We awoke to another great breakfast, this time prepared cheifly by Christof and Simon (Nicole and Peter being away on their excursion), packed our things and headed down the station to head to Freiburg. We arrived early in the afternoon, and Christof took us up to his apartment. Three floors up, with a rack of shoes outside the door that would make one envisage a family of 10 living there, it was a nice place with a wood style of floating foor, a nice kitchen, three bedrooms and a living area. After checking emails and Simon cooking up a quick pasta lunch, with artichoke and anchovies (the latter of which I politely declined), we headed out into Freiburg city to see what was what.
Unfortunately the weather didn't seem to want to cooperate too well with us, and before long it was gently spitting away. After catching the tram to the outskirts of the black forest that Freiburg borders, we started to trek through the not-so-dense forest area, through a winding path and then up a fairly steep hill which opened up into a beautiful grassy area that could see over the whole city of Freiburg. We marvelled at this, and took the requisite photos before piling our stuff in a heap and throwing the frisbee around in the swift mountain air; an activity not without its peril, especially close to a large bunch of blackberry bushes. An hour or so later we decided to start to make our way back down to the city, but not before a father with a couple of his kids had decided to fly a kite in the same general area. The wind by this point was extremely strong, and I'm surprised the kite withstood the pressure applied to its structure. It was hovering in the air for sometime, at which point we noticed a real hawk in the sky not too far off, seemingly hovering in the strong wind also. Edging its way closer, the hawk eventually took a swoop at the kite, before the kites mad flutterings in the air sent the hawk quickly out of the area, no doubt terribly confused at the strange actions of this unusual bird.
Making our way down to the city, the rain that had lightly peppered us earlier in the day began to make its presence a lot more pronounced, and as we made our way into town more and more swiftly, we became increasingly more damp as the minutes drew on. By the time we'd actually made it back to the city proper, my hair, upper shirt and lower pants were thoroughly soaked. We decided to take refuge in a mexican restaurant until things eased off a bit, and treated ourselves to the strangest nacho's I've ever seen (nacho's without much cheese or salsa, and no gaucamole? Insanity!), some other corn chips and dip that were quite nice, and I ordered a mexican coffee. Thijs had ordered a 'sweet coffee', which arrived in a little espresso cup with some cream on top and a shot of kahlua added to the contents. My mexican coffee arrived in a large glass tumbler, also with cream, kahlua and tequila added to the mix for a good right wake up call. The stuff was pretty ordinary, and I would advise my more eager readers to reconsider adding tequila to their coffee in most circumstances.
Eventually the rain died down to a reasonable level and we started to make our way back to Christof's place. This involved walking through the (empty) market area, past the main cathedral. The cathedral was pretty awesome, as it was still lightly raining and the various gargoyles looked as though they were spewing water onto the ground below. I spied one particular gargoyle that was fashioned to look like a person hanging their butt out and mooning the world. An image can be seen here, but I must admit that it was much more hilarious seeing it in person.
By the time we'd arrived back at Christof's place his first roommate, Natalie had arrived home, and after introductions we set about solving her problem of a rumbling belly by cooking up yet another pasta dish with tomato and tuna. Not long after, Christof's other roommate, Regina, arrived and we all whiled away the evening over a few bottles of wine and vermouth.
That time of night arrived, and we packed it in. The following day we slept in until around 10AM and headed out to check the market whilst it was open. It was primarily a food market, with several "Wurst" or sausage stands, filling the area with the pleasant aroma of a good German barbecue. There was one stand selling at least 10 different types of mushrooms, including truffles, and many other vendors selling all manner of meats and vegetables. We didn't have a lot of time to check it out carefully, as we were to meet Christof who had headed out to a physics conference to help with the organisation, for lunch.
He took us to a nice asian restaurant, which was a great change of pace, as I'd not had a good asian meal since I'd arrived in Europe. What they didn't tell me is that while I was visiting the gents, Natalie had arrived with a couple of her friends from uni and they'd all switched tables before I'd gotten back. After a minute or two of bemusement I eventually found them out the front and settled down to eat my spicy satay chicken with rice, which was delectable. It was at this point that Thijs had to leave us back to Holland, and after saying goodbye to him we made our way to the train station to head to Titisee, in the Black Forest.
The place was extremely touristy, with every shop selling a variety of cuckoo clocks, various other souveniers, a few types of schnapps and other liquor. One shop even had quite a large christmas section, selling the once a year festivity decorations all year round. It was, however, an extremely quaint little village, and we delighted in taking a boat out into the main lake. Unfortunately we didn't find out that this was a pedal powered boat until we'd paid and got in the thing, and this particular pedal boat wasn't terribly efficient. We didn't get much speed up for the effort it required, but we were able to slowly paddle out to the middle of the lake and get some nice photos. Taking the rare opportunity, we were sure to announce several pirate references and star trek jokes, with Paul shouting "Ahoy!" to one boat of Germans who replied with a blank stare that would kill puppies.
