alright, we're going to freiburg... remember, of course from the earlier post the you read, bruce and hana both studied abroad in this beautiful town and is where they met. enough of a reason to go for me (plus, i've been there twice so i have my own memories).
we woke up bone-early on friday, sometime between 6-7, and were on the road to freiburg in hana's car. freiburg is in baden-wutenburg which is the nei
ghboring "state" in germany from where we're staying in bayern. freiburg is very west of us and it would take us about 5 hours to get there. hana drove as she knows all of the rules of the autobahn, i talked to her, and bruce slept in the back... the whole time. it was a decently pretty drive as we went through a ton of farm land in the very southern part of germany, drove past the bodensee (which is a large lake that touches switzerland, austria, and germany that bruce rode his bike around), and into and through much of the schwarzwald (black forest to you americans) where freiburg lives. nice.we arrived and, for the first time on our trip, we kind of had an agenda. time for the "stroll down memory lane" which would come in 9 parts, take more than 24 hours, and get us lost twice. awesome.
first, second and third- hana's apartment, the school, and bruce's apartment. we drove into town directly to the school where both bruce and hana studied. we parked and walked around, first by hana's old apartment which apparently is a new color. we kinda looked at it from the outside... cool. luckily, because it was so hot, hana's apartment is on one side of the campus, so we didn't have to go far as we walked in and out of some of the buildings, observed some protest about soldiers in the classroom by some of the students, and noticed that all of the graffiti on the walls hasn't changed much... perhaps it is a bit more updated. it's not a very pretty campus... bu
t, were weren't there to take wedding photos, this was just to spark some of the aging memories of 7-years ago. yes, it was as they remembered... and as i remembered, as i had seen bruce perform there briefly on my last visit back while he studied there. cool. off to bruce's old place (pictured)... which is closer to the town. we found his place, parked, walked around it, remembered, and were finished. it was kind of neat as bruce and hana talked about all of the memories that the have- riding bikes to and from eachother's place late at night, different people that lived in their buildings, etc. we were all glad to visit these three places.but now, more importantly, eating... which is the 4th and 5th part of our journey. the döners couldn't come fast enough. we walked from bruce's apartment into town and made a bee line to his old döner shop. not much had changed except, to our surprise, their normal döner is now a döner kebab and not a dürüm döner. ok... yeah, big deal, right? well... it kind of is. see, to the döner aficionado, the type of döner is very important. the dürüm is basically a wrapped döner, almost like a burrito but with delicious döner meats, vegetables and sauce. the kebab is more like a gyro to the american... which, is boring and much more messy... delicious still, but not the same. well, you used to be able to walk into this place and say, "3 döners bitte", and you would get 3 dürüms... well, that is now different, and we got 3 kebabs. we still ate the death out of them as they are the best thing anyone could ever eat except for maybe landjäger. yummy lunch. after our meal, it was naturally time for dessert. we walked to bruce's second preferred place called portifino eis cafe. the german's don't really have their own ice cream style- actually, it seems that the entire continent of europe benefits from the italian's ability to make delicious desserts and coffee. as you can tell by the name, this is an italian ice cream shop, full of beautifully decorated choices of gelati, coffees, antipasta, and alcohols. really, it is a splendid place. hana ate stratiacella , i had a bowl of amaretto eis, and bruce had limoncello eis. it was perfect.
the 6th part wasn't super exciting but necessary as we needed to walk through the town and see all of the other places- bahnhof, movie theater, the church, and whatnot. we split up from hana for a bit as she searched for an old friend... bruce and i sat down, bruce fell asleep, and we rested for a bit. see... not super exciting.
after an already long day (remember our car ride), we decided to get out of the city center and go relax by the river (part 7) that runs next to and partially thr
ough freiburg. it is called the dreisam and is bascially a large creek with rocks to throw and on which to sit...which is what we did... for quite a while. again, we all have a bunch of memories here and it was exactly what we needed. we talked, i took a nap, we played rock throwing games... the water was crisp and cold, it was very refreshing. part 8- the adventure takes a wrong turn, literally.
