was at 6pm and we attempted to do a load of washing (which for some reason took about 2 hours) and then sat in the bistro, once again waiting for the staff to turn up, while the clothes hopefully dried in the dryer.

Possenhofen is a small town famous for being the home of the castle where 'Sissi', Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, spent her youth. It was also home to Hitler's filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl before she died. We chose to stay at the youth hostel in Possenhofen as a setting out point for day trips to Munich - we didn't want to stay in Munich itself. Our first choice was the youth hostel in Dachau, as we had stayed there on our last trip to Germany, but it was closed over that period.

Freiburg - with a day trip to Freudenstadt

No frost or snow overnight. Regulation 2-bread-roll-breakfast.

We decided to go to Freudenstadt for a day trip because that is where a friend of ours, Verena, comes from, and we wanted to get her something from there. Freudenstadt is in the Black Forest, and is rather out of the way, with it's biggest claim to fame apparently being the gigantic market square (Germany's biggest) that is the centre of town. Tim mapped out and wrote out the route to take, which turned out to be a very winding road through lots of mountain passes.

As we travelled away from Freiburg we started to see frost on the ground and houses, and then there were small patches of snow, then more snow, and then snow covering everything, and then when we got to Freudenstadt we realised it wasn't sprinkling anymore - it was snowing. There were lots of tunnels through mountains along the way, the longest being almost 2km long.

When we got to Freudenstadt we accidentally found the town centre, so parked the car and went shopping for Verena. There wasn't much in the way of souvenirs but we found a few things, including a few things with her name on them (not a common name in Australia!). After finally locating a cafe where you didn't have to stand up to have your drink/food (quite common in Germany) we had some morning tea.

We visited a bookshop in our wanderings, and came across a very Australian book, in German - Jackie French's Diary of a Wombat. We couldn't resist buying it for our son, but I can't help but think that the shopkeeper should be glad we bought it from her, as I imagine there wouldn't be an enormous demand for books about wombats in deepest Black Forest country.

After a little more wandering we got some lunch and then headed for the car. As we came down out of the mountains the snow cleared up and the sun came out - the first sustained sunlight since we had arrived in Germany!

We went back to the youth hostel, unloaded, and then caught the tram into Freiburg again to do some more shopping. We also discovered another internet cafe, so we checked our emails and the Australian news. As evening started to fall we took some photos of the streets we were wandering. As it was just after Christmas they still had all their Christmas decorations up which made them look all the more inviting.

As we hadn't booked our evening meal (what a shame!) we went back to the Italian restaurant again, where the waitress remembered us from 2 nights before. We were highly suspicious of Tim's order of Tortellini boscaiola - it was tomatoey and had peas - but it was still nice anyway.

We really liked Freiburg, apart from the youth hostel, which wasn't the best in terms of service or food, and we were sad to leave. It had a nice atmosphere, feels safe, and has lots of nice shops. Hubert, our academic friend, also told us that Freiburg has the reputation of being the warmest city in Germany, so that's a plus too, when you come from a place that is never cold enough for snow, even in the dead of winter!

Freiburg

There was a frost overnight and everything was crispy with ice. We had our regulation 2 bread rolls for breakfast, avoided joining in with the folk dancing, and went in to Freiburg for the day, mainly for shopping. We found the art shop and I bought some good brushes, and then went to the wool shop next door where I bought some more wool for another scarf. Said scarf, finished, is pictured below.

We pretty much wandered around most of the day, went to the same bakery twice (just near the picture below. Note the travesty of putting a McDonalds sign on that brown and white building, just above the righthand arch!), for morning and afternoon tea, and at one stage went past a place that had a temperature gauge in the window, which said it was -4 degrees Celsius!

We did some shopping, but it was mainly window shopping. We also searched for internet cafes, as the ones listed in our Lonely Planet Guide no longer existed. The one we finally found was in the basement of a photocopying shop (of course, where else?!), so Tim was able to email his Uni supervisors about his meeting with the academics.

We went back to the youth hostel for dinner (SOOO not worth it!) and then back to our room. Tim decided he needed a book to read, so he went back to town to visit the bookshops and wandered around for a bit.

Freiburg

Breakfast was the usual spread (rolls, cheeses and meats), though there was a sign up saying we were only allowed a maximum of two bread rolls. After breakfast we decided to be brave and catch a tram into the city. The tram stop was about 10 minutes walk from the hostel (where we saw the original sign pointing to the youth hostel). To get to it we had to go over a bridge over the river, and past the Freiburg soccer stadium (we actually saw the soccer team having a public training session the previous afternoon). Trams came every 5-10 minutes and the fare was €2 per person. It took about 10-15 minutes to get into the city. The first thing we did when we got into the city was to find the pub where we were having a meeting with Tim's academic contacts that evening. As the Uni library was next door we checked that out too. After that we went to the tourist information centre to get a map of the city so we wouldn't spend our day getting lost again.

Freiburg is a very nice town, with cobbled streets and in front of most shops is a mosaic signifying what the shop is e.g. a pretzel in front of a bakery.

There are also little open drains along the streets with fast flowing water, which are a bit of a hazard, though apparently in summer they are great to stand in to cool your feet.

After the information centre we went to the Museum for Pre and Early History, where even Tim was bored. He thought things were picking up when he saw a sign for a display on the Alamanni (a cultural group his thesis covers) but when we got downstairs to it it was only on jewellery!