After finishing our boat ride and taking a few minutes to relax our stressed leg muscles, we wandered through a few more of the souvenier shops and then made our way into the forest itself. It is true to its name, in that the canopy is quite dense of a certain type of pine tree. The pinecones aren't what you'd expect back home, but are a lot thinner and longer, and litter the ground everywhere. We walked for a while, found some good scenery photos and eventually made our way to a beer cafe near the top of one of the hills. Whilst I was in Italy, Paul was able to do most of the talking in Italian when it came to getting a meal or a drink, and I took the opportunity to flex my very basic German knowledge to order us a round of beers as we sat down. My "Drei große bier, bitte!" was replied with an acknowledgement, and then a rabble of German which I had no hope of understanding. Unfortunately the waitress didn't understand English at all, and after a bunch of linguistic gymnastics, she enlisted the assistance of a gentlemen at the table opposite, who informed us that she wanted to know if we would like cake also. Deciding it was time for a snack, I walked in with her and selected a few different types. One of them was black forest cake of course, a strawberry one and another I can't describe. She brought them out and we enjoyed cake and beer, something we all agreed was an odd combination, overlooking a very picturesque part of the German countryside. The conversation continued for some time, and we got to discussing the limits of my German vocabulary, at which point I informed them that I'd been told the only thing I need to know in German is how to order a beer, "Ein große bier, bitte!". Something we didn't realise was that a German lady in her fifties behind us must have been listening, as this remark caused her to roar with laughter, and after she regained her composure to add "It's true! It's true!". I think especially so in Bavaria.
We trekked back down through the forest, stopping for Simon and Paul to play with Simon's tricked out camera and tripod to get some swish photos, and made our way back into one of the cuckoo clock shops. Paul was intent on purchasing one of these items, and in fact ended up buying two, having them delivered straight to Melbourne. One of the interesting things we found out is that this particular store actually had a service center in Melbourne, which made the two year warranty actually mean something valuable!
After making our way back through the town to the station, we met back up with Christof and went into the convention center where his conference was being held to attend one of the public lectures given by a nobel prize winner in chemistry. His talk consisted of how global warming works, with the last third dealing with a novel idea of injecting large amounts of sulphur into the upper atmosphere to reflect light and cool the planet, should (and he stressed this was a last resort measure) current attempts at reducing global warming fail. The whole thing was a bit dull really, as his presentation wasn't terribly well done, and he essentially just read large chunks of text off his slides. However, the man does have a nobel prize so respect was deserved.
We woke ourselves up by the end of that, went back to Christof's place to gather some bbq supplies and headed out to a nearby park where Natalie and the friends she had brough to lunch were getting the portable unit fired up. Christof had chosen some great steaks and sausages, and after throwing the frisbee around for a while, we all enjoyed a great meal, including an interesting dish that involves wrapping up some fetta cheese with onions and tomato and sitting that on the hotplate for a while. I broke out the couple of bottles of schnapps I'd bought from the black forest, including one very nice honey based one, a peach based liquor and another bottle of some horrid stuff that just tasted like fuel. Christof, Simon and Natalie took to wrestling in the grass, at one point simon ended up half in the creek by the park and also getting slid along the nice green grass by his butt as Paul dragged him around. I felt sorry for those jeans.
A couple hours after the sun went down, and we went back to Christof's place, shortly after Regina had arrived home from her lab duties. She is currently studying some form of cell based biology and often gets stuck in the laboratory waiting for things to happen. She quickly devoured the remaining salad that we'd brought back with us, and then joined Paul and I in finishing off the schnapps (except the fuel stuff, I politely left that as a gift in Christof's apartment), whilst we trawled through a bunch of youtube videos and giggled the night away.
The next day after a bit of a sleep in, we checked out the market in a bit more detail with Christof and a couple of his friends, grabbed some wursts for lunch and parted once more. Simon, Paul and myself then hiked up the 300 odd steps to the top of the tower in the cathedral. Walking up that many stairs wasn't the biggest problem, as much as you had to contend with the people walking back down the stairs on a spiral staircase that was really only built for one. After a lot of squeezing and apologising, and then being informed once we had nearly reached the top that there is actually stair climbing etiquette, which states that those going up should stick to the inside, and those going down to the out, we finally made it to the top. It offered quite a nice close vista of Freiburg and the market below. We briefly checked out the church bells hanging slightly above from where we were, the largest weighing in at a whopping 7 tons. We squeezed our way back down the stairs and decided it was the right time to go get a thank you gift for Christof and his folks.
After a bit of walking and a couple asks for directions, we found ourselves downstairs in a very nice little wine shop, where the owner was taking a couple of potential clients through some tasting. Eventually he finished with those and asked what he could do for us, at which point we explained the situation, Paul and Simon (who know far more about wine than I) gave him some indication for what we were looking for. Paul was dead set on getting a particular type of Hungarian wine from the region Tokaji, that specialise in creating a wine cultivated from grapes with a type of noble rot, basically an edible fungus. Simon picked out a nice sounding Australian wine they had, "The Laughing Magpie", from McLaren Vale. After these wines had been selected, the gentlemen then decided to take us through a tasting of a bunch of wines he was keen to share with us, and Paul later on in the day made an excellent observation on the character of this man. Basically he gave us a tasting of 4 different wines (opening one new bottle for the occasion), and after all of this Paul and I selected one of them that we'd like to add to our purchasing collection, at which point the man confessed that he didn't actually have a bottle of the stuff available. Rather than taking us through a tasting with the intent of selling us wine, he simply wanted to share a few of his favorites with us, which we all found very cool, and something Simon attributed to the magic of wine in general, and his reason for being so fond of the beverage.