*flashback: freiburg sits in the middle of the black forest surrounded by rolling mountains. one such mountain (the second highest in the black forest at almost 1200 m) is called hinterwaldkopf. bruce has hiked it a million times as has hana. i had hiked it myself twice. even my mom has hiked it (well done mom). we couldn't go to freiburg and not hike this mountain... it was kind of like bruce and hana's "old stomping grounds".
we're off! we stop by a penny markt wannabe, bought our things (this lox as well), drove to where we would start, packed our bags and tent, and didn't look back... at least for awhile. it is kind of confusing and it had been seven years, i really do understand. you see, one can see hinterwaldkopf from distance... as it is the mountain amongst all the other mountains with a bald head (no trees on top). but when you are at the bottom, it is hard to remember which other mountains the bald head lies behind.
what did we care... we've done it before. we start. it is about 7. we hike for about 30 minutes and i'm not recognizing a thing, but bruce is still pretty confident that we should just keep going up and that we'd be fine. we find a path that has been cut by some ridiculous machine that can climb a 45 degree angle and decide to painfully follow it straight up the mountain. the gravel path turned into grass, into underbrush, into bushes, and into finally the amazon jungle. we were a bit lost. as we came to our senses, we took a quick break to "reevaluate" how we were going to get to the top... now that darkness was approaching and we weren't quite sure where to go.
this is our first "thank the lord" moment- when we stopped, i turned around to ask bruce something when in front of me, at what seemed like 10 miles away, was this giant bully of a mountain towering way over us... looking almost as if it were sticking out its tounge. hinterwaldkopf- we were climbing the wrong mountain.
crap. now what? it is 8:15. we think we have an hour of light left (and no, we don't have flashlights) and decide that if we go now, we can make it (yeah right). we book down this mountain and through a very steep cow pasture to a road in the valley between the two mountains. there was a house there...
our second "thank the lord" moment- there was a nice man out of his house with his dog and as we were about to trek through his land, bruce and hana decided to ask him if he could guide us toward hinterwaldkopf. he told us it would take 2 1/2 hours from there and explained the way. but because he was so nice, he then offered to drive us most of the way up. he easily cut 2 hours off of the hike that "would not have been". we talked as he drove us and dropped us off... we were going to make it. (here's a view from the last part of the hike.)
we ate, cleaned up, packed our stuff again and, because we still had to drive back to flintsbach, decided no to hang out too long on the top of a mountain. we still had to hike down, but surely, it wouldn't take too long... it's down, and we know where we're going.
well... kind of. you see... sometimes, the problem with things that are familiar is that you start to believe that they are more familiar than they actually are. we were all guilty of this. as we hiked down we decided to take a different route, one that we recognized.
finally, we knew where we were going and we hiked down towards our car. we'd be there in no time. not exactly... after taking a few turns on trails/paths/roads that we thought we recognized or whatever, we finally made it to the bottom, but just on the other side of the mountain. we had no idea where exactly we were and, more importantly, were we had left the car. and it was about to rain. it is pretty funny at this point... hana even joked that we looked like a gypsy family carrying all of our stuff through town. we walked toward the close town of kirchzarten, knowing that if we reached it and got on the main road we could find our car. hana's gps (which she had so smartly not left in her car) helped us with by-foot directions. need i say more, after another hour of cutting through town, turning around, getting rained on, and walking on the side of the road, we made it back to our car... 3 1/2 hours later.
ok... our last and final destination, part 9 of our long adventure (i do apologize for it being so long, but it needed to cover both days)- schlappen. schlappen was bruce's favorite place to eat while at freiburg and they have the best spaghetti bolognese in the world. it's not even an italian place, it's more like a beer pub, but it is fantastic. we all ordered it, with beer, and an order of flammkuchen (which is like flat bread pizza). satisfaction, just like we had remembered it. we topped our trip off with coffee at portofino and left freiburg, driving through downpour all the way back to flintsbach where it is still raining. we all showered and were to tired to eat.
tomorrow pavel comes (hana's boyfriend) before they head off to italy for the rest of their vacation. i'm going to sleep... we have church in the morning.
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