France, Frankfurt and Farewell to Language School

Last weekend I visited Colmar in France. Although you could probably drive there in under half an hour, the trip took us much longer because there was building work going on on the bridge over the Rhine. We took a train to Breisach, and then ended up walking into France and then taking a bus from there. This was the first time I've ever walked over a border into another country, and thanks to the Schengen Agreement it was as if there was no border. No border patrols, no passport checks. I think this is pretty amazing considering the turbulent history of conflict between France and Germany. Now there is finally peace.

So as we walked into a quiet little village just inside of France, we asked a lady "Où sont les cafés ou les magasins?" Interestingly she could only speak German and a smattering of French, which was funny because the same thing happened in reverse on the other side: "Entschuldigung, wo ist die Bahnhof?" was greeted by a French accented English response of "I don't speak German so well". I found this interesting as it was just the kind of thing I studied in my second year at Southampton: the breaking down of physical and non-physical borders in Europe, in an attempt by the EU to foster some kind of collective European identity. Academic bit over.

Once we eventually arrived in Colmar, after coincidentally meeting a family from York on the bus, we took a mini train tour around the town. Colmar is a beautiful place with picturesque and quaint little buildings which clearly show lots of Germanic influence. There is a part called "Le Petit Venise" in reference to its small canals and gondola tours.

We then visited the market hall which was brilliant: all the things I love about France, from fresh bread to wine to the best quality fruit and veg. We sat down for half an hour and shared a bottle of Alsatian wine with bread, cheese and cold meats. It was interesting sitting in the café and hearing that for once, English was not the first or second language but actually the third, as there were lots of German speakers as well as French. Although at one point I forgot the word for the bill in French (all I could think of was 'zahlen' or 'die Rechnung') I did have the chance to practise my French which again made me realise how much better I am at it than German! But that's why I'm in Germany :)

Last week was mainly an 'admin' sort of week, which in German terms is usually multiplied in complexity by about ten. I have sorted out my German bank account (I feel like a proper German with my Deutsche Bank debit card) and am officially matriculated/enrolled at the university. To enrol at Freiburg you need to go to an individual meeting where they get out lots of different items of stationery and spend far too long doing something which could have been done online. I also got my Learning Agreement signed which, as every other third year languages student will know, is a relief. 

Friday was the last day of the language school. After an hour and a half of general chatting in order to get to know the class better (even though sadly some of whom I will never see again) we were awarded our course certificates at a mini graduation ceremony, with plenty of sparkling wine despite it only being 11am. I was sad to be moving on from this, as I really liked my classmates and my teacher, and it felt like a big change even though it had only lasted a month. Here's a picture of us all:

I was up bright and early (actually not so bright, it was still dark at 6am) on Saturday morning to visit my fourth German city: Frankfurt. After the customary high stress levels of waking up 10 minutes before my tram left (!) I managed to get to the main station in time to catch our coach. For anyone who doesn't know, meinfernbus.de is much cheaper than catching the train and it goes to most cities in Germany. The journey wasn't too bad; it only took 3 1/2 hours with a short stop off at Heidelberg (didn't get to see the castle though!). When we arrived in Frankfurt we had a Bratwurst as a late breakfast and then headed to the Altstadt town centre. This is a really nice square where the Christmas market takes place. Frankfurt is a cool place because it has a mixture of quaint old buildings and modern skyscrapers. We went to the top of one of the highest buildings in the city which has amazing views.

Some other observations....

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I did some karaoke on Wednesday for the first time in my life! Singing 'Don't Look Back in Anger' with Gemma was fun, and we got a free drink each for it. It was a great atmosphere and it felt like everyone was up for having a go which never seems to be the case at home, with the karaoke evenings seeming to turn into an amateur DJ set. All the classics came out, from 'Your Song' to 'Dancing Queen' to 'Hero' by Enrique Inglesias.

For some people this would probably come under 'Wurst', but the fact that Lidl has started selling Christmas stuff makes me happy. There's a small aisle which is already stocking Glühwein and Lebkuchen. I'm really looking forward to Freiburg at Christmas; the market around the Cathedral is supposed to be amazing. Also if Christmas is coming that means I'm closer to coming home and seeing all my friends and family :)

Wurst

I'd seen adverts all around Freiburg for the 'Flohmarkt', which as you can probably guess from the name is a flea market or a car boot sale. I thought I'd give it a go even though I am always disappointed by them in England, hoping for classic books and vintage furniture and finding a mixture of 50 year-old naked dolls and overpriced PlayStation 1 games. Turns out they're just as bad in Germany as they are in England, and probably even more overpriced. I'd been looking for a cafetière for a while, and I found one there but he was charging €15 for it. In the end I found one in Ikea for €5. 

