Freiburg, Germany. Friday/Wednesday 17/22-July-2024.
Table of Contents:
Thursday 18: Fourth leg of this year's interrailing adventure. We spent a couple of hours in Freiburg on last year's trip but it was not enough so planned a revisit. Another fascinating town with beautiful buildings, lots to do and a parkrun.
We were in an AirBnB this time in Gunsterstal, village a 20 minute bus ride south of Freiburg centre. The bus stop was very close so it was easy to pop in and out of the city. As usual we did an initial recce to familiarise ourselves with the city centre. That evening we bought some food and cooked a simple supper at the apartment.
Friday 19: Friday was the big touristing day. Tourist Information, located in the Rathaus, has a really useful fold-out town map for €1 with a suggested walking tour and brief details of each of the most important buildings. A small selection of all the fascinating buildings:
Followed by lunch in Rappen restaurant, in the Munsterplatz with a view of the cathedral.
A unique feature of Freiburg is the Bächle which are small water-filled runnels. We didn't remember them from our brief visit last year but I'm not sure how we managed to miss them, there were so many of them in much of the historic centre. Almost every street you had to watch out for them. The main modern day use seems to be for small children to pull little Bächle boats on string.
We saw grown-ups having late-night picnics, a shopkeeper cooling watermelons and many people just sitting cooling their feet. Read more on Wikipedia: [Freiburg Bächle].
We had excellent beer and lunch at Martins Brau close to the historic Martins Gate. I had what was basically a spam fritter with fried egg on top. Mary wanted to try as many types of bratwurst as possible and they were offering four different types in one dish!
We dined that night in the nearby Gasthause Kybfelsen, only a 15 minute walk from the apartment.
Saturday 20: As always Saturday is parkrun day. The Dietenbach parkrun is north-west of the city and our AirBnB location meant a 50 minute journey by bus and tram to get to the park.
Dietenbach parkrun was a lovely course and I managed first in my age category - but then I was the only one in my age category! On the way round Mary spotted a very tame rabbit. Afterwards we went to great café nearby for a post-parkrun coffee and chat with the regulars.
Afterwards we went for a wander around the market in Munsterplatz as Mary wanted to buy some olive-wood salt spoons. In the end she couldn't decide on which one so bought three!
With amazing serendipity again, we managed to be in a town with a festival. Freiburg were having their annual Museums-Nacht which at €10 for a wristband gave access to all the participating museums in town. Along with their usual exhibits there was a varied programme of talks and performances, from 6pm to 1am. We saw two performances of Capoeira - an Afro-Brazilian Martial art - children first then adults later. We also fitted in three bands.
Supper was a very messy galette whilst we listened to a classical ensemble followed by a band swing band.
Later we switched venue to the Cathedral workshop for the excellent Catastrophe Waitress. A very enjoyable way to end the evening.
Sunday 21: We have read many reports of the unreliability of the German train service, including from Germans themselves. Monday's leg of the tour included a 5 hour journey from Mulhouse on the TGV down to Marseille followed by a 3 hour Intercity train to Carcassonne.
We could not afford to miss the TGV and did not want to risk an early start, a bus and two possible unreliable German trains to get to Mulhouse. So we decided to curtail our stay in Freiburg by one night and instead transferred the night before to a hotel close to Mulhouse train station. This also gave us a chance to explore somewhere new.
Mulhouse being right on the border with Switzerland many of the street names were bi-lingual; sometimes direct translations, sometime not.
We had a picnic lunch on the train, a relax in the hotel then went out for a beer at the amusingly named Pub Fiction.
That was followed by a fantastic supper at Le Faubourg. We immediately have more confidence in a restaurant with short menus. A huge list of dishes make me wonder how they can all be freshly prepared. This had three starters, three mains and three desserts. We had two courses and they were delicious washed down with a lovely wine from Alsace.
Next stop: Carcassonne.
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