After leaving the wine store, we headed up the hill behind Freiburg a bit to a beer garden to have a brew, after which Simon left us to go check out some of the physics conference where Christof was at. Paul and I continued up the hill to the top, where a tower offering a different vista of the town was situated, and after some conversation and a few photos we headed back down to the beer garden to continue where we had left off.
We actually hung around the beer garden probably about half an hour too long, and ended up walking on the point of running back through Freiburg to get back to Christof's place to collect our bags. We picked up our belongings, and then had to do the same brisk pace to the station to get to the train back to Basel in time. Running with a 20KG pack on your back isn't terribly fun, and we made it just in time to get ourselves on the train and moving back to Christof's parents place.
Nicole and Peter welcomed us back into their home where we presented them with the gifts we'd procured, and were promptly treated to another incredible dinner of roast chicken legs with rice and a great vegetable dish which I can't describe. Some more of Peter's wine was poured and the whole dish was followed up with a delicious dessert of dried, caramelised figs with mango ice cream and sliced oranges that Christof had prepared. After an hour or so of chatting about wine and things, Christof drove us into Basel city to participate in the celebrations that were happening that evening.
Basel had a public holiday the following day, and to celebrate the people crowd the streets where beer serving tents are set up, and a massive fireworks display starts off at about 11PM. There were thousands of people all over the place drinking and having a good time with different styles of music being played all over the place.
We got ourselves a couple of beers, which took a good 20 minutes of waiting, and found a spot along the Rhine that Christof was convinced would be a good vantage point. Not long after, small long lasting fireworks (more like flames really) started being released into the air attached to helium balloons, and soon the sky was full of bright red flaming stars hovering around which looked incredible. About half an hour later, two large barges lumbered their way up the river and one took position right in front of us, thanks to Christof's good positioning. Some more time passed and suddenly the biggest and longest fireworks show I've ever seen in my life started erupting off the barge in front of us, and also from the other a few hundred meters up the river out of view. The whole show went for 30 solid minutes, and only a few minutes in we were being rained on by spent firework paper, clouds of gunpowder smoke filling the sky amidst some of the most intricate, bright and huge fireworks explosions I've ever experienced. Each burst of light from some of the larger fireworks were accompanied a second or two later by a thundering crack that you could feel in your chest. The whole thing went in stages of different styles of firework, and ended with a whole bunch of floating fireworks being relased into the river and quickly floating downstream. I still don't know how they managed to fit so many fireworks onto even a barge; it was that intense. The crowd erupted in applause after each section, and when it was over everyone tried to disperse back to the beer tents and streets.
This proved a slight problem as the crowd simply didn't move further than a meter a minute for the first few hundred meters. My problem with this was that the couple of pints of beer I'd ingested over the past couple of hours were making their presence known in my bladder, and there didn't seem to be a toilet in sight. About fifteen minutes of pain later and I found a semi-respectable place to relieve myself, much to the taunts and hollering of Paul and Christof.
Finding our way back to the carpack presented us with another 15 minute queue to pay for our ticket, apparently everyone else in Basel decided to use the same carpark joint as we did. This wasn't a major issue, as the grassy park right next to us was presenting us with another, albeit much smaller, fireworks show at either end. It was almost like some kind of jousting match, as one of the fellows at one end would shoot off something, and then the people at the other would try to outdo his performance. The craziest part about it was that one of the guys held onto one firework the whole time it was lit till it went off, and I could have sworn it would have severly burnt him, and when it exploded I thought he was done for. Apparently I was wrong, and this guy actually did know what he was doing, as he calmy walked away as if nothing had happened. I still don't know how that was possible, he must have been wearing a protective glove and jacket of some sort, not to mention the danger he put his face and eyes in.
Christof drove us back to his parents place where we sat around and chatted for a short while and then hit the sack once more. The next day would present us with another exquisitely prepared breakfast, and Christof's father drove us back to the station near their home. Christof and Simon were heading back to Freiburg, Paul to Geneva to check out CERN, and my destination was Munich. There was a round of goodbyes, and not long after I was trying to catch up on some sleep on a train through Ulm to Munich.
The days I was with all of these people were awesome. I've never experienced the kind of hospitality shown to our group by Christof's parents, Nicole and Peter, and there has never been a host and guide as gracious and thoughtful as Christof was during that time. It was really cool to be able to hang out with the same people for a few days and share in a bunch of awesome travelling experiences, and I sincerely hope I have the opportunity to meet up with them again.
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