I watched Borussia Dortmund v Arsenal in a bar. With a yellow and black shirted army of German people. It was 2-0 to Dortmund, and Arsenal were pretty useless, which only fuelled the excitement of the German fans, who seemed to be unanimously behind Dortmund. Then Bayern beat Man City and Chelsea (only) drew with Schalke. I don't think I'm looking forward to the next round of fixtures. 

George x

Jogi Löw, Brewery tour and a trip to Basel

So a lot has happened since my last post. Last Saturday I went to the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) surrounding Freiburg which was great. We visited the former monastery of St. Peter, famous for its baroque church and library. After a scenic coach ride through the Black Forest, we visited what claimed to be the biggest cuckoo clock in the world. We then went on to the Vogtsbauernhof, an open-air museum in which you can experience how people in the Black Forest lived hundreds of years ago. After the essential beer and (huge) slice of Black Forest gateau, we headed back to Freiburg.

Black Forest Gateau

'The World's Largest Cuckoo Clock'

The next day I joined an excursion to a local vineyard. The Baden-Württemburg area is a wine producing region and after a tour of the vineyard by the couple who owned it, we went back to their house where we were given a delicious barbeque. It was a sweltering day and we were all very happy to try white wine and home-made elderflower cordial in their shady garden.

Tour group with a view of the vineyard and Black Forest

Tuesday was a great day, thanks to the visit of Jogi Löw, the German national coach who guided 'die Mannschaft' to World Cup glory this year. The city of Freiburg packed into the square in front of the Rathaus and when Jogi arrived he was greeted with cheers and singing. And he didn't disappoint - no one realised he'd bring the actual trophy along with him:

It was an incredible sight, which made me think about how much it would mean to English people if we were to win the World Cup one day. Jogi, who had three stints at SC Freiburg during his playing career, is a local to the city and (from what I understood of his speech) coming back to Freiburg was even better than presenting the World Cup to hundreds of thousands of fans in Berlin.

"Welcome home - thank you Jogi!"

On Wednesday I went to Baumkronenweg, which is essentially a tree top walk, with lots of suspended pathways overlooking the trees below. This is brilliant - the bridges are rickety and very high, and after the long hike up there, you can get back to the bottom of the mountain on a huge slide. The slide is dark but the acoustics are excellent, meaning when you're at the bottom you can hear the screams of the people coming down.

I've visited two of Freiburg's five museums so far, which were both excellent. I'll do a blog post about them when I've visited all five. On Friday afternoon there was a trip to the Ganter brewery; Ganter is one of Freiburg's most famous beers and it is sold in almost every bar in the city. The tour was really interesting, especially the part about adhering to Germany's purity laws, which dictate that beer can consist of no more than four ingredients: hops, barley, yeast and water. The tour guide pointed out that the water is the most important ingredient, and that the water used to make Ganter comes directly from the Black Forest. After a tour of where the beer is made, which was described as 'one of the most modern and sophisticated breweries in Germany' we went to the bar and could try any of the Ganter beers. The barman made a comment about the English way of serving a pint (i.e. with little or no foam) being wrong. I beg to differ; I like my drinks in liquid form, please.

On Saturday we went to Basel in Switzerland. First impressions of Switzerland were good; the city seemed clean and friendly. We walked to the river first, which although smaller, bore similarities with the Seine and the Thames. After a short walk we found the Münster (Cathedral) which was a red Gothic building with two imposing towers. Interestingly it was originally Catholic but today is a Reformed Protestant church. After an earthquake in 1356 it was rebuilt by Johannes Gmünd, who was also employed to build the Freiburg Münster. 

View of the Cathedral across the river is Basel's highlight

Later we decided to go to the Fondation Beyeler, probably Basel's most famous museum. The guide book didn't inform us of just how far out of the city the museum is. We walked for over half an hour before asking a lady selling sunflowers how much further it was. 'Half an hour from here' wasn't the answer we were hoping for, but she guided us to the tram which got us there pretty quickly. The Fondation Beyeler houses artwork by the likes of Cézanne, Monet, Matisse, Picasso and Van Gogh. I was really looking forward to this as Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are forms of art that really intrigue me. Unfortunately, the main exhibition was closed and we could only see a collection by Gustave Courbet. For €9 entry only to find that most of the exhibits were unavailable was disappointing. The whole museum was rather strange. They were very strict about what you could take in, even stopping me from taking in an empty bottle of water for fear it might 'damage one of the paintings'. I also made the error of standing a little too close to one of the paintings which set an alarm off, although no one actually came to check I wasn't stealing it. I felt very out of place in the museum; the demographic was 60+, well-dressed. I was there in a Primark t-shirt and jeans. 

Entrance to the Fondation Beyeler

Some other observations....

