Comment dites-vous 'American'?: Freiburg, Germany

>>> Hallo Freiburg <<<

Day trips are actually the best...

When we travel to nearby cities, we typically take an early bus out of town to leave the whole day for exploring. Today we left at 9:15am to head to Freiburg, Germany, and we took a 6:00pm bus back to Strasbourg. Originally, seven of us girls booked the Flixbus tickets for the day, and by the time all of our friends who were available joined in on the plans, we had a group of 21.

(Four Italian friends are missing from this picture since they had to split off for an earlier bus home because we filled the 6pm return bus.)

We arrived in Freiburg around 11:00am, and pulled the usual of heading straight for the cathedral. Freiburg's main cathedral, Freiburg Münster, is known for its Gothic architecture, its system of four organs, and its survival of intense bombings during World War II. On November 27th, 1944 over 1900 bombs were dropped on Freiburg within 25 minutes, leaving almost all of Freiburg in ruins with the exception of Freiburg Münster (ncap.org.uk/destruction-freiburg). We were able to climb the cathedral stairs, and found great views from the top. Since Freiburg borders Germany's Black Forest, we were spoiled with many other amazing views today, also.

After visiting the cathedral, we found the Freiburg's tourism office to get information about seeing the closest edge of the Black Forest. Thankfully we had Troy, an American who coincidentally grew up in Perrysburg, OH and studies at OSU, to act as our personal tour guide throughout the day. We climbed up to the top of a couple peaks in the nearest hills, and the views were amazing. This part of the day was right up my alley; for a few minutes I really felt like I should be backpacking in Red River Gorge in Kentucky versus just climbing a steep hill in the Black Forest in Germany.

Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Portugal, Mexico, Belgium, (kind of) England, and the U.S. are all represented in this photo.

The man at the tourism office recommended after we hit the trails we should go by Kastaniengarten, a beer garden, with views of the mountains. We decided this was a fine idea, so we stopped for beer and pretzels before heading back down to Freiburg's city center later in the afternoon. Once back in the city, the mission was to find Black Forest cake at Cafe Schmidt, and from there we relaxed for the rest of our day before heading back to Strasbourg.

Between the view and this company, I had an amazing afternoon.

October Travel Plans!

While we were at the beer garden, we talked out plans for future travel on our fall break at the end of October, as well as ideas for weekends in October... Italy is on our sights for October 6-9th. Additional murmurs of Dublin, Ireland or London, England for October 14-16th are making me almost as excited as the 10-day trip we're planning for Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Austria for October 22nd-November 2nd. It's crazy to me how affordable travel can be within Europe if you're smart about Ryanair flights and using Flixbus... I'm so excited to see what other destinations lie ahead!

Plotting an international Thanksgiving celebration

Oh, and in the beer garden we also discussed our Thanksgiving plans... Since we'll have class on the Thursday of actual Thanksgiving, we're going to try to celebrate the day of the Michigan/OSU game, so we have a Saturday with good football. I love my BG falcons (ay ziggy zoomba), but Michigan has always been my team. Since my friend Troy is an equally avid OSU fan, this will be a really fun Saturday for us. (It'll be even more fun for me if Michigan can pull through with a W.)

We've talked out a full menu, and our friends have agreed to go out and play American football with us, too. The meal is a little ambition for my inexperienced American friend and I, but with the help of our friends who can follow recipes, I think we'll pull off an awesome mock-Thanksgiving. Family, I'll be contacting you for our recipes sometime soon. (: