Freiburg im Breisgau
September 3rd, 2008Freiburg for me is “a mix of old and new,” not in the sense of the guidebook cliche that is so often applied to fast-developing cities (especially since Freiburg is the opposite of dynamic), but because my experience of Freiburg has such distinct boundaries: I lived here before I finished college (old), and am back now after over eight years in the working world (new).
Things I learned in Freiburg:
- German
- How to cook (my friend “majored” in cooking, textiles, and French)
- How to play chess (on the outdoor, giant-sized chessboard* where every defeat is a public humiliation)
- How to play ping-pong
- How to pronounce Pädagogische Hochschule. I realized later that no one bothered — they all abbreviate it as “PH” (pay-hah).
What’s typical Freiburg:
- The river Dreisam (Bist du einsam, gehe zweisam an die Dreisam: ”If you’re lonely, go with a partner to the Dreisam.”)
- Freiburg’s “Bächle”, the little runnels carved in the streets of Freiburg that channel Dreisam water through the city. Local legend says that if you step in one accidentally, you’ll marry a Freiburger/in.
- Spätzle
- People saying it’s the warmest city in Germany
- Green-ness, in both senses of the word: it’s a very eco-friendly city, and is literally green. The city covers the streetcar tracks with sod, and cultivates ivy to grow to cover the electricity poles so that even the infrastructure blends in with the Schwarzwald.
- None of these things is particular to Freiburg, but I got hooked on them here: banana juice, Happy Cola, Ritter Sport chocolate
I arrived in the middle of the night after my flight was delayed, but just the Freiburg license plates were enough to trigger old memories. Cars here have plates that indicate where they were registered, so you can use those letters to indicate your destination when traveling (and exert subtle pressure on people to give you a ride, since it’s clear when they are going in your direction). Somewhere in my storage boxes is a piece of cardboard with TÜ on one side and FR on the other that I used to hitchhike between Tübingen and Freiburg when I was at university.
* The chessboard in the Stadtpark has apparently been replaced by an outdoor amphitheater.