Freiburg

From July 17 - 21, A and I were off work again.  We stuck around Kandern this time, going on day trips and returning to the B&B at night.  Our first day, we hiked to the ruins of Sausenburg Castle.  It was A's first time, and I enjoyed returning to it.  We hung out on top of the tower, the breeze blowing the sun's heat away, and could hear a dog barking a mile away.  We were the only ones there, and it was so peaceful.  A storm started to blow in as we walked back, but we managed to make it within ten minutes of the B&B before the rain hit.  It came down in sprinkles and then in torrents.  We kept walking - both of us liked the rain - and I was soaked within two minutes.  It was great.

Our second day off, we took a bus and a train to Freiburg, a city of about 227,500.  Freiburg has an Old City section with lots of old buildings, churches, and statues in it.  The first thing that grabs your attention as you walk into the Old City section is the cathedral tower.  It's called an open lattice structure, and it's one of the few like it in Germany.

We couldn't go into the cathedral because the city was doing some restoration on it.  Scaffolding climbed up several of the walls, and through the towering slit windows, I could see more scaffolding filling the inside.  

We walked around more of the Old City area.  We saw the Martinstor gate tower, which was used to imprison debtors and witch trial suspects.  

We also saw a lot of narrow stone gutters.  "Gutter" is not a very pretty word - for me, it brings to mind a muddy trash-filled ditch - but Freiburg's gutters were rather pretty.  They were narrow channels running along one or both sides of the cobbled streets.  Some of them were dry, others had water.  They were clean, so people waded barefoot in the water and kids played with little wooden sailboats tied to strings.  Shops also put little decorations in the gutters directly in front of their storefronts.  It was all very sweet.

Another charming thing about the streets was the cobblestone patterns evenly spaced along the sidewalks.  I photographed my favorites.  Here's one of them.

A lot of these cobblestone designs were right outside the entrances of shops, and oftentimes they were personalized to fit the shop.  I don't know if the shops get to decide what design they have or if the city decides for them, and I'm not sure what happens if a shop closes or moves, but it was a nice touch.

A neat red sandstone building with a gold embellished tower in the market square caught A's and my attention.  I wasn't sure what it was at the time, but looking it up after the fact, I can now tell you that it is an historical department store.  I wish department stores were still built like this.

A small book sale was going on under the portico of the department building.  There were about ten tables of books ranging from novels to watercolors of German towns to classics.  A found several little old hardback books with pretty colors and fonts.  I bought one.

It's all in German, and the font is old-style German writing.  The title says it's an almanac.  There are several poems inside along with a couple sketches and watercolor pictures.  The rest of it looks sort of like stories or essays.  I love the color of the covers, the gold embellishments, the fonts of the letters, the pictures, the charm of holding an old well-worn book, and the lovely mystery of not knowing what it says.  

Even the manhole covers were photographic!

Then we found what I think was the Adelhauser Neukloster, a red sandstone monastery for Dominican nuns in the 17th century.  I'd read online that the monastery was also an art museum, so A and I went in, hoping to see an old monastery and some interesting art.  It was absolutely silent inside.  You could have heard a feather land.  There were no tourists or local people.  A and I tiptoed down the halls, peeking out windows and around corners, trying to figure out where the art was and then, as we continued to walk without seeing any art, what this building even was.

It was designed in a square with an open-air quadrangle in the center with garden beds and tables and chairs.  Quite pretty and nice, except no art and no particularly monastic architecture.  There weren't any signs or brochures or pamphlets for tourists.  Increasingly confused but wanting to figure out what this place was, A and I tiptoed up some stairs to the second level.  The second level was full of offices.  And there were a people in them!  A few anyway.  Except these people were clearly businesspeople at work, not tour guides.  Several of them looked up at us as we passed, bewilderment written all over their faces.  Clearly they did not expect to see two young women not dressed in suits wandering through their hallways.

Finally A and I concluded there was no art and this was not a sightseeing destination, and we left.  We couldn't help laughing as we walked away, remembering how the businesspeople looked utterly confused at seeing us there.  We were just as confused as they were and felt like we'd gotten away with trespassing or something.  Oh well.  It was an adventure.

A hall in the Neukloster

We made our way to the Klein Venedig "Little Venice" area of Freiburg.  A canal ran through it, and quaint little shops lined it.  

Before going to Freiburg, I'd found out about a hand puppet shop in the Klein Venedig area, so we made sure to find it and go inside.  It was a little odd as well.  I had expected a small cute shop with colorfully painted walls lined with shelves containing boxes overflowing with handcrafted puppets in all shapes, sizes, styles, and species.  Maybe there would be a little puppet stage set up somewhere.  There would probably be a couple families with kids in the shop.  Instead, the shop was empty except for the cashier, a middle-aged to elderly woman with close-cropped gray hair.  The walls, an olive-y green color, held puppets in the shapes of pigs, owls, and dogs in orderly lines on spotless white shelves.  The weirdest thing about the shop though was the music.  Really intense Celtic or Irish music, possibly Enya, was pouring out of speakers and filling the entire shop.  It sounded like music from Braveheart or maybe from someone having a spiritual revelation or something.  And it was so loud!  It was the weirdest thing.  The woman running the cash register came and talked to us for a bit.  I asked her a couple questions about the puppets.  Then we thanked her and left.  Another odd experience that wasn't quite what I expected.  Oh well.  It's still memorable at least.

Despite these odd experiences - maybe because of them - Freiburg was a lot of fun.  The Old City section, the only area of Freiburg we saw, was pretty and picturesque, and I liked all the personal touches it had, like the cobblestone designs and the stone gutters.  These were some other things that I liked as well.

"Der Brillenmacher" means "The Spectacle Maker"

Lots of businesses in Freiburg, Kandern, and other towns I've been in here have these sorts of signs over their doors, showing what they sell or make.

One building had these little carvings in the corners of each window.

There were street lamps like these everywhere.  Usually they stuck out from walls of buildings or were mounted on lampposts.  Only a couple, like this one, were strung from chains crossing the street.

I liked Freiburg.  I wouldn't mind spending more time there.