Last Thursday was my 21st birthday and I feel very lucky for a few reasons. Firstly, all my friends at home made it special by messaging me or sending me things. Secondly, I had a big party in my flat and (despite the horrendous mess in the morning) I had a brilliant time and I feel really lucky that I've met such great people in Freiburg and that so many people bothered to come! I hope you had a great time if you're reading this and you're one of them :)
Thirdly, it was fun having the General Election on my birthday. In 2010 my birthday was the day after the election which was even better because on the election day itself not much happens apart from people heading to the polling booths. This election was just as interesting though. I remember frantically telling anyone at the party who might care that the Conservatives are heading for a majority or just shy of it. (It would have been interesting if they were a couple of seats off - what would they have done? Asked the Lib Dems to join forces again with their eight seats?) Anyway, I promised not to politicise my year abroad blog so I'll leave it there and just say that British politics gets more interesting by the year.
My parents, brother and friends Nigel and Nina arrived on Friday and luckily my birthday hangover had subsided. Tom came down from Strasbourg for the party and after seeing him off I headed back to my flat to start cleaning up. There was a lake just slightly smaller than Titisee (if you continue reading this, that will make more sense) on the kitchen floor and lots of empty beer bottles. EVERYWHERE. But I was just relieved that the hangover wasn't too bad and my family were coming that lunch time so I cracked on.
On the Friday evening we went out to a restaurant called Kräuterküche which to our surprise had a menu dedicated to Spargel (white asparagus, the Germans seem to live off it at this time of year). The Spargelkarte (Asparagus Menu) had things like 'Asparagus with fillet steak' and 'Asparagus with turkey breast'. Since when has asparagus trumped steak as the main event? You can see Spargel everywhere in Germany at this time of the year and when I tried to cook it myself I had to be saved by my flatmate from cooking it all wrong (thanks, Anni).
On Saturday we went up Germany's longest cable car, the Schauinslandbahn. Something got lost in translation and I mistakenly bought us single tickets, but very reasonably they made us pay only the difference for a return (rather than buying another round of singles). That was a relief because the hike down looked a big one. The views from the top are stunning. That evening we went to my favourite place for schnitzel, Martin's Bräu. Archie and Nige had the large schnitzel which looked more like a shark but triumphantly finished them.
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| The view from Schauinsland |
On Sunday we went to Titisee, a huge lake near Freiburg. It is beautiful. We went on an electric ring boat which travelled at around 1mph. We were repeatedly overtaken by people on pedalos but ours didn't require any effort. My dad also managed to upset an angry German by nearly driving the ring into his fishing lines. "Don't you have eyyyes", he said.
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| Titisee, slightly bigger than the beer puddle in my kitchen |
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| Darts German Championship winners 2015 |
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| The one that sealed it |
