Germany and Germans

I spent the last weekend visiting Germany and our dear friend the German assistant who left Verdun before the rest of us.

Wow, so much happened...I'll try to condense it.  I have a lot of thinking to do about my whole experience as an assistant and this trip didn't make it any easier. Neither did last weekend.

Anyway. we arrived in Freiburg on Friday.  We hung out for a bit and went to a disco at night.  I'm not much of a disco fan, but it was alright.  The music was all in German (of course!) but they were traditional tunes remixed as rock songs.  Too funny!

The next day, we ate a HUGE Bavarian breakfast.  Afterall, we were in the Black Forest.  There, breakfast includes beer.  No joke, Markus drank a huge pint with his, I had only a few sips.  We ate special sausages, AMAZING mustard, and pretzels.  Rosie has all the pictures of this, unfortunately.

 Then, we walked around town.  It was so pretty.  Well, I'll let you be the judge of that.

 The Cathedral.  It was too big to take a picture of the whole thing.

 Halfway through the day, we stopped at a cafe and had these coffees with vanilla ice cream in them.  An Italian invention, so I'm told.  Rock on, Italians.

 

When I shall think of Freiburg thereafter, I shall remember this particular clock tower which used to be a prison.  Jonas told us that there is a plaque on it that commemorates the last witch that was burned in Germany. True story.

 In this picture you can clearly see the little drainage water thing that Freiburg is most famous for.  There are literally little streams all over the city. In one square, people were cooling off with their feet in it (and a little rack designed to hold their beers in the water to keep them cold.  German ingenuity!

Apparently, though, if you are a visitor and you accidentally trip and fall into one, you will marry a Freibuger.  I didn't fall in, FYI, but I was sorely tempted to "accidentally" trip after I met a certain German-Italian student.  :)

 In the town, there is a small mountain you can climb.  On the mountain, lest you should get thirsty on the climb up, there are beer gardens.  We went two days in a row, it was so much fun.  The first day, we went all the way to the top.  At the top, there is a tower you can climb.  Since everyone else was too tired (or too slow, however you want to look at it), just me and Jonas went up to take pictures.  To be quite honest, the view isn't really worth the climb.  You do it just to impress your friends with your stair climbing skills (learned from living on the third floor).  Trust me people, there is a stair-less way to get to the base of the tower that we would've taken if I had been calling the shots.

 On Sunday, we all went to Mass at the cathedral. It was super cool to go with all my new friends.  Mass in German is super cool.  For the hymns, they had a little digital screen with the song number and verses.  So German!!  Afterwards, we went back to the beer garden for lunch.  I ate schnitzel. Yum!

 So there you have it, Germany.  Goodbye new German friends!! (and German- Italian, and Spanish, and English). 

Oh, you know how in France, pigeons pick at baguette?  Well, in Germany they eat sausages and bretzels.  No joke.  As Maria and Jonas said, they're just waiting for some beer.

Germany: land of pretzels, beer, TONS of meat, beer gardens, and sunshine.