Freiburg

Guten Tag, I hope you enjoyed the train ride from Konstanz (2 changes) to arrive in the pleasant university town of Freiburg.

Freiburg is very close to the French border and lies at the southern end of the Schwarzwald (Black Forest). If you look back a couple of posts, you'll see a map showing exactly where it is. This is what Freiburg looks like.

We stayed with Julian and Jana in their swish apartment with its comfy IKEA fold-out couch. Julian finds it a bit small by NZ standards (well, NZ not living in an apartment standards) but it is actually pretty cool, quite a bit of space for a one bedroom place and it has a BALCONY! Ah, if only...

One of the many outdoor activities you can enjoy on Freiburg's doorstep is mountain biking in the Schwarzwald. Here is Sylvia on Jana's new bike - before Jana even got to use it! Fortunately she didn't write it off.

We went out for dinner one night at the Kartoffelhaus (potato house), where pretty much all the items on the menu are based on the humble spud.

Sylvia also made a very yummy Schwarzwalden Kirchtorte (Black Forest Gateaux)!

We came across Stefan's Stuntman Supershow on the streets of Freiburg. We watched, unsure what was going on, as Stefan rode a bike through a (polystyrene) brick wall and other such feats of superhuman strength and bravery. Jana got to throw marshmallow chocolate eggs at him too, though had to pay a euro for the privledge. It turned out that it was Stefan's stag do (not a protest against something, though apparently it's often hard to tell the difference).

While we really enjoyed staying with Julian and Jana, we had planned to do a trip away somewhere for at least a night from Freiburg. Unfortunately the weather didn't really suit those plans so we limited ourselves to day trips. We visited Triberg (below) which claims to have the tallest waterfall in Germany. I guess it depends on your definition, but it seems to me to be cheating when it's in fact a long cascade! It was very nice though, and the train journey on the Black Forest Railway was worthwhile in itself.