Keri Goes Abroad: freiburg

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Leaving Deutschland

The map in my room, with pins in all of the places I'd visited.

A little over one year after we spent our 4th of July in Paris, and I am finally blogging about my last month abroad. Don't worry though - I have quite enough pictures from the past year that I can post them all summer long and potentially be just as late writing about my next adventure, which will be teaching English as a Fulbright scholar in Salzburg, Austria.

After a long, sad train ride back to Freiburg, I resumed writing my Hausarbeits (translation: giant paper that acts as your one and only grade, which must be turned in by the end of the semester before abroad students can go home). I had two to write and neither was anywhere close to being done. The majority of the month of July was spent either researching, writing, or pretending that I did not have to do either of those things.

This picture explains everything you need to know about how I felt toward my Hausarbeits.

One of the things that I had yet to do was explore the Schwarzwald. When I told my coworkers, they insisted that we take a hike. Hiking in Germany is a funny sport. It generally involves ambling with walking sticks on fairly narrow paths, stumbling upon a mountainside hut, and drinking loads of beer. Naturally, this was the kind of hiking that we did. The path through the woods was beautiful, though wet, and inclined gradually. It sprinkled off and on, but we were much too hardcore to stop hiking. After an hour of walking, we found the elusive mountainside hut and stopped for lunch. Of course there was a party going on (for no particular reason), and we joined in on the celebration. Each of us had a beer and a free piece of cake before hiking back down the mountain and driving home.

The Isle of Innisfree staff during our hiking excursion

Views of the Schwarzwald and our path

Cows!

My dirty hiking boots. I'm glad I got the opportunity to use them!

A few days later and it was my last weekend in Freiburg. The housekeeper of my building was only around on Tuesday and Thursdays, so although I wasn't leaving until Saturday, I had to vacate my room on Thursday morning. And in the most German of ways, we had to make appointments for precisely 8, 8:10, 8:20, etc, to give our key back to the housekeeper. I stayed up all night long packing and cleaning - literally everything was spotless. By the time my appointment rolled around at 8:10 I was exhausted. The housekeeper examined everything, pronounced it clean, and escorted me out to the curb. I called a taxi to take me into the center of town where I had booked a hotel for two nights, unloaded my luggage into storage, and returned to a cafe to say goodbye to Kiersten. After a few tears and assurances that we would see each other again (which we will!), I stumbled, exhausted, back to my hotel room to write my papers. I don't really remember writing my papers, though I do have a vivid image of sitting on the bed with my computer on my lap and papers strewn in a circle around me, searching frantically for quotes that would turn my paper into the 12 pages it needed to be. Somehow I put it all together with a few hours to spare, and passed out promptly. Unfortunately I awoke an hour after I had intended to, and still needed to turn in my papers. Things close promptly in Germany, and I had forgotten that classes do not take place on Friday. After running around the city for an hour - copying, printing, stapling and placing everything neatly into envelopes, I discovered that not a single door to the University was open. I had NO idea how inter-campus mail worked, and had visions of my epic papers landing in some obscure mailbox where they would be found years later, filled with cobwebs. In a panic, I returned to the hotel and bought outrageously priced stamps, found addresses for my professors, and mailed my papers from the hotel. Then I promptly fell asleep for the rest of the night.

I spent the next day wandering Freiburg, taking pictures, saying bye to sights and familiar tram stops, and ended up in the pub one last time. All of the regulars wanted to buy me shots (bad idea, I know) which resulted in me being a little tipsy and a little later getting home than I had hoped, especially when I had to catch a train at 6 in the morning.

I made my train (thank god) and made it down to the Zurich airport on time. Unfortunately, I ended up in the wrong terminal. Two flights going to London Heathrow left at the same time. I only discovered this as I was boarding the wrong plane. The nice lady at the wrong terminal radioed my correct plane so that I could run to catch it, but did not notify security. If anyone loves following rules more than the Germans, it is the Swiss (Bill Bryson will back me up on this claim). Regardless of the fact that I'd already been scanned, they made me stand in line AGAIN, along with hundreds of Americans, to get to the correct terminal. Thank goodness I spoke German. I think it saved me as I was trying to explain my way through the lines. They sent me through as quickly as possible, and I sprinted to my gate (naturally the last one in the terminal) where a flight attendant was waiting for me. They had held the plane for an extra 20 minutes just so I could get on. Again, I think the German saved me - I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have held the plane for any frustrated Americans demanding to board in English.

