My first week-end here

All right, my first week-end here is still in progress. As in, it's only Saturday morning and no one else is awake. But I went on today and I think Friday afternoon pretty much counts as part of the week-end.

We finished with classes around 1 (because the other group still had some orientation to do, which we had done the day before) so we got out fairly early. Aymi and I decided we wanted to climb the Münsterturm (the spire in the cathedral), but a lot of people had already done it so it ended up just us. We went back to the dorm, dropped off our stuff, and headed back to Münsterplatz.

This Turm wasn't as bad as others I have climbed (the Kölnerdom/Cologne cathedral is the tallest in Germany, and the stairways in the Duomo in Florence are much harder to manage and you end up on top of the duomo on the outside, which is freaky). So, minus the 418 very steep spiral-staircase style steps (alliteration!!!) it was pretty easy. The view was amazing. You could see almost the whole town (the town is nestled in a valley, and parts of it reach into other valleys which lends an odd shape to Freiburg on any street map), and to the South you could see the foothills of the Alps (that's what I labelled the really big hills anyway. Supposedly we're pretty close). It also helped us, by seeing Freiburg from above, to really understand just how windy the streets are. We're all on the verge of knowing how to navigate, but maps only help so much and we end up walking in circles a lot. It wasn't until I was up there looking down that I got a good idea of just how crazily the town is laid out.

view from Münster

view of Tor from Münster

209 steps up, you can decide to go to the top of the Turm or the belltower. We did both, but only the Turm lended a good view of the city. I wanted to go to the belltower to watch the bells ring, but neither one of us felt like waiting 15 minutes so we left. It only cost one euro (there had got to be a euro key around here somewhere) to go up, so I'll go back and do it again.

me on top of the Turm

Münster cathedral from above

dog in Bächle

After leaving the Münster, Aymi and I decided to put our feet in some Bächlen. We've seen lots of other people walking or playing in them (the latter would be mostly children, though) so we knew it was acceptable, but we figured that we would reek of tourists if we were laughing and taking pictures as we waded in the Bächlen speaking English. So we decided to find a more secluded Bächle, so as not to embarrass ourselves in the town square (we figured every exchange student is allowed a week-end to be a tourist). We went to a street where I remembered there being a little one and not a lot of people (where my first picture of the little Bächle was taken) so we went there. There were a few more people, but it wasn't a big deal. (The water was REALLY COLD!)

me in Bächle

feet in Bächle

Bächle

We then went for some good-old-gilatto, and headed back to the dorm. Dinner turned into a disaster - we decided to go with a few of the girls to get a bite to eat, but on the way out met up with some of the guys, and before you know it had a large group of people with no idea what they were doing. We waited outside Engelbergestrasse dorm for half an hour for some people, and the best part of it was the cat.

cat outside Engelbergestrasse dorm

Eventually it got so confusing that Aymi, Meghan and I just left to do our own thing. We got some Turkish food, then went to the Biergarten. All-in-all it was a decent night in the end.

written by

lost_red_balloon on September 5, 2008 from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

from the travel blog: The European Union

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