We Arrive in Europe – Freiburg For the First Few

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Look forward to more alliteration in upcoming posts.  In this one, I’m gonna see how photos appear!  Exciting, no?.

So, after arriving in Frankfurt in the morning on Tues, Sept 6, we jumped on a German train and headed to Freiburg, the city where I studied my Junior year in college.  This stop was partly to keep the travel manageable (I didn’t think a 8-hour flight followed by a 9-hour train ride all the way to Annecy made sense for the kids) and partly because I really wanted to go back and see the city.

Freiburg is where I learned German, made some great friends, and where I really, REALLY got hooked on international travel.  I was then just a a 20-year-old in a foreign country with no internet, no mobile phones, no texting or Facebook or Skype or anything other than snail mail, and maybe a weekly call I’d make from the post office.  A shared love of beer and German and fun made it easy to make friends and travel and learn a new culture.  It was awesome!

Back to our story.  We arrived safe and sound, and I immediately felt a rush of flashbacks and emotions as I saw the familiar train station sign.  It made me really happy, until I realize we had a TON of stuff to haul from the train station to our apartment.  I can’t wait to see what my wife packed (hmmm…this could be the subject of a future post).

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We started our 3-day stay with some fantastic donor kebabs (an old favorite of mine). Freiburg has a cobblestone old town with a huge church (the Munster) and built in drainage gutters (the bachle) which were pretty far ahead of their medieval times (early 1200s).

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Freiburg used to have a wall running around it with 4 main entrances and clock towers like this one:

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I also noticed the majesty that is the Ganter brewery is still there!

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In the main square, they have a noon-time market with awesome sausages:img_20160908_063452

We took a long hike up to where a huge old castle-like residence used to be (Schlossberg) and saw the city and Munster from above…

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…and then had some delicious gelato to recover.

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Freiburg has changed a lot over the many years since I lived here, but it still reminds me of all the great and horrible, experiences I had here.  All are great memories and have probably set the stage for my desire to move to Europe, even just temporarily.  Plus, the beer is still REALLY, REALLY good here.  I’m not kidding.  The hefeweizen is fantastic.

From our AirBnB in Freiburg, we hauled all our stuff back to the train station and headed to our next stop, Annecy France.

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5 Replies to “We Arrive in Europe – Freiburg For the First Few

  1. Do these images also count as the kids’ “first day of school” pics? They look pretty happy in their new classroom!

  2. So excited to hear more about your adventures via the blog! And yes knitting washcloths is approved by the Como knitting club 🙂

  3. Hi Mike, Jody, Grace, Leo,

    Missing you, but enjoy hearing about all your exciting adventures! I tried posting a comment earlier, but apparently didn’t do it right as I don’t see it on here!

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