I made it through Heathrow with no problems, fell asleep on the plane, and landed in Boston (still exhausted) but excited to see Dan. The next day we would head down to Cape Cod for our next adventure!

Freiburg really is lovely

Memorial plaques like these dot the street where Jewish families used to live. Many of them list the name of the family and say 'murdered' underneath with their last known location.

Sean and Ben at Isle of Innisfree on my last night.

Pouring Guinness - a skill I now possess!

Biggie (left) and Werner (right) - our favorite, and craziest, regulars.

From left: Sean, Ben, Biggie, Werner and John, saying bye to me.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Freiburg With the Family

The infamous tram route that Dad turned down

Back to Freiburg! Since I arrived, I've wanted the family to come visit - to see where I live and how I live. They got a pretty thorough taste, too, though Mom and Dad didn't get to ride the straßenbahn (the tram) which is a pretty integral part of my day-to-day activities. They did, however, have a unique encounter with the straßenbahn. Dad's directional skills are not exactly among his greatest strengths, and even with Jill - the GPS system - telling him exactly where to go, he ended up turning onto the no-cars-allowed street filled with straßenbahn tracks, and then went down another to try and fix the problem. I'm so glad the trams weren't there at that moment. I'm also glad I was not in the car. I think Mom and Dad both had the trams ring their bells at them, too, for standing in the way. This ringing is not a cute little 'ding' either, but a frantic 'BBBRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNGGGGG' that informs you to 'GET OUT OF MY WAY BEFORE I HIT YOU.'

We got back to Freiburg on a Tuesday evening so that I could go to class on Wednesday, and then a meeting right afterwards. Before class I tried to show the family around a little. We went to the Muensterplatz for wurst and fresh fruit, to the bookstore, then to the IES building and my university buildings. After that, I pointed them in the direction of the Dreisam Cafe, a cafe/biergarten right on the river, and headed off to class. Of course, it immediately starts to pour. Cats and dogs, hail, you name it - it fell from the sky. Actually, it took a little while for the storm to build up its ferocity. I had just gotten out of class and was on my way to a meeting, but we couldn't actually go anywhere because the wind was blowing bikes over into our path. As soon as my meeting was done, though, it cleared up. I took everyone to Isle of Innisfree, my pub, for dinner. There we were serenaded by the karaoke singers, one of whom did a beautiful rendition of 'Black Welwet' (or Black Velvet, if you're not German). My other favorite was the boy who can't carry a tune in a bucket, but seems to think that the louder he sings, the better he is. He's a regular on karaoke nights. Lucky us.

After the pub we parted ways - the boys and I headed off to Schlappen (a student pub) while the parents went to the hotel. At Schlappen we ordered a beer boot, like the kind made legendary by the movie 'Beerfest'. 2.5 lieters of beer in a boot-shaped glass called a Stiefel. Only in Germany. Well, maybe frat parties too. Mostly I wanted to show the boys that they do, in fact, exist. While sitting there with our boot, an Irish guy came up to the table and asked if he could take a picture of our crazy drink. We ended up chatting for the rest of the night with him and his two friends, then taking off to make the last tram home.

The next day we wandered the city some more. The boys bought souveniers, Mom and Dad had their incidents with the tram ringing at them, and we went grocery shopping. I took the family to the top of the local mountain, the Schlossberg, to get some of the spectacular views. After that, we headed to the Winefest that had started that night. Freiburg is in the area of Germany known for its white wines, and all the little towns in the area have festivals showcasing the wine. You buy a glass that you carry with you for the rest of the night, and go around sampling the food and drink from local vendors. We spent a little while there, enjoying a good oompah band, then headed back to Schlappen for another round of the beer boot (this time with the parents).

The boys, looking at the karaoke list.

Typical

The boot

When you get to a certain point, an air bubble forms in the toe of the boot, making all of the beer splash into your face if you're not careful. Pat experienced this firsthand, evidenced by the following pictures.