We went to see the Münster (the catholic cathedral - supposedly the 'most beautiful in Christendom' - though I couldn't quite see what the fuss was about). Inside the stained glass windows were pretty amazing, but that was about it for me.

There were markets in the square outside the cathedral, selling both fresh food and tourist items, and also lots of places selling sausages on bread. As it was lunchtime we both had one. While we were in the square finding souvenirs we saw an example of a German phenomenon that we had come across when we were in Germany last time - 'couple matching' - both members of a couple wearing matching clothes. As if you would wear that beanie, let alone make your partner wear one too!

With shopping breaking up our travels between the sights, we then went to the Augustinermuseum, as I hoped to see some interesting textiles there. There were a few woven friezes, and lots and lots of boring ecclesiastical statues, paintings etc, so we left after I finally found a loo to go to which didn't have a long line (on one of our forays into a department store, we went up to the food court for Tim to get a coffee, where he was told off for not having it on a tray, and I would have gone to the loos there but the line was so long that holding on until I got to another loo wasn't going to be any more of a stretch than waiting in the line until it was my turn. And I would have had to pay for the privilege too - you leave a tip for the woman who supposedly cleans them - though I think they often seem to spend more time guarding their plate of tips rather than cleaning). We did a bit more shopping and then got the tram back to get ready to go back in for our meeting at 5pm.

Once we got back in to town we loitered around for a bit killing time until 5pm. We were meeting two German academics, neither of whom we had any idea what they looked like, nor how old they were. Tim stood at the door (me behind him) looking around, until one of them asked him if he was Tim. They were very nice and friendly and Tim talked to them for about 2 hours, and they were very positive about his research topic. At the end I mentioned that I was hoping to find an art shop to get some paint brushes. Hubert, one of the academics, thought he knew where one was, close to our tram stop, so he walked with us to where he vaguely thought it was. He couldn't find it so we said goodbye and then he raced back a few minutes later to say he'd found it. It turned out that we'd noticed it earlier in the day (though not realising it was an art shop) and it was also next door to a wool shop that I wanted to visit. Neither was open (though some shops stay open until 8pm) so we set it aside to visit the next day. I still have an abiding memory of two workers from a nearby florist climbing up a ladder to attach a moss and berry covered creation to a street lamp, just outside these shops. The creation was just so European compared to any floral arrangements we have in Australia.

We then went in search of dinner. We wandered around for a while, determined not to resort to McDonalds or Burger King (which seemed to be quite big in Germany) until we found a nice little Italian restaurant. While we ate our pasta we emptied our heads of all the info Tim had learnt at the meeting (they spoke in English for my benefit) and then we caught the tram back, for bed by 10pm.

And two more things: (1) it was supposed to snow today but it didn't, and (2) the man who gave us directions to the youth hostel who is part of the folk dancing group keeps inviting us to have a go at the dancing. We keep looking busy!

Hermeskeil - Freiburg

We had breakfast with the leftover Americans and the only other group now staying at the hostel - some Germans. Obviously 8am was too early for the Americans as almost all of them came down to breakfast in their pyjamas!

After we had packed up we loaded everything into the car. There had been no new snow overnight and there was no ice so for once there was nothing to clean off the car. On the way to the express way we bought diesel without any dramas, though we realised that we had no idea how much the tank holds. We had an uneventful trip, and I even remembered passing the army/airforce base just near Mannheim from our last trip in 2002. We stopped at a roadhouse near Mannheim for some morning tea, where there was also a motel. We counted at least 6 Avon cars in the carpark, so there must have been some sort of Avon convention on.

On reaching the turn off to Freiburg we once again had no idea how to get to the youth hostel, so we just drove and drove. None of it made any sense in relation to the map we had of the inner city of Freiburg in our guidebook. We went through 'town' and ended up in suburbia, and were just looking for somewhere to ask for directions when we saw a sign for a youth hostel. We didn't know if there was more than one youth hostel in Freiburg, but thought that at least if we got to the wrong one they should be able to give us directions to the right one! We followed the signs, but ended up on a bikepath/footpath which lead over a river, but certainly wasn't wide enough for cars! A kind man stopped and told us how to get there on roads but said it was a common mistake! When we finally got to the hostel it was the right one.

It is a very big hostel, but for some reason the kitchen doesn't cater for lunch or dinner unless you order and pre-pay for it over an hour beforehand, so we ordered and paid for dinner. They also still had us down as a reservation for 3 people, even though Tim had emailed them the change in numbers, so our room turned out to fit 4 and is the largest, nicest room we have had so far. As we had missed lunch (and it wouldn't have been pre-ordered anyway) we went for a walk to find something. We walked along beside the river for a while, and then decided to head for the main road. We found what passes for a shopping centre in Germany and had lunch in a Turkish kebab joint. They were the strangest kebabs we have ever had - on pita bread, with lettuce, tomato, red cabbage, yoghurt sauce and some other strange things, plus meat and chilli flakes. We walked back and Tim did some washing and I knitted until dinner. Dinner was ok, (dessert was a Milky Way!), and the only drink on offer was a barrel of raspberry tea. The kitchen staff thought it strange when Tim asked for some water to drink. After dinner we resisted the urge to watch "Bruce Almighty" (in German) which the hostel was showing, and went to bed at about 9pm.

A large group of folkdancers is staying at the hostel, and as well as dancing classes, they have a variety of craft activities too. The man who directed us to the youth hostel is with them.