Michelle's host family from her earlier exchange to Germany had invited the two of us down to Freiburg for the Easter holidays, and, not having family in Germany to visit, we accepted. We had both had a wonderful time the last time we had been just before Christmas (link) and so were looking forward to another nice vacation. Relaxation was one goal, but the other was to see the Black Forest and do some hiking.
We arrived just after supper time, although Sonja's family still had food waiting for us. We sat down and talked with the Biecheles (Sonja's family) but unfortunately Sonja was away studying at the time. She had exams in a couple of days, and so would be quite busy during the weekend. We prepared our plan for the morning and headed to bed.
The next day we borrowed a couple of bikes and headed into the city along the same path that Michelle and Sonja had used to get to high school years before. We walked through the market, bought some fresh cider which was fantastic, bought some flowers for the Biecheles and wrote a few postcards. Freiburg is a very nice city to spend an afternoon, lots of small shops in old brick buildings, along streets which all have tiny streams of water flowing through them. Between the sidewalk and the road along most streets downtown, there is a little gutter, although more like a tiny canal, which carries water along through the streets. It is supposed to create a cooling effect during the warm summer months.
In the afternoon we headed with Sonja's parents to the Kaiserstuhl (Emperor's throne), a collection of volcanic hills just south of Freiburg. The view is great from the hills, looking down into the little villages that dot the valleys. We also got to walk through vineyards, as the sides of the hills there yield some of Germany�s finer wines. On the way back to Freiburg we stopped in Breisach to see its large church, which sits at the top of a hill and overlooks the city. Outside the church and older man stopped us to tell us the story of a ceasefire during Christmas in the late 1940s, and how he heard the church bells ringing across the city. Inside the church is a fantastically intricate carving surrounded with leaves. All made from sandstone and dating back to the sixteenth century.
In the evening, Sonja emerged from her studies, and we went out to meet one of the girls' former classmates. We had coffee in a very cute cafe, but didn't stay long as the cafe apparently was having a heavy metal night, and despite it's quiet decor played non-stop Metallica, and very loudly.
Sunday morning was gorgeous weather, and we went for a long hike with the Biecheles for a couple of hours through the hills near their house, and passed the vineyards where they ad bought the wine we had had with dinner last night. They get it directly from the source, which I thought was pretty cool. It was also great just to get some exercise. My desk job is really pretty stagnant. I really don't have any reason to move around during the day, and I�m' getting pretty excited about leaving office work in a few months.
Monday morning, we got up and prepared to hit the Schwarzwald (Black Forest). We had already borrowed a map of hiking trails, and a pass for the train from the Biecheles, and now needed to make a short trip south to the Feldberg, a large snow-capped hill, to start our hike. It had been really hot the day before in Freiburg, almost 20 degrees and bright sun, but as our train and later our bus snaked its way up the Feldberg, we realized that it wasn't going to be so much a summer day as it would be a late winter one up here. People were still skiing down the Feldberg as we started our walk up it. The snow was pretty patchy with bits of grass showing through here and there, but it was certainly not summer weather. It was 5 degrees out, but that still hadn't managed to melt enough snow from the paths so that we could take our original trail. Instead we settled for a slightly less direct route that would bring us over the hill and down into a valley on the other side. From here we could walk to the next town over, and hopefully catch a train back to Freiburg in time to make our connection to Cologne. We huffed our way up the hill at a fairly sharp angle, and finally reached the top which offered a view for miles and miles of the Black Forest, and even over the border and into Switzerland.
We crunched along through the snow for an hour, stopping on a fallen tree to eat our sandwiches for lunch. and then continued on to the valley. we took a picture from a path that had a view of the hill from where we had started, and congratulated ourselves on how far we had come. By the time we ended up in the next little town we were beat.