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One awesome thing they do in Germany is give you money if you return a plastic bottle to the shop. You put them in this big machine that scans the bar code and gives you a voucher to use in the shop. It's usually 0€25 per bottle, which when you can get six bottles of sparkling water for 0€69 is pretty strange because you're sort of making a profit. (Although the money has to be used in the store anyway). I think this is definitely something we should do in the UK, although it has the unintended side-effect of making homeless people go through the bins in an attempt to find bottles that have been thrown out.

German food can be really delicious. I've been eating out quite a lot lately (luckily Germany is a lot cheaper than Switzerland, which I found out in Basel after a slice of pizza and a coffee cost me €12). Last night I had Schweineschnitzel mit Knöpfle und Rahmsauce. This is a delicious combination of pork schnitzel, a gnocchi-like starch and a sauce made from fresh cream. There's also something called Flammkuchen, which is a very thin pizza with sour cream instead of passata. Lecker!

Wurst

So I wanted to buy some normal tea. Just tea. After browsing the tea section in Lidl (which for some illogical reason is really far away from the coffee), I settled on 'Cream Tea', which had a picture of a scone with jam and cream, so naturally I thought it must be the kind we have back home. Unfortunately it was cream flavoured tea, which in case you're wondering, is disgusting. And that's from someone who likes most kinds of tea.

The coffee and milk aren't much of an improvement. The milk just doesn't taste the same. Mostly they drink UHT milk but even that tastes very different to the long-life milk you get in England. The coffee, which is called gold blend, is nothing like Nescafé gold blend. But I guess I'll get used to all these little differences.


George x

3 days in

So it didn't start as smoothly as I'd hoped. My flight from Gatwick to Basel was delayed by about four and a half hours; something about needing some tape and gel to fix the front of the plane. We ended up getting on another plane in the end, one that was scheduled to go to Manchester. They gave us a free drink and snacks, which was clever because people's grumpiness definitely decreases significantly if you give them (1) free stuff, and (2) something to eat. The whole episode reminded me of the scene in Come Fly With Me where Taj, who works for the airline, tells a customer it was their fault that the plane was delayed 'for being a cheapskate and booking with a crappy airline' (Jack, Adam, you know the reference). The delay had a huge knock on effect on my plans. Basically I needed to collect my room keys from the Language School office by 9pm, when they closed. When I realised there was no way I could get there before 9, I sent an email to the office, and in ever-efficient German fashion they replied quickly explaining that they'd give the keys to the Hauptbahnhof (main station) office, which closed at 11.30pm. Relief. Until I worked out that the delayed flight would arrive at 10.15, and I'd need to catch the 10.30 coach from Basel to arrive in Freiburg for 11.30. I got through customs really quickly, and made the coach by the skin of my teeth. In fact I think I got on at 10.34. The journey to Freiburg is 55 minutes, so again it was going to be very tight as to whether I'd get to the Hauptbahnhof before it shut. I arrived in Freiburg at around 11.25, and after a few minutes of running around the large station with two big suitcases I found the office and luckily it was still open. I collected my keys and took a taxi to the address stated on the envelope.

Getting in the building was a challenge, even. Nowhere in the pack did they state that you have to scan the keyring to get into the building and your flat. So I just waited until someone came out. One guy could tell I was confused and helped me find my room, the numbers written at the top of the envelope. Why couldn't they have put 'Raumnummer' or something next to it? I arrived in my room and pretty much went straight to bed after such a stressful afternoon and evening. My flat is quite nice, 7 rooms and two bathrooms, but so far I've only met one housemate as uni term doesn't start until mid-October and the others won't arrive until nearer the time. Apparently they're all German which I think is awesome.



View of the city from the top of the Cathedral

Language school is 3 hours every morning and then we're free to do whatever afterwards. Everyone in the class seems very nice, including the teacher who makes crude jokes every so often that no one is quite sure how to react to. So far I've met lots of Americans and Canadians, and also people from all over the world; Nigeria, Japan, Slovakia, Ireland, Italy... With the guy from Japan I chatted in German about football for a good ten minutes or so. For all the stick football gets in the UK, no one can deny that it's a great unifying force for different cultures all over the world.

 



There are little streams on the streets called 'Bächle' which are unique to Freiburg. If you step in one by accident, legend has it that you'll marry a Freiburger.

There are lots of organised activities and excursions for students, so far we've already been to the top of the Freiburger Münster (cathedral), on a small hike which ended with a great view over the city and a short guided city tour. There are some great things lined up in the next week and a half; a trip to Basel, Switzerland, a vineyard tour and a hike to the Black Forest (which is tomorrow at 8.30am, which could be interesting seeing as there's a Kneipentour (bar crawl) this evening).



One strange thing is the Germans' tendency to not cross the road unless the little man on the traffic lights goes green. I wonder how much of their lives the Germans waste waiting to cross a road even when there's no car nearby.

Overall, though, everything is going pretty well and I'm practising German quite a lot (even with native English speakers which is a bit bizarre) and the city is absolutely beautiful, as I hope you can tell from the pictures.

George x